Chapter 12

The Cavalry

"I'm home!" Kevin shouted as the door shut behind him. He scooted his way over to the kitchen table to set his groceries down. He slid his dusty Systems Alliance jacket off his shoulders to drape it over a smooth white-grey chair that was lazily pushed halfway under the oval table.

"Bout time," said a quarian woman with the unmistakable friskiness of Bela'Merni. "Tell me you got it." Her dimly glowing eyes shone with excited anticipation.

"Yeah, I got it," Kevin replied with a big grin. He pulled out a circular sealed metal object from one of the grocery bags and held it out for the quarian. It was black and discus in shape, and an angry, pulsing red circle in the middle stuck out as if it were a sphere jammed into the center. It was only there for a mere fraction of a second before the quarian lunged.

"Ohhhh yesssss!" Bela exclaimed as she almost instantly scooped it up. "Kevin, I take back almost all those terrible things I said about you behind your back!" The excitable girl hugged the item to her chest and ran off into a different room of the house.

"Don't eat it all at once!" Kevin chuckled and pulled out several similar objects in expectation. Soon after he'd set them down, Kar'Welkas came in, looking beefy and malformed under his suit as always. "Just in time, Kar. Here's yours."

Kar happily hopped over to the table and scooped his up. He gurgled out a disgusting, mucousy noise that Kevin instantly knew as his thanks and bounded off after Bela. Siri showed up next, her suit open and body missing aside from the thin minimalistic frame of a geth chassis. Her voice, however, was as it had always been—confidently gentle and full of wisdom.

"You're too kind to us, Folner," captain Kortel said as she took her respective meal. "We'll have to find a way to return the favor someday."

"Don't worry about it," Kevin returned with a smile. "Where are the others?"

Siri put her metal container back down and leaned against the table with her sharp hip, arms crossed. "Riik's sulking around here somewhere. I'm sure he'll be up here to offer his antagonistic nature and a few choice words soon enough. I haven't seen Arla, Tyr, or Ralik in ages. I hope they're alright."

Kevin suddenly felt increasingly apprehensive about Arla; somehow he'd forgotten she wasn't there and just remembered she should have been. "Captain, can you pass out the rest of the food? I… I need to go find Arla."

"Don't worry about her so much, Folner," she commented with a shrug. Metal joints clicked. "I'm sure she'll make her way here soon enough. She's always just been stubborn with change."

"Change?" Kevin asked himself, unsure of her meaning. Hadn't they always lived like this? "I'm sure that's enough for you, captain, but I just want to have her at my side."

"It's only a matter of time before she joins us here, Folner. Trust me." There was a confidence to her tone that made the hair on the back of Kevin's neck stand on end. The wiry woman stood upright off of the table and she started towards the door that lead to the rest of the house, hips swaying invitingly and looking as attractive as ever when not seen through the opening of her suit. "Come on, let's go up to my room for some vids. I'll let you pick this time."

Kevin's brow furrowed. Siri never swayed her hips at him like that ever before. Something was wrong. This place… he shouldn't be here. He took a few quick steps forward and gripped Siri by the bicep, his fingers crumpling the empty suit until they wrapped around the hard metal chassis beneath them. "Captain, where's Arla?"

Siri looked back at him, glowing eyes seeing his wariness. "If I knew where she was I'd bring her here myself. She's never even had the courtesy to come visit us here. It won't be long, though."

"I'm going to find her," Kevin said resolutely as he turned towards the door to the outside.

"Don't leave us, Kevin! We need you here! Everyone needs you here! Don't you want to live forever? Forever with me?" The last two questions echoed endlessly in Bela's false voice. The sound bounced off every wall an infinite number of times, drowning out all sound until even thoughts felt oppressed.

"I'm going to find her!" Kevin yelled back as he ran for the door.

"Stay with us! Play with us!" the haunting voice called to him, heard above even the echoes. "We can preserve! We will harvest! Even you can't hide from the end, boy! Better to embrace it than to fight in utter futility!"

Kevin wasn't listening anymore. He threw the door open and ran outside without a second thought. The outside world was dark and mechanical. He looked back to the house he'd just run from and all his friends were watching him from inside, unable to cross the same threshold. Another look around at the environment outside and he recognized the chilling interior of the reaper he was standing in.

It roared.

Kevin's eyes flew open as his ears picked up the distant sounds of reapers continuing their obliteration of Vallum. All at once his foggy mind registered several critical details about his situation, but even the critical nature of them was half-lost in the fog he was mentally trying to breach.

He was on his back. His neck had grown sore from falling back sharply and hanging there, taken by gravity and unsupported beyond the hard material under his shoulders. He was pinned as well. His muscles worked, as near as he could tell, but every slight motion sent sharp stabs of pain up through his body and he found he couldn't move any of them anyways. His eyes took a few minutes to focus, but when they were able to make sense of the darkness around him, he saw that he was in some kind of room. There was a ceiling above him, at least. Most everything else was obscured by rubble that had settled on top of him.

His entire body throbbed. He felt like every single inch of his existence had been stepped on by a reaper… twice. He thanked the powers that be, as it meant he still had limbs to feel and his body was working enough to tell him he was in pain. It was going to make trying to get up a serious challenge, though, even if he wasn't already buried in building debris.

He turned his head to the left despite the obvious outcry from all muscles involved so he could get a bit more bearing on his surroundings. Flickering and sputtering orange light, probably from some nearby fires, illuminated the room enough to allow him to get a general idea of what was waiting for him in the darkness. Luckily, not much was there to greet him besides more wreckage and the dancing shadows lit by the fires somewhere below. The orange glow light was coming through a collection of gaping holes in one of the walls, the larger of which gave him a limited view outside of the building. Wherever he was it wasn't ground level.

Kevin groaned as he tried to move again. He felt some of the rubble pinning him shift a bit and he stopped immediately, fearing that it would somehow settle more and break some bones. Memories he'd forced to the recesses of his mind, ones of waking up in the flaming wreckage of the Kellius, jumped into the front of his thoughts for a few brief moments before he shoved them back. He needed to focus on getting out and finding out what happened.

"Folner. You alive over there?" came the raspy flanged voice of a turian. Not just any turian, however. It was Senik.

Kevin tried to speak but the words caught in his throat. It was dry as a bone and all that came out was something between a cough and a hiss. The turian seemed to accept that as it was.

"That's as close to good news as we're like to get," the kebalim grumbled, his voice strained as if in immense pain and somehow keeping it under control.

Kevin coughed a bit more until he felt his throat open up a little. "What… What happened…?" he managed to wheeze out. There were some vague dots of memory about… Core Squad… A reaper… biotics…

"We climbed a damn reaper and tried to blow its face off. Twice."

All at once the memories returned to him, right up to punching Senik in the arm to detonate the massive biotic distortion they'd created. "Did it work?"

"Hell if I know. I don't hear any nearby roars or explosions, so that's something."

Kevin sighed as much as his lungs would allow. Even just that caused his entire upper body to ache. He didn't hear or feel any reaper footfalls either, at least none from anywhere nearby as far as he could tell. The problem with that was he had no idea how long he'd been out. The reaper could have killed everyone and been well on its way by now for all he knew.

"How… How am I alive?" Kevin asked, aware that if things went the way he thought they did, he should be dead by all accounts.

"You lost consciousness amidst the biotic explosion and we were thrown across the field of battle into a building, though I don't quite know where. I had to shield you with biotics or you would have been little more than a smear on the wall."

Kevin grimaced at the thought. "And you?"

"Fell through a broken window that proceeded to jostle the building enough to dump rocks on us. That or the concussive shockwave did."

Kevin wasn't sure how true that was, as it didn't make complete sense in his mind. His head was pounding hard, however, and decidedly let the matter drop for fear of his skull splitting in half at too much thought.

He forced himself to turn his head to look to the right so he could see Senik. The aches made him wince and grit his teeth, but not as much as seeing Senik did. Looking down passed the edge of the rubble keeping him pinned, he saw the turian in a similar situation—lying face-up and buried under some rubble. One of his arms was free—his left arm, as it were—and rested on top of a nearby piece of debris. Kevin curiously wondered why he hadn't used that free arm to use biotics and release himself. He found out why when he noticed the turian's arm was twisted around and jutting outward at a grotesque angle between the elbow and the wrist.

What struck him more than the arm, however, was what he had on display on his omni-tool. There was a small holoimage of an asari in commando leathers that he could just barely see due to the twist in Senik's omni-tool arm. Even from where Kevin was laying, though, he could see how immensely beautiful she was. She seemed to have a femme fatale air about her; a woman just as capable of killing you as entrancing you. There was a wry smirk on her face; that kind of 'I know something you don't know' twist to her lips that made her even more entrancing. Kevin couldn't see Senik's face, but he could tell the turian had been staring at the holoimage for a while.

The only thing that broke this relative silence between them was the sound of reaper troops echoing up a nearby exit to a stairwell. They had just started to climb from the sound of it, and long periods of silence between any progress implied they were searching the levels of the building for something. Kevin had a likely guess, and he also guessed he and Senik weren't going to survive when they were found.

"Who's that?" Kevin solemnly asked the kebalim, his attention turned back to the asari.

"Someone I… had to leave behind," was his only reply, almost growling as he spoke. After another small moment of relative quiet, he asked, "You have anyone you want to get back to?"

Kevin thought about it for only a short while. The image that flashed through his head wasn't of Maela, curiously. "I did."

"Did?"

Kevin swallowed hard. He didn't want to bring her face to the surface of his mind again, but there she was, standing defiant and seen in his mind's eye. "She's… dead."

"Tell me who she was," Senik inquired, his tone flat and emotionless.

Kevin knew what was going on. They both knew their deaths were just a few stories below them and Senik was giving him something else to focus on in their last quiet moments. Normally this involved some level of deception, something that made sure the victim couldn't resist the need to focus on something else. He remembered doing the same to Bela'Merni and his brows crashed together. Somehow he doubted that Senik was trying to play him the same way, though. Their situation was obvious, and if Kevin was going to die now, he didn't mind Arla being in his last thoughts.

"Her name was Arla'Tavval vas Kellius nar Neema."

"A quarian?" Senik asked rhetorically, almost sounding half surprised.

"A Migrant Fleet Marine, yes. We ended up in the same squad, believe it or not."

"That have something to do with your… appearance?" the turian asked, never once looking away from the holoimage.

"It was her squad's idea when my life needed saving." He sighed, letting his mind fall into the sea of memories he could still bring up. "She and I were as compatible as oil and water when we first met, but we spent a lot of time helping each other in various ways. We bonded, then fell in love, then made love. I spent almost all of that night with her in a cramped decontamination chamber in a ship's med-bay, hopelessly lost on the very fringes of the galaxy with geth gathered nearby, a reaper sleeping inside a mountain under our noses, and imminent death looming in every conceivable direction." He paused. "It was the most perfect night of my life."

He and Senik shared a chuckle, then silence fell again for another minute or so.

"How did she die?" Senik asked not a moment later, quickly subduing the mood.

"Soon after that night, we accidentally caused… some kind of event that led to a reaper appearing. One of those big ones we've been seeing off in the distance. We quickly formulated a crude plan to try to take it out before it could begin doing what these reapers are doing now, but Arla was sick from our… intimate encounter. You know… quarian problems. I had to leave her behind with a few others to watch over her while the rest of us went off against all possible odds to kill the reaper.

Even above the ambiance of the semi-distant battles, Kevin could hear Senik's teeth grinding. Perhaps hearing that the person who would soon share his last moments had to leave someone behind as well rankled him fiercely.

"We were successful somehow, but the price was too high. The reaper disabled our ship and sent us crashing to the surface. I'd survived through my biotics but the rest on the ship weren't so fortunate. To make things worse, when I looked around, all I saw was the wreckage of the tent she and the others were taking refuge in. The broken ship had fallen into it and obliterated it all."

Kevin felt a lump grow in his throat, and no matter what he did he couldn't will it away. All of those feelings—helplessness, emotional agony, loneliness, and the unfairness of it all—it all came back to him, bubbling up and overtaking his attempts to tell the story. He fell silent so he wouldn't end up audibly giving away the tears welling in his eyes and grit his teeth to force himself to reel it in.

The grotesque gurgles and monstrous growls of the reaper troops sounded only one floor down now. Kevin could hear them toppling furniture and taking random shots at things in order to try and find their target, or rather, targets. He took another look at Senik, the turian's eyes still locked solely on the holoimage.

"Her name is Khamila Suriyan," the kebalim suddenly stated. "She's my mate. I had to leave her on Omega when I was called back to the Hierarchy's service." His voice was devoid of all emotion, colorless and flat. "I promised her I would return to take her away from that wretched place when I was done with this mission, no matter the circumstances."

Kevin raised a brow in surprise. He'd never figured Senik to be the type to love or be loved by any woman. He was all military, married to his duty, and it seemed to Kevin that simply being a kebalim didn't leave much room for any such attachment. Interestingly, even imposing figures like him could have a soft spot for a woman strong enough to catch his eye, though he'd probably punch a hole through anyone stupid enough to call it a 'soft spot'. "And now you worry about how she'll have handle the imminent storm alone," Kevin surmised. He wondered the same thing about Maela now.

Senik said nothing but rather broke his gaze away from the holoimage to stare off at the ceiling, deep in thought. The reaper forces were done searching the floor below now, marked by the lack of violent noise coming from below. Suddenly Kevin heard Senik grunt loudly in pain and the weight of the rubble pinning him down had diminished so much that the rocks could have almost floated away on their own.

"Get up, they'll be here any second," Senik growled in order, his voice laced in agony.

Kevin quickly pushed at the rubble and debris, moving it off of him as effortlessly as if it were made of Styrofoam. He found his pistol lying next to him, scratched and scuffed rather badly but otherwise undamaged. Doing everything he could to ignore the aches in his body, he grabbed his pistol and forced himself to stand, grunting with the exertion. He saw Senik pinned and lying exactly as he had before, but his left arm—now without a holoimage over it—was in a new position. It dangled from his shoulder in a way that made Kevin's gut churn from looking so painful, as though he'd outstretched it towards Kevin and let it drop.

The first thoughts in Kevin's mind were of how ready Senik was to let his end come and how stark a difference that was from right now. It had to have taken impossible levels of physical effort to move a broken limb properly enough to enact a biotic field the way he had done, a feat Kevin would never ask of anyone and probably never be able to accomplish himself. He was almost dumbstruck with the sheer u-turn the turian had to have pushed through just to have the mental fortitude to execute that.

He didn't have time to think about it any more than that unfortunately, or to free the turian. The reaper troops were already on their way up the stairs and the sound of their approach snapped Kevin out of his thoughtful state. Gathering dark energy to himself, Kevin ducked low behind a nearby pile of fallen debris and trained his sight on the door on the far end of the room. His body burned with the sensation of his worked nervous system pushing to gather more dark energy, but he made himself continue gathering. A pair of cannibals entered the room first. Other than broken furniture and piles of rubble that had fallen from floors above, the room was otherwise empty, so they didn't have anything to draw their attention.

At least, until Senik took that job on himself, grunting in the process. "Down here, you dumb bastards."

The ploy worked, and the moment both of the cannibals looked down towards Senik, Kevin popped up from cover enough to fire several precisely aimed rounds into their heads. There still wasn't any time to help the kebalim yet, though. At least five or six more were coming up the stairs. Kevin's mind quickly sorted through a number of potential scenarios and one stood out in his head as the most efficient. He needed to rid themselves of these enemies and get Senik mobile before more could track them down. Fortunately, he knew a way to handle both of these in one stroke.

He first released the dark energy he had built up into the rubble pinning Senik down with such a low mass field that the debris started resisting gravity and floating into the air. Next, he used a second high-mass field to act as a gravity well to cause the floating rubble to meander over towards the door the hostiles came from. Senik started to roll away from the door, already understanding what Kevin was going for. As the next enemies—a pair of turian-reaper hybrids—came through the threshold, he used one final push of dark energy to enact a biotic throw on the collective fields enveloping the broken pieces.

A biotic explosion tore through the door, sending the rubble shooting towards the incoming hostiles like a massive shotgun. The force of the explosion caused the entire stairwell to begin to collapse and the wreckage took any reaper troops still alive with it. Luckily the collapse ended at the doorframe and Kevin felt it was safe to go check on Senik.

The turian was already getting to his feet, though, and was also in the painful process of realigning his broken arm. He used his good arm to unbuckle his grenade belt and he held it out for Kevin to take. "Nicely done, kid. Here, help me pin this blasted arm to my side so I can at least move without it ripping off." His jaw was clenched hard and Kevin was thoroughly impressed with how well the turian could manage his pain.

"Damn, you must have an impressive threshold for this," Kevin mentioned as he took the grenade belt, knelt, and looped it around the kebalim's waist, arm and all.

"I do, but this is different. My limbs only register about fifty to sixty percent of feeling; a constant pseudonumb state that humans liken to a foot 'falling asleep'. Such are one of the detriments to many years of hard biotics use."

Kevin finished buckling the belt around Senik's right side, effectively pinning his broken left arm in place by the armor. As he stood upright again, Kevin thought back to the sudden and profound change the kebalim had fought through to save them. "Not too long ago you seemed convinced that we were done. What changed your mind?"

Senik grunted, face as blank as ever. He looked out one of the large holes in the wall that overlooked their prior battlefield as he considered his words. "I have no wish to leave Khamila the same way your Arla left you. As long as I have the strength to breathe and an arm to fight with, I'll do everything I can to return to her and kill every reaper-aligned motherfucker in the way. Spirits willing, with a legion at my back." To finish off his speech, the kebalim found his Shuriken and holstered it on his hip.

Kevin admired such indomitable spirit. He felt like it gave him strength just by association. Just as Kevin was about to respond, however, the deep, thrumming wooshes of huge beating wings broke all perceptions of safety. The massive maw of a reaperized harvester appeared in the window Senik was staring out of just as the first light of dawn was coloring the clouds of smoke smoldering in the sky behind it.

Senik turned to look at Kevin, flames in his eyes. "Run!"

"Damnit!" Kevin cursed as they both immediately broke into a sprint down the long room away from the stairs that had previously collapsed. His screaming aches were smothered under a full dose of adrenaline as fight or flight kicked in, and he certainly wasn't going to stand and fight.

Behind them, the room lit up with explosions, fire, and flying debris as the harvester let fly with several shots, shooting just as much through the open holes as it did straight through the weakened outer wall and into the building. Each shot trailed just behind the fleeing pair and their shields took the brunt of the flung shrapnel that kicked up almost at their heels. They took a left turn to head further inside the building, but the familiar sounds of hordes of reaper troops somewhere below told them all they needed about using the stairs.

"Guess we pissed them off," Kevin noted as they hopped a railing to careen down one floor in hopes of throwing off the harvester's search.

"We're being hunted," Senik confirmed as the ominous sounds grew louder. "They'll be converging on our location in less than a minute. We'll need to throw off the ground troops long enough to get under that harvester…"

"Or just stop them in their tracks," the human suggested as he started gathering dark energy to himself. "We just have to hope half of the building doesn't come down on our heads." He turned his head towards the wall when he heard explosions caused by the harvester begin to pummel the side of the building.

Senik didn't give much acknowledgement, but he did start looking for ways to impede the approaching creatures. The short pause, however, ended up being a bad idea. The walls next to them crumbled as an explosion tore into the building. They turned to look at the gaping breach and the harvester flew into view.

Senik growled and lunged off towards a door down the hallway with Kevin hot on his heels. Behind them, two explosive shots obliterated the spot they had stood in not three seconds ago. Ahead of them the hallway opened up into what was once some kind of office space for the local government. It looked largely intact until three cannibals busted through the door somewhere on the left, took one look at Kevin and Senik, then launched a number of grenades into the room.

Kevin used the dark energy he had been gathering to erect a barrier between the grenades and themselves. The sharp explosions turned most of the office space into flaming chaos, but the barrier held. Senik hurdled over an overturned desk as his right hand came around for his Shuriken, tucked into a tumble, laid out flat on his back, then fired several burst-fire volleys at the trio. By the time Kevin had dropped the barrier, the three cannibals were spurting gore and collapsing to the ground.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Kevin asked with a slight gesture towards the broken arm.

Senik stood and holstered his Shuriken again. "Only when I let it," was his quick and simple reply. "There, the door they came through—there's more behind them. I'll prime."

The turian ran a few steps before launching biotic pull through the door. The resulting field of low mass caught several hostiles in its effective area and they failed to continue their charge into the room. Kevin knelt in front of Senik and tossed a biotic throw at the very same group. The biotic explosion that followed obliterated the hostiles and a large section of the building with it.

"Let's keep moving," Senik ordered without allowing even a fraction of a moment to enjoy the destruction of so many enemies at once. "That harvester will be on us again any second." He was already off towards a shut door on the opposite side of the room from where they entered, and both he and Kevin were jumping over downed office equipment instead of wasting time in going around.

Through that door was another hall with doors to more offices on both sides. When they reached the end, the hallway turned right and terminated at another office door. They ran through, hoping to see a way down, but the only thing they saw when they skidded to a stop inside was the massive visage of a harvester looking back at them from outside the building. The room lacked a wall entirely, having been blown off at some point. Kevin and Senik wordlessly gathered their dark energy and made ready to put up a strong fight against the devastating blows it was about to fire.

But those shots never came.

With a loud and angry roar, a krogan fell elbow-first onto the center of the harvester's head, immediately causing it to sink too low to maintain line of sight on the pair standing inside the room.

"Targold!" Kevin shouted with immense relief.

"Get to ground level!" Targold roared, his powerful voice practically vibrating the air. He stood, cocked his Scimitar, and aimed straight down with a wide, almost drunk smirk. "We've got you covered!"

Amidst a borderline evil and fully knowing chuckle, Targold fired several times in a row straight into the hard carapace of the harvester's head making the large hybrid creature roar angrily and try to shake him off. Targold merely gripped the inside edge of the hole his shotgun tore out to keep his place, then holstered his shotgun. His chuckle had risen to full on laughter and the krogan pulled several explosives from his belt—likely courtesy of his time with Heavy Squad—primed them, and dropped them in. He then leapt backwards and used some cords woven into the hybrid creature's long neck to guide his drop right to the creature's back.

There Targold eyed the four large wings keeping the creature aloft. He took a place between the two sets and planted his feet firmly, gripped the stalks of the larger set in each had, roared, and pulled inward towards his chest as the wings attempted to beat down. The material—more brittle than it should have been thanks to the altered DNA—snapped as synthetic muscles pulled against the krogan's mighty grip. The two larger wings came loose and Targold tossed them aside, ready to ride the beast down as it started to lose control. As the massive harvester fell, the head exploded, painting everything in the nearby area in corrupted blood, flesh, and technological bits.

Kevin and Senik had moved to the edge of the open side of the room to look down on what was happening, but once the head exploded they decided it was time to get to that ground level. They sprinted towards the nearest door and into another hallway, but this one had a stairwell symbol on it. They flung open the doors and paused briefly to listen for hostiles. After they confirmed that the stairwell was clear, they flew down as fast as their battered bodies could take them.

At the bottom floor, they found Tauria Mencius and Karus Stenseus of Vanguard Squad waiting for them by the entrance doors. The look on their faces when they saw the kebalim was one of moderately suppressed joy and renewed determination. They'd seen a ghost they'd always hoped would haunt them.

"Come on!" shouted Tauria with a flick of her rifle out the door. "There are hostiles converging here from several sides! We need to pull back to the apartment!"

No one stopped to relish the moment and nothing more was said. When they rushed outside, they saw Targold ejecting a heat sink before he hopped down from the leaking corpse of the reaperized harvester to join them in the rush back to the Kaliar apartments. Unfortunately, that building was over half-way back across the ravaged field of battle, and while the area wasn't bristling with hostile forces, the messy path on the trip back would slow them down and leave them fairly exposed.

Kevin and Senik simultaneously noted the crushed reaper husk looming in the center of the battlefield and were both relieved to see that the Kaliar building was still in one piece. They shot each other a glance with quiet triumph in their eyes, only to have the personal victory ripped away by mounting danger.

Enemy fire was raining down on them from several windows on multiple floors in the buildings they just escaped from, and kinetic barriers all around were straining under the constant heat from above. That all ended when a bright, flaming projectile launched from the roof of the Kaliar building and smashed into the hostile garrison behind them with a thunderous explosion. The concussive shockwave that hit them barely a breath later made them all stumble mid-stride. The resulting damage to the structure was catastrophic and the building imploded soon after, ridding the running group of the immediate threat and covering the entire area in dust. The shots from the other, more distant buildings ceased when they could no longer see where Kevin, Senik, Tauria, and Karus were. The path back to the Kaliar complex looked clear.

"Shit!" cried Daenus somewhere up high. "Multiple brutes closing in on your position, fast! They broke through the northern buildings!"

"I've got no visual!" Tauria exclaimed as she rushed through the rubble and expanding cloud.

"Move it! They're right on top of you!" Daenus informed angrily, her repeated shots clearly having little effect on the situation.

Just as the comms closed on that last announcement, two brutes smashed right through a considerable wall of rubble just off to their right and they came down right on top of Karus. Karus was quick, though, and he used a blink field to move forward and to his left to avoid the falling debris and the crushing stomp of the nearest massive amalgamation. He quickly moved away and Kevin threw up a biotic barrier to shield them from the two boulders that both brutes saw fit to utilize immediately. Targold roared and turned around, hurling two grenades aimed at each respective brute in order to try and slow their advance. Like a true, utterly stubborn krogan, he grinned and stood his ground, looking to stall the brutes from further progress. That damn krogan is having the time of his life right now. Are all krogan this insane?!

The rest continued onward in full haste, but two more brutes hopped over a piece of broken, half-standing wall ahead of them to block their way. Tauria stumbled as a rock that was dislodged from the brutes' initial jump hit her square in the side, and she did her best to blink away from the danger. Her balance was too far thrown, however, and her blink came up painfully short. The cabal ended up falling flat on her back a mere meter and a half from the closest approaching hulk. Kevin and Senik both launched a biotic throw at the first brute to halt its advance and the double impact successfully knocked the beast right on its ass.

The second one was quick to see the opportunity though and rushed forward to try and take Tauria while she was down. Karus quickly rushed in to assist, but Tauria simply grabbed him by the collar of his armor and threw him back towards Senik and Kevin, whereupon Tauria's waiting blink field got him clear of the danger.

"No, damnit!" Karus shouted as he hit the ground at Kevin's feet and used the human's aid to stand.

Tauria was not so fortunate, however. She tried to charge away, but she couldn't execute the biotic technique in time. She was quickly grabbed by the second brute's huge metal claw and lifted into the air. She screamed in pain and coated both herself and the brute in a large warp field as a last ditch attempt to give the others an opening. The warp field held even after the reaperized monster slammed her into the ground with an earthshaking thud and the sound of breaking bones and snapping armor filled their ears.

Behind them, the two other brutes were in a full charge, readying to smash the three tiny organisms to pulpy meat as a slightly less tiny krogan did his part to stand defiantly in their way. Their thunderous and angry footfalls overtook every other sound in the world and it seemed to Kevin that they'd need a lot more than blink fields to get out of this. The brute holding a broken Tauria held her body up high in victory, likely with intent to slam her into the ground again and ensure the job was done.

Kevin glanced to Senik. The turian kebalim remained resolute, readying himself into a stance that prepared him to face down against the impossible odds yet again. His face was sharp with focus and his cyan gaze gave no quarter. He could take down a reaper and suffer little more than a broken arm. What could four brutes in close quarters hope to do?

They never got a chance to find out, however. At that very moment, the brute holding Tauria up in the air was hit full-force in the side by an AHV and the impact was so strong that the brute's body nearly tore in half. Two turians bearing Sphelix Legion insignias opened fire on the second to distract it and keep its attention away from those on foot. Tauria's body fell from the crushed brute's claw and landed in the back of the vehicle that jarred her loose.

Within the next few seconds, the remaining brute ahead of Senik, Kevin, and Karus also took a lethal blow from an AHV, struck from behind as it turned keep the first one in sight. Both of the brutes behind them took similar hits, but one of them shrugged the impact off. Three of the four AHVs rounded on the survivor with concentrated fire, all staying mobile to keep their distance. The brute threw a rock at one of the vehicles, but the pilots seemed quite used to this tactic by now and easily anticipated the projectile to avoid it with ease. Under all that continued fire, the brute could only last so long, and its perforated mangle of a cybernetic corpse fell limp soon after the thrown rock crashed into some distant wall.

"Kebalim?" called Naelar Takress, the only member of Marksman Squad to take the AHVs. She reached out a hand to pull him up into the back of her vehicle with Pliviss Thest of Heavy Squad. "What the hell are you doing out here dancing with brutes?"

"Shut your mouth and get us to the Kaliar apartment complex," the kebalim ordered as he used his good arm to grip the rail on his AHV.

Kevin took a hand up from Nolus Invidiun, the Core Squad member he'd replaced early in the mission. Relus Paliencar was also on this AHV. "Holy shit, the human kid's still alive!" he commented, partly with enthusiasm and partly with awe. He gave Kevin a solid pat on the shoulder when the human found a place on the AHV and gave Karus a lift up as well.

"Somehow," Kevin added as he settled in behind the armored cover of the AHV's raised plates. He noticed that everyone on the AHVs couldn't take their eyes off of the corpse of the defeated reaper at the center of the plaza, even as a bloody krogan climbed aboard an AHV with Espien Foreit of Vanguard Squad and Naxys Pavar of Shield Squad.

"Spirits, what the hell happened here?" Naelar asked over the comms as they all quickly pulled away towards the apartments.

"Same thing as everywhere else, Takress," called out Berus from the apartments. "A goddamn war. And shit it's good to hear your voice again."

Barely a minute and a half later, all four vehicles parked just outside the shaken, but mostly intact main entrance to the Kaliar apartment complex. The turians that were on the AHVs, including Karus, all took up position in salute alongside the path to the door to make a protective corridor. The doors swung open just in front of them, revealing a tightly packed crowd of turians on the far side of the lobby, all staring.

Once he and Senik had stepped into view of the larger group, a barely suppressed cheer rang forth from the citizens while fervent and perfect salutes came to greet them from those in the military. The sight of the blanketed bodies laid out across the floor destroyed any sense of accomplishment, though. There were a lot, and several of them had the Sphelix Legion emblem on them. Kevin swallowed hard as he walked by them, the sounds of the cheers slowly coming back to his awareness. The celebrations didn't last, however. Turians were far too proud to cheer for long, and once the many caught sight of Senik's arm, Madeen came rushing forward to part the quieted, but fiercely proud turians around them.

"Make space! We need a medic over here!" Madeen ordered, something in her voice wavering between relief and stern command.

"Relax, Arcellus. It's just an arm," the kebalim noted calmly as he used a simple gesture to tell the medics that he was fine as if his broken arm were no more urgent than a hangnail. They encouraged him to move to the improvised medical room anyways, though with markedly less fervor.

Kevin wasn't sure whether Madeen looked ready to throttle her kebalim or kiss him, but she kept her composure and followed the medics as they escorted the turian to the other room for care. Meanwhile, Kevin had nearly been ambushed in a jumping hug assault from the only asari in sight, relief and smiles plain on her face.

Kevin grimaced as she effectively reminded him of his hurts. "Ow. Maela… Pain… Whole body…"

She ignored him. "Goddess! You're alive! We were all certain you were…" She swallowed hard and buried her face in his shoulder for a brief moment to help her retain her attempts at a neutral complexion. "You're one stupid motherfucker," she continued, a wry smile replacing the palpable giddiness. "Who the hell climbs a reaper's fucking face to try and poke its eye out?"

"This badass son of a bitch right here, hah hah!" Targold shouted as he wrenched the quarian-suited human from the asari's crushing grip for one of his own—headlock style. "Damn, Folner! Remind me to make a krogan war song out of that!" He growled, loud and aggressive, his furor fueled by thoughts of the battle they had all just fought. "That's the kind of shit I live for! Big guns and bigger enemies! Maybe that'll show those bastards we're not to be messed with."

"Or it'll just make us a target," Kevin wheezed, his head ready to explode under the pressure of the krogan's playful headlock. "Targold… you're… you're crushing… my face…"

Targold let go of Kevin and the human stumbled before standing upright again. As his vision came back into focus, he spotted Liam standing with them now. The older man had a look about him that Kevin couldn't quite place.

"My dear boy…" Liam started as he took a few steps forward to embrace the quarian-clad man. "You really are a wonder, boyo. I watched from the second floor, but didn't realize what had happened until I was told. To see how limitless your potential truly is…" He let out a quick breath and pulled back to hold Kevin at arm's length. "All these years of watching you grow at such a distance… It made you seem so fragile, so isolated. All we could do was look on while you forged your own path."

Kevin didn't really know what to say so he simply took a step back and awkwardly toyed with a few of his suit's wires.

"I may not be your father, Kevin, but… I'm just as proud of you as any father would be. As any father should be." Tears welling in his eyes, Liam gripped the sides of Kevin's shoulders to give him the tiniest of shakes for emphasis. "I'm just so proud of you."

Kevin couldn't help but smile, and an unfamiliar yet pleasant warmth spread through him. There was something about such unconditional and absolute approval from Liam that did more than just boost his ego in a boyish way. Liam was the closest thing he had to a father, and while Liam never took the liberty of calling him 'son', Kevin felt the powerful love of a father from the man. It touched him more deeply than he could say.

"Th-thanks, Liam…"

"I know this is late, and I'm a fool for waiting until now to ask, but…" Liam looked down to his feet for a moment, took a deep breath, and looked back to Kevin's face. "I would be honored if I could call you son."

Kevin smiled a little wider to himself, thankful that the quarian helmet hid such a wide and silly grin from the others. He stalled long enough to get full control of his voice before he answered with a simple. "Sure."

Liam's face went from serious to joyous to tearful in the span of a second and he pulled Kevin in for another hug, this time with a bit more of the classic 'manly and rough' fervor and a well-failed attempt to suppress the smile. Kevin could hear him sniffle a couple times before he spoke anything else.

"You don't know how much this means to me, my boy. Truly, despite all this war and nearly dying several times over today, you've made this the happiest day of my life. If not for this damnable jamming, I'd hop on the comms straight away and tell Allison."

Maela took a step forward. "Yeah yeah yeah, father and son, blah blah blah. Get out of my way, McRoilie, I have more important things to discuss with Kevin." She pulled Liam out of the way and stepped in close to Kevin. Before he could even say anything, she reached for the clasps that held his visor on and pulled it off, tossing it aside. Targold caught it out of the air, thankfully, as if knowing exactly where it would fly.

Without a single second to waste, Maela gripped Kevin's suit and pulled hard to bring him in for a supremely passionate kiss. Voices went up around them at the public display of affection, followed by good-hearted laughs and even a few cheers. Clearly a few out there knew the touch of an asari's lips. Kevin hardly heard them, though. His mind was focused on the warmth of her face, the softness of her lips, and the delicate dance their tongues performed. This was a much hungrier kiss than any she'd gone for back on the Appalachian, and Kevin was certain she'd try to strip him on the spot if they weren't surrounded by people.

When the kiss finally ended, Kevin took a deep breath to get the air he'd lost in the throes of the asari's passion. She eyed him dangerously, and it was a look Kevin knew he'd surely rival were they in a bedroom alone. That's what victory in battle did to people. She said nothing more, but simply turned and walked away as calmly as if nothing had happened. Kevin noticed during her exit, however, that she clenched her fists as if fighting herself to keep her cool. He smirked.

Targold handed him back his visor. "You know, even if I stood in the way I don't think I'd stand a chance at stopping her from fucking your brains out," Targold said with a booming laugh. "I worry for the life of any moron that tries to get between you and her."

Kevin replaced the visor and sealed it in place as he licked his lips to gather up the taste of Maela's tongue. His face was too warm for his comfort and he didn't want to be seen flushed in front of the turians. "I think she'd probably try to kill me just for leaving to eat. If I ever do find myself in a room alone with her, be sure to, you know, make sure I'm not dead every few hours or so."

"Hah, you got it, kid." Targold gave Kevin a 'pat' on the back that sent the human reeling and reminding the man just how much his body had been battered.

When Kevin looked up, he saw that the turians all around them were moving with haste. The celebrations were over and everyone was packing things away and making ready to leave. He looked around for the kebalim, but he was nowhere to be seen; likely still having his wounds tended to. Targold was looking around at the movement as well. It seemed orders were issued and they weren't made privy to the details.

"Targold, I'm going to find Senik and find out what's going on."

"I'll be here," the krogan replied as he leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed.

The medical room was the most obvious place to start, so Kevin headed that way. When he entered, he found the kebalim sitting upright on the side of the only bed yet to be folded up. The previous medical staff was busy packing things away so he was being tended to by Madeen. Senik's arm was already in a well-applied splint and wrapped up rather tightly, so Madeen had moved on to cleaning the kebalim's many cuts and other lesions. Kevin couldn't help but notice just how tender Core Squad's most vicious CQC specialist's touch was. More than that, he couldn't miss just how closely Madeen was sitting while tending these wounds. She had some kind of calm, victorious air about her, like being able to do this for the kebalim meant that everyone else had lost the only chance in the world to do it themselves.

When Kevin approached the two of them, Madeen turned to look his way. She gave him an odd glance, then ignored him entirely and went about her quiet and intimate cleaning of Senik. Kevin wondered if she had any idea about Khamila. Judging by the higher-than-normal level of stoic Senik had put on, he had to guess not.

He pushed that from his mind, though. It wasn't important right now. "Kebalim Corvallus, I see everyone moving, but I've not heard what we're aiming to do. What's going on?"

Senik, for all of the sterile presence he'd been forcing outward, looked more relaxed now than he had since the first explosion was heard outside of the city. He looked up to Kevin, fixing him with those strong cyan eyes. "The orders were mainly for those who had set up here. We're evacuating the citizens. Sphelix Legion will not be escorting them out, however."

"We're not? Hah, that'll make Liam's day."

Senik shook his head. "We'll be handing the AHVs over to the colonial infantry and they'll backtrack through the city using a map the AHV teams made on their way in that'll find them a way out of Vallum. If all goes well, they can get everyone out beyond the limits and make a few more trips before the vehicles start to break down."

"And Sphelix Legion?"

"You'll hear with the rest." Senik looked down at Madeen. "I'll be out give orders the in one minute."

Madeen rolled her eyes, sighed with just enough irritated angst to note that she wasn't done, and started packing up the cleaning supplies.

"So many lost," Senik said under a breath as he looked to the ceiling. Even Senik wasn't immune to the reality of losing nearly a third of the people under his command, it seemed. "Come. We must pay our respects. We owe our lives to those that gave theirs today." Senik hopped off of the bed and immediately strode for the lobby.

When Kevin, Senik, and Madeen reentered the lobby, they were greeted by salutes. Senik gave them a gesture to be at ease and he made his way towards the grid of casualties. Most of the AHV team was already kneeling by the blanketed bodies paying their respects to the honorable fallen. Madeen, Senik, and even Kevin joined them at the edges of the blanketed grid. It didn't matter what race they were, they had given their lives in the most difficult battle any of them—save for Kevin—had ever seen. Madeen and Senik had started muttering things under their breath, but Kevin simply remained silent for a while.

"What were their names?" Kevin quietly asked Madeen when she'd stopped her quiet words. He couldn't read the names written. "The Sphelix Legion ones, anyway."

Madeen didn't look at him. She simply raised her eyes to the names on the blankets as one of the citizens began bundling up the dead and wrapping them tight. "Relissi "Eyes" Stensus, Vanguard Squad. Pazet Xalier, Marksman Squad. Syne Melfas, Artillery Squad. Saren Nolencus, Heavy Squad. Lorien Fal, Heavy Squad." She paused as she looked to the last two names to their right. "Haekas Tolensen, Core Squad. Tauria Mencius, Vanguard Squad." She flicked her head towards a name written without a body to accompany it. "Auros Volen, Vanguard Squad, the one that died fighting the brute before we arrived."

Kevin shook his head. "Damnit… Haekas…" He hung his head. He'd come to feel like a distant brother to his squad after all the hell they'd walked through in the past day. Knowing Haekas was gone hit him harder than the other names did.

"Folner," Madeen said as she continued to stare at the blanketed bodies. "Regardless of my opinion of you, it's… good that you're here with us." It couldn't have sounded more forced, but something about how she said it also made sound… genuine. She clearly wasn't the type for kind words, so as forced as they were Kevin concluded they were sincere. "The kebalim has judged you worthy of our legion as well. I hope you understand just how absurdly great an honor that is. If not, I'll be sure to remind you. Repeatedly."

Just then, Senik stood to his feet. "Sphelix Legion! To me!"

Kevin stood as well, not having any chance to respond to Madeen's comment. He looked around to see the AHV team rising and Sphelix Legion turians materializing out of the crowds that had already started gathering in the room. He also noticed that folded up equipment lined the outside of the room in preparation for leaving, though none of it was likely to make the first trip out. They'd probably come back for it after the fighting, if that ever stopped.

Once the surviving entirety of the legion had assembled around Senik, he began. "Sphelix Legion, it's time for us to move. The AHV team has informed me that an elite legion of the colonial infantry, called Vallum's First, is bunkered down closer to the center of the city and in serious need of backup. They've been surrounded and are perilously close to several reapers roaming the heavier fighting there. As it stands, we're the only surviving legion with sufficient mobility and strength to assist, so we're handing the AHVs to the colonial infantry here to enable a full evacuation of this building and any others they come across needing a way out of the city. The colonials are giving us the majority of their stockpile of thermal clips and the last of their rations, so grab a bite to keep up your strength, gear up, and be ready to move out in ten. Am I clear?"

"Yes kebalim!" shouted the legion, their fervor strong despite all that had happened.

"What of the honorable fallen?" asked one of the turians from the surrounding crowds.

Senik's head slowly turned to look in his direction. "We have no choice but to leave them. If the spirits are willing, the fighting will not collapse this building and they may one day be recovered." His tone brook no argument and he turned back to his legion when no further questions presented themselves. "We've been staring into the mouth of Hell for too long. It's time we took a walk in to join our brothers. Dismissed."

Senik then turned to Kevin and beckoned him over. "Sorry Folner, you'll find no levo-amino rations available here. Try to keep further biotics to a minimum to conserve as much strength as you can. Same goes for the rest of your friends. We need your mobility and guns more than we need your biotics. Keep your focus up, it only gets harder from here."

"Harder than delivering a biotic punch right to a reaper's eye? I feel bad for the rest of them." He quickly drew in a breath and let it go. "Understood, kebalim," Kevin replied with a salute of his own. He greatly respected this turian, especially now. Even still, the possibility of facing down a roaming reaper of that size with crimson beams flashing everywhere… He briefly had a vision of staring up at one as one of those long, segmented legs came down to crush him out of existence. It made him shiver and he shook his head to rid himself of the unease.

When Senik turned away to take the ration Madeen had offered him, Kevin headed back to see the rest of his friends, all conversing in low tones off to the side. "We're out of luck, guys. Nothing here we can eat."

"Damnit," Targold grumbled. His multiple stomach followed suit loud enough to be heard over the ambiance.

"The kebalim recognizes that, so he wants us to hold back a little with our biotics and…" He looks to his krogan friend. "… enthusiasm, since, as he put it, we're about to walk into the mouth of hell and we need to keep up our focus."

"That's just bloody wonderful," Liam said as his shoulders drooped a little. "Why can't we just take the damn AHVs out with the rest?"

"Two reasons, I'd wager," Kevin responded with two upheld fingers of three. "One: The AHVs are already full beyond typical capacity, and they'll be weaving through hostile forces as it is. Two: We don't know where they'll exit the city. It could be that they'll end up on the complete opposite side as our ship—if it's even still there—and that would take us days to walk around."

"Kevin," Maela sighed. "I don't know how much more of this shit I can take."

Kevin held Maela at arm's length by the shoulder. "Me neither. We've made it this far, though, and we have to make it out so we can brag to everyone else that we killed a reaper, yeah?"

Maela forced a laughed, though she didn't seem very confident about that outcome.

Kevin let go of Maela and addressed the others again. "Let's get some of those thermal clips and take a moment to rest our feet. We've still got work to do."

They all nodded, though not all were very excited about it. Who can blame them? Kevin thought. We didn't come here for this… Moments later, they were restocked with thermal clips and having a seat while the rest of the legion had their rations. At ten minutes on the dot, Senik called for everyone to pack up and move out.

The entire legion gathered around the four overloaded AHVs as they made ready to leave. Senik stepped out of the circle to address the ones that would lead them, hopefully, to relative safety.

"Be swift and take no unnecessary risks. You all carry the story of what happened here today, so ensure that turians across Taetrus—and if possible, beyond—know what's going on and what can be done to fight these bastards."

The citizens and colonial infantry all gave Senik and his legion a proper salute and a wave of thanks for showing up when they did. At the very least, these turians will be far less skeptical of biotic squads in the future, Kevin mentally noted as he looked upon the faces of the anxious and the relieved. They're not out of the fire yet, though. The legion opened up to let the AHVs speed away, and as they left it suddenly felt like a huge burden had been lifted off of the legion's shoulders. They could finally get moving again.

Senik gestured for everyone to move out and the entire group started east, spread out wide as they weaved through rubble and the massive reaper corpse to avoid being flanked by stragglers. Weapons ready and pace steady, Sphelix Legion followed the lead of those that returned to the fold from the AHVs to find the Vallum's First infantry legion. The first half hour of travel was surprisingly eventless. With the reaper dead, it seemed there was little other reason to continue the direct assault methodology they'd been using and the concentration of hostiles was already thinned. There were a few skirmishes here and there, but they were caused by patrolling squads that seemed to be keeping a lookout on the streets. Sphelix Legion made sure those scouts went dark.

Further into the city, the vast and merciless destruction caused by the two kilometer tall machines became more and more obvious. The threat of hostiles up in the windows quickly faded away as fewer and fewer buildings remained upright enough to hold threats up high. Any structures that did had generally been reduced to half-standing or less. More than once they'd crossed through the wake of a reaper's previous path, each marked by long swaths of empty space and large fires. The buildings that once stood there had been leveled, trampled, and burned away. The chaos of war grew steadily and pretty soon the city of Vallum looked far less like a huge turian metropolitan and more like ancient ruins with fires blazing in every corner and smoke choking light and breath.

Just as Daenus Targrien spotted the first sight of the artificial bunker that the elite legion had settled into, though, the fighting picked up significantly. Senik was in no mood to be stalled by more ground troops, however, and he ordered a complete sweep on an entrenched enemy position. The biotic explosions that tore apart the troops also brought down the building they were using as cover from the gunners on the bunker walls. The dust and smoke that resulted obscured their view in all directions, and Senik had to shoot a special blue flare in the direction of the bunker to ensure those watching the area knew that friendlies were coming through.

On the last hurdle into the defensive perimeter of the octagonal structure, Telius came up behind Kevin and tapped him on the shoulder.

"What's up, Telius?" Kevin shouted at the liaison.

Telius pointed at a specific structure to the northeast that had come into plain view some distance from their current location. It looked as though it sat somewhere near the very heart of the city. However splendid it once looked, it was a blasted shell of its former glory. It looked sheared as if it had taken a reaper laser clean through the fourth and fifth floors. Fighting was heavy there as well, as shots were both coming from and aimed at what structure remained. It looked like another holdout in a much worse part of town.

"There!" Telius shouted to Kevin as he picked up to run ahead across a dug trench with the rest.

"There what?" Kevin shouted as he followed.

Telius pointed northeast again in emphasis. "That's the parliamentary building! That's where we were supposed to meet the quarians!"