Chapter 14

The Final Stand

Kevin looked up and his stomach lurched as the menacing dark shape pierced the smoky clouds with mechanical limbs outstretched like the fingers of a metal hand reaching down to clutch the shattered city. It roared as it landed hard just ahead of them with a great thunderous crash, facing the column of runners.

The ground shook violently enough to cause everyone to stumble, though only a few fell. The reaper, on the other hand, looked as if it had just daintily hopped like a performer with how little the legs strained under the landing. It immediately roared to make its presence not only known, but oppressive. Nobody had the freedom to cover their ears, though—they were too busy running for their lives.

Even with one of the deadly machines towering above them directly ahead, everyone continued their mad dash. They were in the one place they absolutely did not want to be; right in the center of the effective range of the reaper's beams. The giant machine certainly didn't waste any time proving it and a blindingly bright crimson beam as thick across as two quarians together carved a path just ahead of the Xelvas'taersh perpendicular to their path to cut them off. The road and the pileup of abandoned vehicles in the way erupted in a series of near-constant blasts that sent everyone—even Kevin mid-way down the line of runners—flying backwards off of their feet.

The air in Kevin's lungs was forced out in a sudden rush when his back hit the hard rock and he rolled onto his side, wheezing. He was dimly aware of a collection of names getting called out in the wake of the receding explosive noise, but everything was blurry. His vision kept crossing and the ringing in his ears overtook everything but faint blurbs that he knew were supposed to be voices. The aching in his body returned in full force. He grunted as his head swam, looking around to see who as still alive. He found his Phaeston lying nearby and he grabbed it, pulling it to himself almost in pure reflex before rolling more to move to all fours.

As he pushed himself to a hunched standing position, his hearing began to return. Suddenly his mind recognized danger and urgency again as other quarians were frantically getting up and scattering. Someone was shouting.

"Get off the street! Get off the street! Move!"

A brief look up at the looming machine gave him all the reason he needed.

Without any regard for the constant throb of his muscles, Kevin immediately turned right and headed for the lowest level of a broken building, seeing at as probably his only chance for survival. The bottom three floors had not collapsed, so he figured he could lose the reaper's interest in there. He saw everyone else doing the same, fleeing to left and right for cover in structures as another bright red beam fired down the road and tracked up the center of the street where everyone was previously getting up.

The force of the explosions behind Kevin sent him flying through the air once again. He saw his violent approach towards the building he sought to hide in and he curled into a ball knowing what came next. To his surprise, his momentum wasn't cut painfully short by a wall. During his flight he felt the moderate impact of a mostly-intact pane of glass as he was hurled through it, shattering it around him as he was thrown inside the structure. He hit the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him a second time, skidding along the smooth floor until he bumped up against a shelf of some sort.

He wheezed hard, knowing that he had no time to lay there and recover. His vision spun and blurred and the concussive force from the blasts still rang in his ears. He clenched his right hand only to find that it was vacant again and he rolled his eyes around to bring his sight back into focus. Still making an active effort to breathe, he spotted the gun lying nearby and once more stretched out to take it. Feeling the grip in his hand, Kevin struggled to stand, grunting at the resulting pain.

His body normalized somewhat quicker from the shock of the blast this time. At this rate I should be quite used to being blown to hell. He looked around, spotting quarians everywhere. Some were struggling to rise as he had, and others… Well, they wouldn't be worrying about reapers anymore. He almost envied them for their sweet sleep, a nap from which they'd never wake and never concern themselves with a galaxy on fire. He shook his head, quickly banishing the thoughts. He had no time for this kind of distraction, especially now.

"Come on guys, up! We're not safe here!" Kevin shouted to those recovering their senses. He needed to break through the haze of the concussive blast to instill urgency in them again. It worked for some, and he was grateful for even that much. Not enough, not enough…

A few seconds later, the wall opposite where he'd flown in from burst as several flaming projectiles punched right through it. Kevin groaned, knowing exactly what they heralded. Damnit. More reaper forces! Quickly he considered dosing himself with a measure of medi-gel. There wasn't anything to heal up specifically, but the painkillers in it would do wonders for the aches of his battered body. He decided that would have to wait. It wouldn't even start to affect him in time for these enemies, and he had to buy some time for the others to get up.

Gritting his teeth he lunged forward as the cannibals and marauders were still getting to their feet. The two closest to him were marauders, and their ever-inconvenient kinetic barriers would deflect more shots than he had time for. Knowing that, Kevin swapped his rifle to his left hand and pulled his black monomolecular blade with his right from the sheath on his back. He tucked into a roll over a waist-high counter and brought a foot down across the nearest marauder's face to knock it back down as it was standing up. The jolt sent sharp spines of pain up his entire leg, but he ignored it as best as a man fighting for his life could.

Bounding forward off of the same foot, he brought himself close enough to the second marauder to slash his knife across the throat of the machine-like turian. With little more than thick cables and a metallic spine to hold it up, the head rolled off almost immediately. As he spun around with intent to finish off the one he'd just kicked, it grabbed his ankle and pulled it in an attempt to trip him up and nullify his advantage. Kevin spun as his foot went out from under him and caught his fall with his other foot, his body hunched over as if he was about to dive into a pool of water. A quick kick in the marauder's head with the stolen foot released his grip, and Kevin spun around to plant his knife squarely through the forehead of the machine. It sparked, sputtered, and went limp on the spot.

The other hostiles would be on their feet by now, he knew, and he abandoned the knife where it stood out from the marauder's head to bring the Phaeston into both hands. He wanted to gather dark energy to finish off the rest, but the exhaustion bearing down on him told him that biotic attacks would soon come harder and with a price he couldn't afford here. Not to mention that the quick motions he used to manifest those attacks were becoming increasingly ineffective. He had to save it. A few shots from a nearby cannibal nearly depleted his kinetic barrier before he took the monster's head off in two clean shots, then he turned his attention to the rest of the incoming reaper troops.

Some of the quarians had joined in his charge, he soon realized, and the enemies that rose from the nearby burning pods were quickly taken down around him. He looked to several others and nodded to each of them, getting silent, masked stares in return. Ahead of them a few more cannibals turned the corner, drawing everyone's attention – and fire. Once those were gone, various quarians went to check on those who hadn't risen. They didn't take long, but Kevin was about to peer around the corner the cannibals came from before the reaper shot its beam and the building shook around them so hard that the ceiling collapsed in several places. Luckily no one was caught under the debris.

"Shit!" one of the quarians nearest the window shouted as he was violently enveloped by a rushing torrent of dust billowing in from outside through the broken windows. "The reaper's taking out the surrounding buildings! We need to get out now!"

Kevin certainly didn't need any more convincing, and with only a moment of hesitation in concern for all the others as they had to feel their way to the exit he was standing in, he turned to head down the hallway. Worry for his friends, all seven of them, creased his brow as he ran for the broken, doorless frame at the end of the hall and he wished he hadn't been separated from them. You guys better stay alive! I can't save you from reaper lasers any more than these quarians can… There was nothing he could do for them right now, wherever they were, so he pressed on.

With a brief glance over his shoulder, he was pleased to see a large group following him with rifles of all assortments in hand. As he rushed out the open door, he had to weave through large piles of rubble just to keep any sort of momentum going. It was like every building beyond that one had been sufficiently leveled, and a few moments later, the terrifyingly distinct sound of the crimson beam echoed behind him to level the one he and the others had just come from. Explosions nearly threw them off of their feet once, but they ran. A thick blanket of dust enveloped them from the resulting implosion behind them, though the cloud didn't travel as far as it might have. The tall piles of broken structures cut its progress short the way a forest dulls the wind.

He heard more shouts again and he paused to look up at the reaper, nearly standing right on top of them now. To his dismay it was turning to follow them. Soon they'd all be right in its prime firing angle and it would be right at their backs if they continued toward their destination. Kevin cursed to himself as quarians ran by him, everyone looking for some sort of cover. Kevin reasoned that the best they could do for now was to stay out of its firing range, so he kept moving with the rest.

"Can anyone see the spaceport?" a quarian woman shouted above the din of chaos.

"A few more meters and we should be able to sight on it!" Kevin heard a quarian man yell somewhere behind him.

If we make it that far, Kevin thought as a crimson beam lit up a section of ground to their north, likely where the rest of the team was. The others stopped to stare at what could easily be the death of their squadmates, but Kevin pushed onward. "Keep moving! We can't afford to stop for that! We need to reach that spaceport or it won't matter whether they made it!"

Most of them turned to look at Kevin, their faces unreadable through those visors, but they did as he bid without any acknowledgement. To Kevin's nearly palpable relief, the reaper stopped trying to follow them. It seemed its attention was garnered somewhere closer towards the center of the city and it resumed its terrible march, each mechanized and segmented leg slamming hard into the ground with each step of progress. Kevin only wondered for a moment what could possibly draw the attentions of a two kilometer-tall machine before he realized that it was heading straight for the bunker the turians were fighting in. Kevin's heart sank for their chances, but he couldn't turn back now and he'd just be a hindrance anyways.

Nearly a minute later, Kevin's group came into an area that lacked piles of rubble almost entirely. They spotted the spaceport they were meant to get to, still some distance away to the north and gasps sounded all around him. The entire area was in flames—freshly lit. Pillars of smoke rose all around where the landing pad should be and the entire northern half of the city looked to be little more than a smoking ruin. There were a few tracer shots visible here and there—stragglers fighting for their lives—but there didn't appear to be any considerable resistance left.

"There could be hundreds of reaper troops between here and there," muttered a quarian man to Kevin's right.

"Is there even a spaceport left to reach?" added another man to his left.

"Keelah… Where do we have left to go?" said a woman as she struggled to see through the shoulders of several others in front of her.

"This looks bad," Tyr'Garloh grumbled, his tone stark and weary.

Kevin and the others turned to look at the familiar voice and they saw the rest of those they had gotten separated from when the reaper had appeared. There was a barely subdued moment of relief across both groups as they merged together, but it hardly lasted. All it took was one look to the north to remind everyone just how lost this city was. The turians fought hard, but in the end, the reapers were superior in nearly every way.

Kevin moved to rejoin Tyr'Garloh, Arla'Tavval, Ralik, Lan'Karthal, and the others from his group. Arla and Targold both gave Kevin a nod, but little else was exchanged. "Let's not make any assumptions," Kevin told them. "Unless we find the wreckage of the Peravaash, we don't know for certain what happened."

"Continue on, then?" Arla asked in equally as stark a tone as Tyr'Garloh.

Kevin nodded once, slowly. "Continue on," he confirmed. He noticed that several quarians that witnessed the brief conversation looked at each other in astonishment, as if they'd never seen the captain take such plain advice so readily. No one else seemed to notice.

Arla'Tavval stepped between Kevin and Tyr'Garloh to address her team. "Listen up! We're moving forward! Any of you rats want to wet your suit, do it now! I won't tolerate more hesitation once we get into the thick of things! Am I clear?"

"Yes ma'am!" replied the whole of the Xelvas'taersh, minus Kevin and his friends. Kevin himself almost seemed startled to witness such fervency come from a team of quarians this big. He'd never seen it's like before. They might all have once been Migrant Fleet Marines, but military bravado was never something the quarians were known for.

And just like that, they were off again. It seemed the reaper forces finally found a reason to focus on their group, however, and a fresh stream of fireballs pierced the smoke clouds above to rain down ahead of them, behind them, and anywhere else that could provide safe landing. Everyone saw them and nobody said a word until Arla gave silent orders to split the group into two columns, each focusing on their side to keep the flanks clear. The firefights came slow at first. These early bouts didn't hinder the group's progress, but that changed quickly.

For Kevin, it was all too familiar. They'd done this song and dance back with the Sphelix Legion early on their way into Vallum and it nearly got them overwhelmed; and certainly not for lack of effort or desire to get a move on. The numbers of cannibals and marauders simply came in too fast and from too many directions, and the same thing was beginning to happen here as well. It was especially prevalent when they were forced to halt and dig in a mere one hundred meters from their destination, obscured by large piles that were once thirty, forty, and fifty story commercial buildings.

Kevin weaved his way through the entrenched quarians to make his way towards the captain. He needed to tell her just how bad the scenario was and convince her to make a push through an enemy line to break out of this hellhole. Targold caught his arm three-quarters of the way through, however, and held him until he waited.

"Not now, Targold! I know we're getting buried, you don't have to tell me that!" Kevin ducked as several marauder shots flew by, nearly taking his head off.

Targold growled and hocked a grenade right into the offending group to silence them with a boom that could hardly be heard above all the other chaos erupting around them. It was only then that he turned to talk to Kevin as he pointed towards a direction where a lot of enemies were flowing in from. "Look there. A hardpoint for movement! If we can collapse the overhanging debris, it'll cut off their path and give us enough of a break to pick up and relocate before we get run out and slaughtered!"

Kevin stared eagerly at the area Targold had been referring to and he nodded. "Good idea, and I think I have a way to do it! Let me inform the captain so we can all get going at once!"

"Move your ass, Folner! We have maybe six minutes before we're meat!" The krogan nodded towards Arla's direction, let go of his arm, then resumed shooting at the incoming flow of hostiles.

Kevin picked up his pace, sacrificing staying low for moving faster. His kinetic barriers deflected a few hits on his way, but he made it to Arla before they came down. Ducking next to the quarian, he nudged her shoulder.

Arla didn't turn to look, but screamed at him, "What the hell is it now, Lan?! I told you to stay at your damn post!"

"It's Kevin, captain Tavval!"

She paused for a moment but gave him the same irate question.

"Targold spotted a troop hardpoint! I can collapse the enemy path with biotics and cut off their advance, and that should give us an out! Everyone needs to move at once if we want any chance of getting out of this mess alive, though!"

Arla looked to Tyr'Garloh and Ralik, and they both nodded to Kevin, picking up and following him. "We'll give you cover," Ralik said as they weaved back to where Targold was.

Crouching behind some low cover a few steps away from Targold, Kevin set his rifle down on a rock in front of him and he drew in a long breath only to exhale it all immediately. He knew his biotics were driving his exhaustion to its limit. Pretty soon he wouldn't be able to perform any biotics at all until he's had a meal and some rest, assuming he didn't pass out first. What he would give to have Bela'Merni with them right now to utilize her comically sized rocket launcher. "Be ready to move!" Kevin announced as he started to draw in dark energy.

He focused on the overhang. He saw how unstable it was with how it rocked now and again when concussive force hit it. He needed to hit it in just the right spot with just the right amount of force or he would risk either overspending himself or not using enough force to knock it free. He still needed to be combat capable—they still had a lot of fighting to do, especially if this trip turned out to be a dead end.

Without any time to lose, Kevin loosed his biotic attack as a throw aimed down at the point he inferred to be where the stress was highest, the point that held the entire overhang in place. In truth, he only had a meager idea of what made up that stresspoint. He had to ensure that his throw was strong enough to break through what he assumed was a collection of alloy metals and some form of turian-made concrete or stone. The impact was announced by a loud crack and a resounding gong-like hum from metal beams in the wreckage, but little else happened. Kevin cursed to himself. Time was running out.

The wave of exhaustion that hit him just after that made his vision tunnel and he had to lean against the rubble he was using for cover to keep from falling over on the spot. He groaned, though it was likely drowned by the surrounding noise before it could reach any ears.

"What's wrong?" Ralik asked, knowing that Kevin made his move.

Kevin grimaced behind his visor as he made himself crouch in as much of an upright position as crouching would allow. Ensuring the subject went another way, he said, "It—it wasn't enough! Maybe the material's sturdier than it looks!" He cursed to himself again for not taking that into account and he started gathering dark energy to himself once more, not even sure he had enough strength in him left to match the last attack. He was at the point of running on fumes now.

Just as he was contemplating what might happen at unleashing more biotic energy, a deafening snap from the overhang cut his thoughts short. All at once, the mass of broken things fell down, crushing an untold number of reaper forces and blocking the path from their safe drop point beyond. Kevin immediately released his hold on the pool of dark energy, relief washing over him that he wouldn't need to try again. On cue, several members of the Xelvas'taersh focused their fire on the stragglers to wipe them out quickly and everyone started picking up to go.

"Move move move!" Tyr'Garloh shouted, waving his hand to get everyone moving with as much urgency as they could muster this late into the fight. The ploy worked better than Kevin had anticipated and they nearly got away clean, aside from a few of the quarians furthest back having to pause to put down a pair of rushing marauders.

On the move again, the general mood in the group seemed to pick up slightly. It always seemed to boost morale in knowing that you'd escaped certain death, even if the overall chances of making it hadn't changed a sliver. The team weaved through the final set of broken—yet not completely obliterated—buildings without much more resistance, though it was quite evident by the sky full of reaperized harvesters and descending fire that the reaper forces were looking to pin them down and finish them off. Kevin was not looking forward to the battle on all sides and knew it would spell disaster. If we don't get off of the planet soon, we might as well just dig our graves right in the spaceport and save ourselves the trouble.

The only trouble was that there was no spaceport to dig graves in. As soon as they'd moved through the destruction enough to be at its edges, they found little more than fires and yet more destruction. Some fires were still burning hot and high, but this place could have been leveled in a reaper's pass as recently as mere hours ago. There wasn't even any way to tell if the Peravaash had gone down with the structures with how strewn the mess was.

"Keelah," came the disparaging gasp from Arla'Tavval as she looked around. Others in the team mirrored her despair in more visible forms, like collapsing to knees.

Ralik and Tyr'Garloh came up front with Kevin and Arla, along with Targold, Maela, and Liam.

Targold grunted and shook his head at the sight. "Guess we should have expected as much."

"Then it's over… We're finished…" Liam said, fear plain on his face. "The spaceport and finding their ship was our one chance of finally getting out of here…"

"We're not dead," Kevin growled, "so we're not done." He noticed Targold's firm nod of approval and agreement.

"We're out of options," Ralik stated plain. "Unless we mean to try and escape the city, but then what? We're in no condition to be travelling on foot, assuming we can even make it that far."

"There's always options," said Maela, seemingly speaking from experience. She was breathing raggedly and clearly just as exhausted as Kevin felt. "We just need to find them. We need to think of a new angle. A different attack vector. Whenever I got stuck with my genetics progress, that knowledge alone helped me make a few breakthroughs."

"We don't have the luxury of time, asari," Arla'Tavval noted with steel in her tone. "Those reaper troops will be coming down on us within the hour from all sides, and those following us here, even sooner."

"It's Maela, quarian," the asari replied, venom rolling off her tongue.

Tyr'Garloh broke in, almost stepping between the two women. "We need to buy some, then. Even if just to delay the ones following us so that we can have at least a few moments of peace to search for anything useful."

Arla's glare lingered on Maela for just a few moments before she looked to her comrade. "Agreed. Do we have anything to level these structures with? Explosives, heavy biotics?"

Kevin began to take a seat on a broken rock before he saw eyes fall on him. He raised his hands defensively. "No no no, don't look at me. I'm spent. Any more and I'll black right the hell out."

"You… have a limit?" Arla asked flatly. Her tone made deciding wither her question was of confusion or annoyance difficult to interpret.

Targold stepped closer, his massive footfalls causing dust that had finally settled to spring up around his legs. "I have a few trip mines left courtesy of Heavy Squad," he said with a nod. "Set them right and you can kill a bunch of those bastards and bury this path all in one shot."

"I like the way he thinks," Tyr'Garloh commented as he flicked his head back the way they came and started off. "Let's get that set up… Targold, was it?"

The krogan gave Kevin a glance and the human nodded for his friend to go do as needed. He looked across the devestation, watching for movement or enemy traps or anything that could help them survive just a little longer. He found what he thought to be the tall building that was once a set of hangars for ships that didn't have landing gear. It was little more than a ten meter high pile of trash now. A few landing platforms were in similar condition, flames still spilling forth from the fueling depots that resided alongside them. There really didn't seem like there was anything left to work with. To make things worse, he had no idea what the Peravaash even looked like and was thus unable to assist in searching for the vessel.

Just as he was about to turn to let everyone know that he was heading forward, a glint of dim light caught his eye against the dark of the rising smoke. He focused on it and saw a dish of some kind, likely an orbital communications tower fallen over in the wreckage. The dish and the short tower it was attached to seemed in one piece and relatively undamaged. Kevin was no comms expert, but maybe the others might be able to use it for something.

He turned to address Arla and whoever else and spotted Lan'Karthal talking with her and the others that remained. As he approached, he caught some of the lightly heated conversation.

"If we do a grid sweep, we can cover as much ground as possible in a moderately short time," Lan'Karthal suggested.

"That could end up a supreme waste of resources," Ralik countered, arms folding and a hand coming up to tap fingers against his long chin. "We need to focus our efforts on a goal if we want to get anything of note done before the imminent attack on all sides comes down on us."

"That's assuming we have a goal to focus on to begin with!" Lan'Karthal shot back.

"We do," Kevin said, cutting off the next argument. "I spotted what I think is an orbital comms array about three hundred meters that way." He pointed with a flattened three-fingered hand and let the others have their moment to look for themselves.

"I see it," Ralik confirmed with a nod. "Looks in decent shape, especially given, well, everything else."

"What the hell do you plan on doing with a knocked over orbital comms array?" Lan asked, barely holding back his growing irritation. It seemed he wasn't used to being countered so frequently or openly.

"We're not walking out of here," Kevin stated matter-of-factly. "We already know that. If we want even the slightest chance of getting out of this hellhole alive, we need to see if there's anyone up there still flying that can extract us."

"You want to spend our focus on trying to use a busted comm relay in hopes that someone will miraculously be alive and well enough to give us a ride?" Lan asked with borderline disgust as if it were the worst possible plan he could have ever heard.

"Better than hunkering down and waiting to be overrun or stomped on by another reaper," Ralik added.

Kevin looked to Arla who had remained decidedly quiet and distant. Not because she didn't have any idea what to do, but because she thought it best not to break up the deliberations. It was an intentional silence. She looked back to Kevin when the debate fell to her and nodded. "Kevin's right, Lan. That's our best chance, if we have any chances left to run with." Tyr'Garloh and Targold had just returned and Arla started spitting orders to everyone in turn. Most consisted of using what Xelvas'taersh were left to her to find ways to make a perimeter—setting up killzones, blocking off easy paths, and rearranging rubble to give the quarians every meager advantage they could manage.

Meanwhile, Ralik looked to Kevin and flicked his head towards the downed orbital comms. "Let's go. I have an idea of how to use it. Tyr?"

Tyr'Garloh shook his head. "I'll have to see to the defenses with the captain. Do what you can. We'll find you when we think we've gotten all we can spare out of this trash heap." Without waiting for a reply, he looked to Arla, nodded, and headed off with her towards the north to start working on the defenses. Lan'Karthal followed Tyr and Arla.

Kevin leaned over towards Targold and nudged him to get his attention. "Targold, get Maela and the others. They'll come with us."

The krogan nodded. "Probably for the best. They look like lost younglings over there. You go on ahead, I'll bring them whether they like it or not." And without another word he too was off towards the meandering few.

Just as quickly, Ralik and Kevin were headed towards the comms array. They set a brisk pace and moved as fast as they could manage without breaking any limbs over the treacherously jagged terrain. Time was perilously short. The brief trip was made in silence, though Kevin wished it wasn't. Kevin wanted to talk to Ralik, to catch up and make jokes the way they used to. He wanted to do that with all three of them. Despite his longings, however, he knew that now wasn't the time. They might not ever get that time if they don't get off of the surface, but there would be time if they managed to get out alive. So many ifs. That's all it's been since I left the Alliance all those years back.

When they reached the knocked over array, Kevin was breathing quite heavily and had to lean on a broken block of tech to keep from falling over. He wanted to retch, but he forced it to stay down. He wouldn't bring anything up anyways—he hadn't eaten in over a day. He knew that was bad in normal circumstances, but with all the biotics he'd been throwing about over the last twenty-four hours, he knew he was heading in a direction still worse.

"Kevin, are you alright?" Ralik asked, a touch of worry lacing his normally flat salarian voice.

"I'm… fine," the human replied as he fought to keep his vision from tunneling. "I'm just… I've been pushing myself pretty hard the past day without any food or water, and I've been blown up more times than I'd like along the way. It had to catch up with me sooner or later."

Ralik knelt beside the comm array and brought his omni-tool to life. "At least that's better than one of those neural cascade things I remember you having. Well, lucky for you that problem will be solved soon."

"What, you figure a way to get the relay working?"

"Still working on that. I more meant that either we'll be dead within the hour or we'll be on a ship and you can get some food and rest."

"Ever the optimist," Kevin replied flatly, then shrugged. "But yeah, I came to the same conclusion." Realizing that his lack of technical expertise had him moderately useless at the moment, he slid down to sitting with his back against the scorched metal. Sitting was the last thing he should be doing right now, he knew that, but it felt so good just to sit for a little while…

Targold showed up with Maela, Liam, and Telius just then and the asari immediately ran over to Kevin the moment she saw him on the ground.

"Shit, Kevin!" she yelled as she hopped over broken metal and debris. Liam was hot on her heels.

Kevin lifted a hand to respond, but Ralik spoke first without peeling his eyes from the screens on his omni-tool. "He's alright. Exhaustion is taking its toll. That is all."

Maela sighed as though she'd already expected far worse and Liam offered Kevin an arm up. "Come on, boyo. We've still got work to do."

Kevin looked up at Liam and he grasped his father by the forearm. "Five more minutes…" he half-heartedly joked as he was hauled to his feet.

Ralik stood then, having completed his analysis. "I have good news, bad news, worse news, and news of a neutral nature."

"Just get on with it," Targold grumbled, clearly impatient in waiting for the enemy to come to them.

Ralik eyed the krogan for a short moment before continuing. "The good news is that the orbital comms array works, even if ninety percent of the array has been destroyed. We can still use this one dish here to get a message out. The bad, yet expected news is that it looks like the comms relays in orbit were taken out just before the attack on the city. If we want anyone to get our message they'll have to be on this side of the planet. The worse news is that we won't be sending shit until we can somehow get this dish structure upright. Aaaaaand the neutral news is that the dish is bent and out of alignment, but thanks to the late Tosh'Rolush, I know how to compensate for that."

Kevin and the others nodded with each piece of information that Ralik divulged. Targold shrugged afterwards. "Getting that piece of junk upright shouldn't be hard. Folner can just use his biotics to make it weightless." The looming mercenary turned towards Kevin. "Right?"

"Not me," the human said with a weary shake of his head. "I've got nothing left to spare, even if my life depended on it. I'd pass out before I could even place the mass effect field properly." After a slight moment of consideration, however, he turned his head to gaze at Maela.

She sighed before he had a chance to say anything and stepped towards the relay. "I can do it, but make it quick. I'm not far behind Folner in exhaustion and I have no intention of pushing myself that far until my life depends on it."

Telius rolled his eyes behind Maela's back and strode towards the downed tech along with Ralik, Liam, and Targold. Kevin started towards it, but a meaty krogan hand stopped him in his place. Kevin knew when Targold was being serious, and it was usually when he had nothing to say. He thought it wise to stand aside for this, and was moderately grateful to his friend.

Maela gathered dark energy to herself and Kevin saw the familiar shimmer in the air around her. When she was ready, she called out, "Okay, ready? Aaaaaand go!" With a measured punch into the air between her and the comms, the shimmer transferred to the tech to lower its mass considerably.

All four men heaved in unison, each grunting in the way their own species did. Despite Maela's low-mass field, the huge device still weighed a considerable amount and it took quite a bit of effort to get the huge metal contraption to stand upright even with a krogan helping out. Once it was standing as intended, Ralik brought his omni-tool up again and began tapping on the screens fitfully.

"I'll need a couple of omni-tools to provide power, at least until we can get the message out. Maybe longer if we want to keep an eye out for replies, though not so many."

"How will you get by the blanket jamming the reapers are still maintaining?" Telius asked as he climbed up the device to fix the dish, which had been forcibly rotated upon landing on its side. Kevin, Liam, and Maela offered their omni-tools for temporary power sources and hooked them up.

Ralik paused in his work a moment while some functions were copied from his omni-tool to the orbital comms array. "Hmm. I suppose we'll have to use bandwidths that haven't been flooded with scramble data. The problem there is that any unscrambled bandwidth likely isn't used for comms in any capacity and might get ignored by ships that do pick it up." The salarian's eyes lit up as he thought of something, however, and proceeded to get back to work on his omni-tool without informing anyone of what he was up to.

A few minutes later, captain Tavval, Tyr'Garloh, and Lan'Karthal showed up after their brief rounds. Conveniently, Ralik had just finished up with his wordless work as well, and he almost gave a start when Arla moved over to him.

"Does it work?" she asked flatly.

The salarian nodded proudly. "It does. The trouble is getting around the wide-band data scrambling the reapers are blanketing the entire area in."

"I trust you were able to come up with a solution with all that nonsensical grinning you're doing?"

"Indeed. I needed to reconfigure the orbital comms relay a bit in order—"

Arla cut him off. "Just the plain version, please. We're minutes away from getting slaughtered and I have a headache as it is."

Ralik nodded and shortened his explanation accordingly. "I don't know how many know of the method, but I converted the message into data bursts that will be sent out along the same bandwidths as the geth network. If we're lucky, someone will be alerted to the abnormality and investigate it enough to decrypt the message. The Peravaash, if it's still flying, will no doubt pick it up quickly with those sensors you had installed."

"It's as good a shot as anything," Tyr commented with a slight shrug.

Arla merely nodded and turned to head to some slightly higher ground where she could get a better view of what was to be their final stand. "We already have a large number of reaper ground troops moving in on us from just about every direction. I've ordered our defense lines to stand and only pull back when the line threatens to break. We're dangerously low on thermal clips, sleep, and sanity, but we'll not be sent off to see our ancestors without giving them hell."

It seemed to Kevin that she had already resigned herself to an inescapable death at the hands of these reapers. What bothered him about that was not that she'd given herself over to the imminent demise that was merely minutes away; It was that she didn't seem at all interested in having a private word with him, her past and hopefully only lover, before meeting her end. It was like he was just another soldier to her, like everything they had gone through on the Kellius together had never happened. It was disheartening and it only seemed to make his exhaustion loom dangerously close to overwhelming. He fought hard to keep such negative emotions at bay, however. Now—especially now—was not the time to fall down and sulk.

Instead, he forced himself to climb the small hill of metal scraps to where she stood. He was going to be near her and everyone else could go pound sand for all he cared. Up on that slight rise, however, his attention had instead been drawn to what was once the bustling city of Vallum around them. He'd known that the reapers were methodically obliterating the city; what he'd not known was how efficient they were at it. Vallum, in its entirety in tens of kilometers of area that it had occupied, was completely leveled. There was not a single patch of the once-sprawling metropolis that had gotten a miss, and it looked very much like an even larger smoking crater once more. The two-kilometer-tall reapers were slowly being replaced by handfuls of the smaller, four-legged ones that he and Senik had taken down back at the Kaliar apartments so they could root out all of the stalwart turian resistance with more focus.

He must have been staring at the smoking ruins more intently than he thought, as he'd not noticed Arla talking to him until she put a hand on his shoulder. "Kevin! Snap out of it."

Kevin shook his head, licking his lips invisibly behind that quarian visor of his. "Sorry. I'm good now."

"What's wrong?" she asked in a curious, yet slightly tender voice. Certainly not the same voice she'd been using since they'd been reunited.

He wanted to talk about them and their relationship. He decided, however, that if she'd decided not to bring it up now, then it probably wouldn't do any good for him to. Instead, he gestured towards the broken city. "It's hard to imagine all of this was whole not two days ago. It seems like it took us ages just to get from where we were to where we are." He paused a short while, looking to the east with several others when gunfire and shouts began to pick up at the perimeter. He winced. "Seeing how we're backed into this corner we never expected to run into… it reminds me of a phrase we once used when backed into a corner of our own."

"Which was that?" the quarian captain asked as she stepped up next to him to watch the edge of the fight from their slight vantage point. The explosives that Targold and Tyr'Garloh set up to cover their backsides went off, leveling what was left standing of the buildings caught in the blast.

Kevin unholstered his acquired Phaeston and he ejected the empty thermal clip residing in the chamber to replace it with a fresh one. "I'm not done yet."

Arla stared at him for a while, her face unreadable behind that damn visor. He could see her eyes searching his, but the moment was cut short. A pair of harvesters flew overhead, screeching, and each dropped a line of five flaming drop pods. They landed so close that bits of dislodged metal flew by Kevin and Arla's heads as they were on their way down from that hill.

"Damnit!" Arla cursed. "I was hoping they wouldn't be smart enough to drop inside our perimeter! Stupid, stupid, stupid!" She growled fiercely and immediately flicked fingers towards Tyr'Garloh and Lan'Karthal to have them follow her to the new threats. "Kevin! I won't order your friends around, but you and Ralik need to stay by that comms in case something comes in! Keep it running as best as you can and protect it with your lives!"

Kevin nodded before she turned to head off and he looked to his group. So much for staying near her. Targold, Liam, Maela, Telius… They were all looking to him for orders. He wanted to fall over with the incredible ache in his entire body, but he stood as straight as he could and hoped the others couldn't see just how close his legs were to giving way just from his own weight.

"Liam, Maela, find a place on the perimeter that looks like they could use a hand and give as much support as you can. Telius, catch up with captain Tavval and help her keep the area inside the perimeter clear. Don't know how you feel about working under a quarian, but trust me when I say that she's seen more shit than most men you probably know. Targold, I only have one order for you…" He reached forward towards the towering beast and Targold clasped forearms with him. "Kill."

"Music to my ears, Folner," Targold boomed with a massive, feral grin. He only waited long enough to break his grip with Kevin before heading off with a low, steady laugh, his footfalls heavy and eager.

Telius merely nodded, accepting Kevin's confidence of Arla and bounding towards where she'd gone.

Liam and Maela stepped closer, a tired, but fierce fire in their eyes. Kevin could tell they knew that this was their final stand, and they had nothing else to lose. They would fight hard, and they would die harder. "Please be careful," Liam said with a firm hand on Kevin's right pauldron.

"I don't want to have to scrape you off of the ground when we get out of this shithole," Maela said with a fierce smile. That dangerous look made Kevin's head sit back an inch.

Without waiting for any more words, they both moved off to join areas in the perimeter in opposite directions. Kevin sighed and turned back towards Ralik. "My family," he said with mock exasperation to the busy salarian.

"An odd family," he said rather nonchalantly, his eyes fixed on one of the barely readable haptic screens emitted by the comms array. With the machine already up and running, it only took Kevin and Ralik's omni-tools to power it now, and so long as they remained within a meter and a half of it, they would continue to do so. "Human, I can understand. Turian? Asari? Krogan? You keep strange company for family, Kevin Folner. As strange as you, it seems."

"Well, I suppose I can only call Liam and Maela family. They made me, watched me grow. They were part of the Cerberus research team that brought me and several others into existence." The fighting around them continued to pick up intensity until it seemed they weren't in a ring of fighting, but rather in the middle of a huge assault. They very much were as it turned out. "Maela even saved my life by, uh… 'fixing' the problem with my brain. Remember that neural cascade incident thing?"

Ralik nodded, his face darkening as he recalled seeing some of those incidents himself.

"Taken care of," Kevin announced to his old friend with a grin behind that mask. He'd leave the bonding part out of it for now. That grin faded when a trio of explosions, each a measured time apart, made both Ralik and himself duck low. That was no reaper—something huge was trying to smash them with some kind of artillery. He heard something fire three times ahead of three more explosions and he recognized that terrifying report instantly.

"Damnit!" Kevin cursed as he climbed up the side of the comms to see where it was. He couldn't see much in that side of the little crater of debris.

"What the hell is that?!" Ralik yelled up as Kevin searched and found the harvester.

"It's a harvester! You know, all decked out like a husk with reaper tech! It… grew some kind of artillery guns on the sides of its head!"

"Harvester?" Ralik echoed, his brows furrowed in disbelief. Another volley later, the massive flying thing soared overhead to relocate and harass another part of the perimeter and Ralik nearly jumped out of his suit. "Keelah!"

Kevin raised a brow at the quarian exclamation coming from his salarian friend, but he supposed being surrounded by quarians for so long would make it easy to pick up a few of their words. He was certainly not exempt himself. Scanning the surrounding area, he quickly realized that their fight would be a very short one. Almost everywhere the outer perimeter was getting slowly pushed back, and the reaperized harvester assaulting their ranks was blowing open gaps that forced the defenses to thin out in a desperate bid to keep the enemy from flanking and getting inside the circle.

"Shit. Things aren't going so well," Kevin murmured to Ralik as he watched another round of drop pods slam off to his left. He ground his teeth. He hated standing idle, especially when he could do something about it. At least from here he could pick off a few of the freshly dropped troops before Arla and her team could get to them. It didn't seem like it would do much, though. The perimeter was shrinking so fast that he could see Xelvas'taersh backpedaling and relocating for new cover in all directions. The outcome was looking bleaker by the second and fading fast.

Suddenly Ralik shouted to Kevin, barely heard above the din of battle. "Kevin! I got a reply! The Peravaash is still up there and they got our message! They said they'll have to weave wide around a knot of reapers, but they'll try to be here as soon as they can!"

The sinking feeling overtaking Kevin's chest was broken by a swell of new determination and he immediately waved his arms wide in the air to try and get Arla'Tavval's attention once they'd dispatched the most recent incursion. After a few short words with the others, her team made their way to him.

Kevin was too busy watching for potential targets on their backs to explain as he crouched against a metal beam that jutted skyward for cover in his raised position. He spotted a small break in the defensive line as two quarians fell to a swarm of red-hued grenades and a number of cannibals with a marauder at the front broke through to flank the quarians around them. Targold seemed to come out of nowhere, bashing the marauder in the head with an elbow so hard that it actually broke right off its shoulders before roaring in delight and literally pummeling the cannibals nearby to death before they could even get any good shots on him. The melee allowed the surrounding Xelvas'taersh enough time to safely relocate, though Targold had to remain there in order to keep the already-thin line intact.

Ralik took up the job of explaining with a near-frantic gesture at the comms array. "Captain, we have contact!"

"Who?" Arla quickly demanded.

"The Peravaash is still flying in orbit, believe it or not! They got our message and replied that they have to make their way around a collection of reapers before they can even think about descending, but they're on their way."

"Spirits," Telius said more calmly than anyone else would have between gulps of air. "That's the best news I've heard in weeks."

Kevin glanced over his shoulder to look at the group. There was relief there, but it was tenuous at best. Looking around, he could easily see why. "Hopefully we're still alive when they get here. This battle is going south, fast. If that harvester returns, we're as good as dead—we're too clustered already."

"You sure know how to sour a moment, boy," Lan'Karthal grumbled.

Boy? Kevin thought, indignant. "My tongue has no taste for sugary coatings when the hammer of hell is dropping on our heads," he shot back starkly.

"Everyone take up a defensive position around this location," Arla ordered almost as a means to break the imminent argument before it started. "We. Need. To. Hold. Everyone out there will be counting on us to keep the last defense in place—I doubt it'll be long before we're rubbing suits with them at the rate things are going."

As if to signify just that, Targold and a few other scorched, but standing, quarians found them. "The perimeter's failing, captain!" one of the quarians announced. He seemed rather young. "The west side is nearly backed up here trying to hold off an intensely focused attack, and the north side is almost in full retreat after a few brutes smashed their way in!"

Kevin felt his stomach lurch. It didn't take very long for him to find the places the quarian spoke of. Enemy fire began to pepper around him as quarians backed up to a stout set of broken beams and spires not too far in front of him. "Damnit!" he exclaimed as he took aim on the direction the shots came from and let loose a few precise shots of his own to take out the offending cannibals. He could see the encroaching ring of hostiles moving through the wreckage that was inside their perimeter mere minutes ago.

The exclamation brought about a nervous flight of movement behind him and everyone had moved up to begin aiding in the defense. Liam and Maela joined the party looking like they'd walked through a few explosions of their own and took a moment to breathe before finding a place to return fire. A few more breaths later, any surviving quarian that had taken part in the defense was fixed in the tight circle around the comms array, all desperately trying to hold of the tidal wave of cannibals, marauders, and brutes charging at their last stand.

And still there was no sign of the Peravaash.

Kevin had no real notion of exactly how many Xelvas'taersh there were before, but he estimated that only half were there with them on the hill now. No one bothered to ask if so and so had made it back, nor did anyone bother to take the time to report to their captain. The only thing that was said over the deafening rush of gunfire was someone's announcement that they'd run clean out of thermal clips. Someone tossed him their last spare, but soon another made the announcement and she had to resort to what was left in her M-3 Predator.

A huge shadow passed over the tight group of defenders just then and Kevin instinctively looked skyward, though he'd quickly wished that he'd not. The harvester was back, its four bio-metal wings forcing air down onto their heads as it careened just off to the side far enough to spot the group and screech.

Kevin's heart about stopped. There was no way to keep it from slaughtering them all and he knew it. The battle was lost, their failure seconds away. The imminence of death brought flashes of memories before his eyes.

Acing biotic exams in the military. Saying goodbye to Xavier Toreles before they went separate ways. Dancing at Afterlife with Maera. Talking with Tarsil in his information broker store and learning about the Melkanis relay. Finding the quarians and befriending each of them. Walking on the Neema in the Migrant Fleet. Leaving Siri'Kortel to her undeserved fate at the hands of the geth. Hearing Arla's confession of love aboard the Kellius. Feeling every inch of her skin in the decontamination chamber. Fighting off keeper husks aboard a sleeping reaper and—

The harvester suddenly exploded in a shower of flaming half-organic, half-mechanical bits as something bright smacked its broad side with the plume of fire typical of heavy infantry ordinance. Kevin came to his senses with a jump as he looked to where the luminescent projectile came from and he saw…

"Holy shit!" was all he could say at first, eyes wide under the visor. After getting control back from his shock, he finished, "It's the Sphelix Legion!" He pointed northwest as he saw a number of turians blink through one of the denser crowds of hostiles, cutting them down from behind with the efficiency he'd come to know from their like. Kevin could hear Targold give a roar of a laugh as he spotted them too.

The lull in gunfire was as brief as it could be for people all glancing to see what Kevin pointed at. Otherwise any joy was completely smothered in the need to continue fighting off wave after wave of reaper ground troops as they continued to swarm in from everywhere, each stopping only long enough to utilize cover almost as an afterthought.

The Sphelix Legion, with ever-stoic kebalim Senik Corvallus leading the front, tore a wide swath in the enemy charge and a few broke off to continue that path of destruction around as far as they could. Vanguards, it looked like. After they'd blown a massive hole right through the offense, the turians headed straight for Kevin and those around him.

"Sphelix Legion! Sweep the yard!" Senik ordered as he threw out some quick gestures for specifics. He and Madeen were the only ones who didn't run off to throw biotics at the encroaching death. The tide of battle turned rather swiftly after that. Between biotics, swift vanguard flanking tactics, and heavy ordinance, the reaper troops were caught off balanced and forced to retreat and regroup.

Kevin stood—well, more moved from a prone gunning position to one knee—and he saluted as perfectly as he could possibly manage to the kebalim. "Goddamn you have no idea how good it is to see you guys!"

Senik returned a salute of his own and he pushed inside the ring of defenders with Madeen. They had formed a ring on a donut-shaped rise, the comms array just off to the side at the outer base. Targold, Maela, Liam, and Telius all gave curt and indescribably thankful nods towards Senik and Madeen as they crouched just inside the inner ring of the rise.

"What happened?" Kevin asked, sliding back just enough to talk with the two while still being able to see the field of battle. "I thought you all were holding up in a bunker or something."

"One of those larger reapers flushed us out," he commented with a gravelly growl, browplates furrowed deeply. "Losses were… heavy."

As the rest of the turians began to gather in and around the ring, Kevin noticed how it really looked like they'd gone through hell ten times over. Their armor no longer held any color. Plastered with blood, dust, and scorches as they were, color was long lost to a disheveled and hopeless camouflage. Dints, scratches, and cracks marred armor and facial carapace alike, and their grim expressions merely deepened the effects.

It was only then that Kevin realized just how few there were. When he'd first met the Sphelix Legion they numbered thirty-one – six squads of five and Senik as their kebalim. Now there were only sixteen including Senik, and only nine of them had the Sphelix Legion sigil. Heavy losses indeed.

"How did you find us?" Arla asked. She clearly didn't know who these turians were, but they were on a turian colony and turian combatants were as common as can be, with everyone over the age of fifteen having some military training. Besides, Kevin clearly knew them.

"It wasn't hard," Madeen replied as she tightened the cinch that held the kebalim's injured arm in place. "We knew which way Folner and his group went, then followed your trail to the massive gathering of hostiles."

"You've gotten boxed in rather badly here," Senik commented off-hand. "Folner, you should know by now that the only way to keep alive is to keep moving."

Kevin gestured towards the repaired orbital comms array. "We managed to get this working and sent out a message hoping for a reply. We actually got one." When Senik raised a single browplate, Kevin knew he wasn't going to verbally ask. "The quarians had a ship, the Peravaash, which they arrived in. Apparently it's still flying in orbit, playing keep-away from the reapers to avoid fights. They're going to try to come to us, but we're not sure we'll last that long."

Called on cue, Tycus Kalkerien—Core Squad's medic—came running up. "Kebalim! The enemy's regrouping. We need to relocate if we don't want to get locked in!"

"Tell everyone that we're holding fast here, Kalkerien. It seems Folner and his quarian friends found themselves a ride. We're going to see that they get to it."

Tycus didn't balk. He didn't pale or hesitate. He merely saluted to his superior and ran off to bring the orders to the rest.

Senik turned towards Arla, hard eyes focusing on her. "You're the captain of the Xelvas'taersh, I assume?"

To Arla's credit, she did very well for her first time under that drilling gaze. "Captain Arla'Tavval vas Peravaash nar Neema of the Xelvas'taersh."

"Kebalim Senik Corvallus of the Second Sphelix Legion. Better late than never, I suppose."

Kevin had almost forgotten that they were meant to play escort for the quarians before everything went to hell. How things had changed…

Arla nodded as she recognized the name she'd been given what seemed ages ago and inclined her head for a brief moment as a sign of respect. "I don't care if you only got here by accident, kebalim Corvallus. I'm just glad we have a few more guns with us."

Senik nodded once, seeming to fully understand the necessity of the simplicity in that need.

"Eyes on! Northeast!" a turian that sounded like Artemis Tenrek shouted, announcing the incoming attack.

It took only the blink of an eye for the battle to begin anew and once more quarians and turians alike were lying prone to return fire. Senik crawled on his elbows over to Kevin and Arla, who had ducked almost in-place to avoid stray shots and take aim on enemies themselves.

Senik didn't bother to shoot back, but he did place a firm slap on Arla's left pauldron to get her attention. "You're in the middle of a closing fist here, Tavval! We need to get our people out and mobile to keep the reaper forces off balance!"

"We can't! We need to keep the orbital comms array functional so the Peravaash can zone in on our location! We need at least two hooked to it for power, and I'm not leaving two of my men alone to face the slaughter!"

"Then we'll split our firepower thirty by seventy! The larger group will draw fire and keep assaulting perimeter flanks while a strong core keeps the comms array intact!"

"That sounds like asking seventy percent of our people to jump into the fire without a suit!" she yelled back before taking another few shots with her Viper. She paused, taking a moment to think about the risks and weigh her options. She nodded resentfully, knowing that she didn't have to like a plan for it to be their only way out alive.

"Care to join us, Folner? We could use your biotics on the front line out there!" Senik asked as he waved several military hand gestures at Madeen who nodded and moved off to make the call as to who goes and who stays.

"My biotics are tapped out, Senik!" Kevin shouted back between bursts of his Phaeston. "I'm barely standing as it is!" He crawled backwards soon after, however, preparing to leave. "Hell yeah, I'll join you up front!"

Senik nodded once and went off without a word to gather those that would go on the side of the small donut-shaped rise that wasn't taking as much fire.

"Kevin, wait!" Arla shouted, a hand reaching towards him for a second. "Where are you going?"

"Someone needs to keep the landing zone from getting too hot or the ship won't have anyone to pick up!" He paused a moment before giving a hesitant, "By your leave, captain Tavval!"

She simply stared at him as he rose and moved off towards where Senik had gone, and she continued to stare even as he broke line of sight. To his surprise, a number of volunteers from the Xelvas'taersh were already gathering with Senik and the remnants of the legion chosen to go on the offensive. Targold was on his way, but Kevin more than expected as much. Telius was there as well, and even more to his surprise, Liam.

"McRoilie!" Kevin called out as he joined the latter half of the already-mobilizing flank cutters. "The hell are you doing out here? You should be up with the comms array defense team!"

"This is a fight for our lives, boyo! I may not be the best soldier, but damn me to hell if I'm going to stand by and wait for them to come to us!" He threw Kevin a moderately forced grin. "Besides, I wouldn't pass up the chance to fight alongside m'boy again, would I?"

"You're a crazy son of a bitch, Liam!" Kevin shouted back as Targold gave them both a frighteningly wild and approving grin. Kevin knew he really didn't have any space to argue, though. As close to passing out as he was, he was probably the very last person that should be on an assault team. "We all are if we're charging into the reapers' maw, though!"

"You've got more credentials in that than most of us there, Folner!" Telius shouted just as they turned a sharp right to begin cutting through the enemy's flanks.

All conversation cut off in the blink of an eye as they began slicing into the thick conglomeration of cannibals, marauders, and the occasional brute. The universe quickly shrank to Kevin and the few people around him, the smoke from nearby fires, the shouting, and the near-miss shots flying just beyond the reach of his kinetic barriers. It was a train of chaos and little more than a gambit to buy some time.

A quarter of the way around the ring of enemies attempting to reach the comms array at the center, the train began to spread out. Kevin was falling behind with a few others, his exhaustion beginning to win over his will. A pair of quarians had gone down by then, their visors punched clean through by Phaeston volleys. The marauders that had made the kills lasted no more than three seconds longer a piece, but the damage had been done.

Half of the way around, the flanking team had been strewn out across the perimeter as those falling behind had to entrench themselves to fight off replacement forces. Kevin had since lost sight of Senik, Liam, and the others and he broke off of the floundering tail of the assault team to help a pair of quarian women who'd stopped to assist a quarian man who'd taken a non-fatal shot to the leg. Once he'd shown up, he took the place of one of the women so she could stop firing long enough to help up the injured and try to move him back from the ever-encroaching wave of death.

"Stay low and try to get to that comms array with the others!" Kevin shouted as the woman helped the man hobble back to where he and the other woman crouched to lay down cover fire.

Kevin barely saw the nods of thanks he'd received from the two as they passed by, one supported by the other. He, like the woman next to him, was frantically trying to keep some space between them and the hostiles that seemed to endlessly approach from around cover just ahead of them. His focus was barely kept in check—with tunneling vision and limbs almost numb for half their length, he was all too aware that he was in danger of his body just giving out at any time. Even the deafening sounds of combat seemed distant, especially compared to the throbbing of his pulse in his ears.

He felt a firm grip on his shoulder from the woman next to him and he looked to see what she needed. She flicked her head back towards the center and Kevin understood. With a deeply drawn breath, he took a few more shots at the enemies coming at them and began to run for it. Two pairs of massive explosions wrenched apart an entire quarter of the ringed threat half way around the closing circle of retreating quarians. That was when he saw it.

A frigate about one and a half times the size of the Kellius, as he remembered, and dominated by sharp, predatory angles was in the process of swooping down over the battlefield near the comms array. It took him a few seconds, but he recognized the ship as the once Cerberus hunter-seeker frigate that Siri'Kortel took back to the Migrant Fleet. The big deep blue quarian sigil of the Xelvas'taersh on the side brought energizing waves of relief flooding into Kevin, and he redoubled his efforts to get there.

He must have been more exhausted than he thought, as he never realized that his kinetic barriers had been taken down from shots fired by their pursuers. The shock of being vulnerable just then caused him to lose footing on an unstable piece of rock and metal. He tumbled forward and cried out in agony as a cannibal's projectile tore through his left thigh before he'd even hit the ground. A white hot spear of pain shot directly from his leg to his head and dots smeared his vision, flashing and dancing in what vision hadn't tunneled yet. He hit the ground hard, fortunately down low enough to keep him from being in line of sight of his attackers. Struggling to keep his consciousness, he clenched his hands hard against the armor over the front of his thigh.

The quarian woman ahead of him must have heard him, as she stopped to look for him and waved some gestures towards a small group of approaching friendlies while she ran to kneel beside him. She looked him over once to ensure he was alive and then took aim to fend off the closest enemies that were practically frothing at the mouth to finish him off. She was trying to say something to him, but the pounding in his ears dominated all but the sound of his own anguish.

Damnit! Not now! Get up! Get up, you sorry excuse for a Xelvas'taersh!

Kevin saw two familiar figures running over to him. They must have been part of the group the quarian woman called to. Arla and Liam ran to him as the woman explained what happened. Arla had the filth and marks of long-endured combat, but the darkened right half of Liam's armor and the burns on the same side of his face spoke of a dangerously close encounter with one of those fiery cannibal grenades. The blinking warning on Liam's omni-tool also told Kevin that his kinetic barriers had been shattered and his barrier module was offline. What the hells is he still doing out here? He needs to get in cover!

"Took a hit through the back of his leg! Middle of his left thigh!" The quarian standing over him seemed to be growing frantic with all of the shots just barely missing the lot of them. Her shots came fast in bursts as she did everything she could to hold position with her Vindicator rifle.

Kevin tried to get up knowing that now was not the time to be slowing everyone down. He might have passed out already if it weren't for all the adrenaline pumping through his system. He also tried calling to Liam to tell him to get to a safer place, but anything he said was both drowned out by the utter chaos on their heels and made incomprehensible by agonized moans anyway.

"Kevin!" Arla shouted as she knelt beside him just long enough to assess his state. She made several snap decisions and started to hoist him up so that he could put his weight on her instead of on his injured leg. "Liam, was it? Help Jiah'Merni give us some cover fire! We're pulling back to the Peravaash! Everyone move! Now!"

Liam nodded and he took up a low crouch beside the quarian to keep the enemy from charging them. They both slowly backpedalled in order to keep moving towards the ship, which Kevin saw was just now coming in to hover near the donut-shaped rise near the comms array. The front loading ramp was down and already a few quarians were hopping up to help others cross the astonishingly small gap between the rubble and the edge of it. Others from inside were taking up gunner positions to help stave off the waves of enemies that continued to close.

Almost at the base of the rise, Arla and Kevin came across Senik. His team was dispersed and as busy as he was, the pure chaos around them slowed only a moment by the Peravaash's earlier volleys. Kevin gestured to Arla to give him a second and he managed to flag down Senik's attention. "Kebalim!" he shouted between hard breaths. "Come with us on the ship! There's no point in fighting here anymore, the city is lost!"

Senik paused in his lethal work for a moment, surveying the inevitable destruction around them. Suddenly he looked to the quarian holding him up. "You said your name was Arla'Tavval?" She replied with a nod and the turian looked to Kevin. An unspoken conversation passed between them and Kevin nodded as well.

Senik smiled.

"Sorry, kid. I have my own to find and I can't do that aboard a quarian ship." Kevin had an idea of what he meant, and it had to do with an asari on Omega. Just then the kebalim looked skyward and his smile vanished just as the roar of a reaper overpowered the sounds of battle. "And our fight is here on Taetrus!" he half-growled half-yelled as he looked towards where it was about to land. "Artemis! Take care of it!"

The loud crash of one of those four-legged reapers boomed across the city-turned-wasteland and horrified eyes everywhere turned to stare down the doom of their ship. Its red eye glowed with imminent malice as the hulking figure began to turn towards their final stand.

"On it, kebalim," replied Artemis Tenrek of Heavy Squad, calm as if they weren't about to be reaper-stomped.

Just as the reaper sighted on the hovering frigate and began to charge its red eye weapon for the disastrous blow to the Peravaash, a bright projectile flew up from somewhere on the ground amongst the sea of battle and hit the reaper square in the eye. All around the reaper, the ground seemed to crumple under the instant concussive force. The bright explosion washed the entire area in white for a second and the reaper reeled violently, roaring deafeningly in irritation.

"Fight hard," Senik yelled to both Kevin and Arla, "and never leave each other behind!" He nodded to them only once and blinked away to join the fray before either Kevin or Arla could get in a reply.

"Alright, let's get the hell out of here!" Kevin wheezed as he looked up at the loading ramp just ahead of them. "Before that reaper realizes we're leaving!"

Arla silently nodded in urgent agreement and they started climbing the small rise to where the loading ramp was tenuously waiting for them. Kevin spotted Maela and Telius inside already and Targold was still on the rise helping the last quarians up. Kevin turned to holler at Liam and Jiah'Merni to get up on the ship, but his words caught in his throat to the point that he nearly choked.

Time seemed to drop to the slowest of crawls. He saw Liam falling as Jiah'Merni reached out to him. He saw Liam's back, a seared, circular void where armor and flesh should have been centered on his torso. He saw Liam's body go limp the moment he hit the ground and sprawl like a ragdoll, lifeless. Kevin felt his chest go numb and the strength in his legs failed. He stumbled, only staying upright thanks to Arla's hold on him. He tried to fight her pulling, to turn around and charge down the rise to get to the only father figure he'd ever had. Tried to… Tried to do what? Save him? Avenge him? Say goodbye?

"Liam!" Kevin shouted long and hard as Arla fought with him to pull him to the ship. She was succeeding due to Kevin's dire lack of strength, but he didn't stop trying. "No! No no!"

"Kevin, he's gone! We have to go, now! There's nothing we can do!" The urgency in her voice was a strong combination of frustration with him and sheer terror at how very close to death they were right then.

Kevin barely heard Arla's words—her voice was all but a blur. Somewhere in his mind, however, he knew them to be true. When Jiah'Merni took one last sullen look at Liam's body, shook her head, and began high-tailing it up the rise towards the ship, he knew it in his depths. His eyes remained locked on the dead body, wishing he had some scrap of biotic ability left to do something. Jiah'Merni joined Arla in pulling Kevin's mostly-useless body towards the ramp, and when they got to the top of the rise, big, meaty krogan hands took over. They hauled Kevin up by the shoulder and his good leg, swung him once, then tossed him hard through the air so that he'd land inside the ship.

Kevin hit the cold, unyielding metal floor with his shot-up leg landing first. The shock of pain that followed blackened the world.