Chapter 3 Code Green
Commissioned by MaceShepard
Written by BloodRaven
Kepla watched in horror as he performed aerial reconnaissance. The wave of abominations moved across the landscape like a flood. The alien research facility had been about seventy kilometers away from the primary settlement, and these aliens were eating up the klicks like they were mechanized and not running wildly through the untamed forest of this world. Occasionally he saw hidden pillboxes and native hideaways light up with gunfire. Survivors who had hidden in the forest and accessed the unknowable bunker complex that probably crisscrossed the entire region. But just as quick as they lit up with gunfire they were overrun.
"Attention pilot, get ahead of horde, fifty soldiers need pick up, transport them here." The alien general ordered. Orinia had tried to restrain him from giving orders in her stead, but had relented when he had brought up the undeniable fact that he knew this planet like the back of his hand, and would lead its defense, whether from the Turians or these "infected".
Hergo just silently observed a camera shot as it panned across the landscape, clearings and breaks in the woods showing just how massive this horde of alien creatures was. The only people on his bird were General Arterius, his brother, and two surviving alien soldiers from the facility.
"Pilot…. How many survived?" The smaller of the two aliens asked as he looked at a camera feed.
"In the settlement? Or in your unit?" Kepla asked for clarification. Silence greeted his question, so he hazarded a guess, "In the settlement, about half the population died when they went for weapons. Mostly adults. About two hundred soldiers have returned to the settlement, mostly squads or individuals. I don't know how big your garrison was sir."
Silence continued on as they approached the indicated point where the alien survivors were, "About two thousand. Thirty thousand permanently lived here."
Saren Arterius spoke up, "Permanently?"
"Children don't stay."
The whine as Kepla's dropship began to descend overpowered any possible reply anyone could have made. The drop bay opened with General Arterius and the alien captain exiting. The aliens, in their camouflage uniforms combined with the veil of night were almost impossible to see until they stood up and began sprinting for the dropship.
"Feces! Infected!" One of them shouted and fired. Hergo changed cameras and saw a leaping creature diving for the General, an autocannon chittered and blew it apart.
"It was scout! Hurry!" The alien captain screamed, pulling out his sword. The footsoldiers began sprinting faster, clanking up the gangway. "Covering fire pilot!"
Kepla and Hergo didn't even reply, just firing into the woods where any heat signatures showed up. "All in, lift off!" An alien voice shouted.
The dropship began to ascend, giving them a better view so they got a front row seat showing the horde seconds away from reaching them. The cannons chittered into the pile of bodies below, even as Kepla began to orient the craft towards the settlement.
A resounding klang interrupted his concentration as his vessel was impacted by something. "Now pilot, run!" Another voice screamed near hysterically. Kepla punched it and the dropship rocketed away as a boulder the size of a small gravbike flew past where they just were.
"They are mutating fast! Faster than before!" The alien captain commented with several untranslatable swears.
"Ammo checks!" The biggest alien screamed, and reports filtered up. It wasn't good, everyone was running on less than 20% ammo.
"That bunker! Pilot Kepla, take us to one of the alien bunkers we found!" Kepla looked back to Saren poking his head in, "They'll need a resupply, and we'll need heavier firepower."
"And medical supplies and armor!" The alien captain squeezed in past him, "We go to the one you attacked first, here!" That alien was fast on the mark, he'd been on the dropship less than ten minutes and he was already using holographic interfaces like a pro.
Kepla looked to Saren who merely nodded in affirmative.
Commander Jenia Vasilias was feeling ill. How could one not when you were watching doom play out in real time, "Sir, we could land some frigates on the planet and load up the colonists that way. It'd be faster."
"It would also open us up to boarding. These people are obviously terrified of this infection, what if it's a biohazard and can spread to us?"
"Sir this is our best chance of evacuating the colonists. We don't have the dropship capacity to evacuate them." Silence reigned as everyone looked back to the viewscreen, showing the status of the legion deployed to the ground. More than half of it was red, and showed 100% fatalities in so many units.
Another officer spoke up, "Sir, even if we don't evacuate them with our frigates, we can get under the kinetic barriers and bombard this horde that way."
Jenia rubbed his eyes, "Do it, get the light cruisers in atmo as well and provide fire support. Get some medical units down there and start screening the aliens before they're embarked. Use the legion bulk transports, board them on those first. Our birds don't need them anymore."
A timer came up on the screen, 'Time until the enemy reaches the defensive line. One hour.'
"Quick quick quick!" The alien captain shouted, waving his sword in the air as his soldiers loaded up crate after crate of supplies into the dropship.
"Sir, we only have a few minutes until those infected show up!" Pilot Kepla shouted on the comms to Saren.
"Hold on pilot we've almost got the last of the cargo on here." Saren replied, standing by a pair of aliens manning a squad support cannon. The alien gunner was tapping his thumb into the firing stud protector impatiently, his head swiveling left and right as he scanned the dawn's early morning forest. Fog and mist shadowed the land with eerie swirls.
"Calm self legionnaire." The loader eased his comrade, shaking his shoulder.
"I am calm I am calm sir." The gunner bit out, a bit too hastily.
The sound of twigs breaking, or perhaps bones splintering echoed through the air, as a soldier carrying a crate behind them fell, crying out in agony as dart-like bones protruded from his leg and side. "They are here!" Someone screamed.
Saren's excellent eyesight had already spotted the source of the fire, a cuff to the back of the gunner's helmeted head and a point was all the direction necessary to unload high caliber shells. Explosions rocked the ground as the tree the fire came from was turned to splinters, with a satisfactory splatter and the sound of multiple bodyparts impacting the ground, spasming then growing still.
"Dismantle gun, lets go!" The loader shouted, and they began to do just so. Saren took the ammo case, while the gunner got the cannon itself, and the loader grabbed the tripod. Sporadic gunfire covered them as they ran towards the transport. Another man was dragging their wounded comrade towards it as well.
"We will not make it!" The loader screamed as he looked back, in the mist and fog figures emerged, shambling at first, then sprinting madly towards them. First a few, then dozens, then an indeterminate army.
Saren began cursing, willing himself to run faster to catch up with the loader and gunner as they ran just as madly as the infected enemy behind them. It wasn't enough, even if they dropped their weights they'd be overtaken.
Thunder and lightning screamed overhead, like a vid horror parody foreboding their doom. The dropship couldn't wait for them, already the pilot was beginning his lift off sequence.
"No! No!" The gunner shouted, primordial alien terror reverberating through Saren's own mind.
The thunder got louder, and then the treeline splintered and exploded as accelerator fire bombarded the land. Saren looked up, spotting little square Frigate IFFs coming up on his HUD. It was less than two hundred meters in the sky, hanging in the air like an ancient titan as it fired down.
Saren laughed madly, like a turian reborn as Kepla held the dropship steady enough for the trio to board. Desolas patted them each on the shoulder as they began to strap in, the dropship lurching underneath them as the bay door was dented inwards by something.
"Armored fighting vehicles!" The alien captain screamed in dismay. Immediately discontent and worry spread through the alien ranks as dark muttering began.
"What do you mean?" Desolas asked the captain, the translation they got was obviously incorrect as the one syllable shout was elongated into a multi word translation. He snapped out of his worry long enough to adopt a thoughtful posture before snapping his fingers.
"Ah, ah, big infected, very dangerous, can throw vehicles like toys. Throw boulders at the ship, very hard." The dropship got some altitude and began screaming towards the settlement, "It is special infected. Very dangerous, strange. Takes a while for special infected to appear."
Desolas nodded, "I'm sorry captain, I've not introduced myself."
The alien captain nodded, then sighed heavily. It was hard to discern what he was thinking, he and the other soldiers still wore their full body suits and NBC gear, "True. I am Crown Prince of the United Kingdoms, Sir Anthony Rochford Windsor, Prince of England, inheritor of the Commonwealth. Commander of the garrison of the Quarantine World of Shanxi."
That was a long name and many titles, "I'm General Desolas Arterias of the 51st Special Legion of the Arterius clan, me and my brother Saren are the last of our clan." He indicated Saren, "We serve the Turian Hierarchy, part of the Citadel Council. We are," Desolas paused to collect his thoughts, "We are Turians, a species."
The alien nodded, "We are homo sapiens Cursor. Unchanged human carriers."
"Unchanged?" Saren asked, butting into the conversation.
Windsor hesitated, then after an elbow from his bodyguard sighed, "Unchanged infected carriers. Natural born human. We cannot be changed by infection, but carry it. Infected out there are zombies, mindless creatures driven mad by green flu. A mutagenic virus we use. There are others. Homo Sapiens Mutatus, Changed humans. Hard to quantify, many shapes, many peoples, most of humanity are changed. This colony is for those called carriers. We can carry infection but are not changed by infection. Zombies are hostile to all living things, you, us, see as monsters."
He gave it some more thought then added, "Changed cannot have children. Sterile. Quarantine worlds grow children until adults, then adults have choice of becoming changed. Most accept. Rise in citizenship tier. Carriers are those who can't accept or refuse, have to live on Quarantine worlds to death, not immortal. Changed are immortal, live good lives after service, free travel except to Quarantine worlds. Children vulnerable to infection, must be clean." He shook his head, "We fail, do not know what facility was doing with infected on Quarantine world." His fists clenched, fury etched in his body language, "We fail, colony gone."
Saren couldn't believe what he was hearing. He chalked it up to his translator being an incomplete mess. But some of it clicked, Windsor didn't know about the facility either, "These infected, ahh, Zhombees, aren't normal?"
Windsor looked up, "Infected have mutagenic properties, cells change based on life experience. Those zombies were control group right? No cell experiences. But it still change rapidly. Takes days for virus to change body like so. Tanks and shooters late stage. Not natural, ehh, not natural for them. Think bioweapons program. Deeply wrong." He looked at himself, then was interrupted by a yowl of pain as a medic worked on removing the spikes from the wounded soldier.
"Deeply wrong." Windsor repeated, staring at the needles. Then perked, "We must be quarantined, can infect children."
"Is there no vaccine?" Saren countered.
Windsor looked thoughtful, "Yes no. If given measures cannot be changed, ruin lives. But won't be zombies." He shrugged, "You are infected too, not affect you? No matter, can't be near children, airborne. Damned Protheans did to us."
Saren and Desolas looked to each other sharply, "Protheans?"
Jenia got a priority call from the ground, "Captain Vasilias, this is General Arterius, are you there?"
Jenia perked up and slapped the comm button, "Vasilias here General. Whats going on down there?"
"Hell captain, we're currently retreating to the main settlement. Have you got any new information from the local general?" Desolas sounded spooked, not a natural state for the illustrious Desolas Arterius.
"A bit sir, but he's been too busy to answer questions." Jenia replied truthfully.
"Evacuate him and the rest of the populace faster, Captain. Start bombing the planet with everything you got, we're moving now towards some of the generators for the kinetic barriers. Override any objections from the general and have him distribute the vaccine to all the populace who need it. We need to burn this continent to the ground, ignore any damage to the ecosystem, not a single one of these infected can be allowed to escape or survive." This sent chills down Jenias spine.
"Sir, I'll need-"
"You have my verbal and written orders to do so captain. I'll take full responsibility! We're facing an incredibly dangerous and virulent bioweapon here. I think the only reason why we aren't infected by it is due to our amino acid difference." A deep steadying sigh erupted from the speaker.
Jenia swallowed hard, "I understand sir, we'll begin bombardment immediately." His talon shaking as he pressed the button to end the call, he hit a new button to call the bridge, "Attention all hands, attention all hands, prepare for planetary bombardment. This is not a drill, this is not a drill."
The conversation with Windsor was unfortunately fruitless, he wasn't a student of history and the translator had difficulty interpreting him as he descended into the technicalities. All the Turians on the drop ship knew was that the "protheans" had established a scientific outpost in their home solar system, and as part of a contingency program, released a terribly mutagenic virus a few centuries ago that devastated their planet.
Saren sent the data packet up to orbit, along with his last will and testament. If Windsor was right, the kinetic barrier bunker was nearly inaccessible, and would require an explosive charge to enter the facility and disable the shield.
Windsor had not been optimistic about their chances of escape, he refused the assistance of the platoon around him, indicating that only four of them, Saren, Desolas, himself, and his lifeguard Battlechief were to accomplish this mission. The rest of the men wouldn't be able to slow the horde.
Honestly, the last thing Saren expected of the human was for him to laugh slowly, then contemplatively add, "Just like our carrykin. Teams of four, accomplishing duty." Desolas tried to protest, explaining that they were all wounded, but Windsor proceeded to demonstrate his returned vitality by doing a handstand on the moving dropship, "Medical gel, derived from special infected. Try some, maybe it will work."
Hesitantly the two Turians tested it on their omnitools, then applied it gently against their wounds. Little spikes of pain needled into their wounds and carapace, but minutes later when they were about to land Saren realized he felt revitalized and energetic. His wounds didn't hurt, and his damaged carapace was crystallizing before his eyes.
"The changed, they're hedonistic, but by god. They make good things." Windsor shouted with delight, as he shouted a warcry and ran down the ramp, the hooting warcry echoed by the rest of the men on the dropship, then the cry of 'windsor, windsor, windsor!' chased them out.
The barrier bunker was a squat concrete structure with a armored projector at the top, even if they used all their explosive charges on that projector it would barely fluctuate the shield, they'd need to blast into an underground tunnel, go through blast door, and then enter the command center and disable it that way. Battlechief wasn't so confident of their chances of escape, as he explained, the infected would flock to them once they heard the first explosion.
So when Saren set up the charges to break into said underground tunnel, he was quietly praying to the spirits to deliver his soul to wherever it may go.
As the dropship thumped to the ground, the humans in the back were running out, shouting and orders flurried about as the cargo they held was also unpacked and distributed. Civilians, children, and even turian marines grabbed the weapons and support equipment as General Orinia directed the deployment of minefields and fire positions.
When the dropship was emptied of cargo, it was refilled by children and the wounded. Terrified faces and the almost lifeless look of those who no longer cared whether they lived or died filled the cameras as he ascended, Kepla tried to ignore his cargo by looking out his viewscreen at the devastated terrain of the town around him. The walls had been demolished, the gates blown open, and many doors and buildings forcibly broken into. The only safe spot to hold out was the central administration building, which was already sporting machine gun nests, barricades, and fighting positions.
Zooming away, a legion corvette took his dropship's place in the yard before the administration center, loading up dozens of people into its cargo bays and barracks, people were pushing and running into the ship.
In the distance, Kepla saw the horde, literally minutes away. He shivered once more, his whole body trembling with his craft as it climbed to orbit.
Main cannon, ready. Fire.
Main cannon, ready. Fire.
Main cannon, ready. Fire.
The mantra kept repeating as the ship's VI loaded slug after slug into the dreadnought's firing tubes. Vasilias looked to the rippling surface below as the kinetic barriers warbled and flickered under the onslaught, but no breach was made. Under the barrier his light cruisers and frigates fired into the moving mass underneath them with everything they had but seemed to make little dent.
The countdown on his screen ticked down, sixty seconds until the alien monstrosities reached the settlement's outer perimeter.
The explosion rocked the land like an earthquake, "Go go go!" Battlechief screamed as he jumped down the newly made hole. Saren followed after him, and then sprinted after the alien, "Hurry, before close!" Battlechief added, pointing to the descending blast door.
Battlechief ran as fast as he could, but his physiology limited him, running at a good twenty kilometers an hour. A Turians primitive past gave Saren the advantage. He reached thirty, then pushing himself further forty kilometers an hour. Feeling something tear in his legs, the Turian dove forward and past the threshold. He tried to stand but couldn't. He coughed, then coughed harder and finally hacked up a liter of blood.
Saren pulled himself up with his rifle and hit the bright red emergency stop button. The door stopped with two feet to spare. Battlechief wiggled through, then Windsor, then Desolas. Saren hit the button twice more, and the door closed with a thud.
Battlechief kneeled next to him, and took out a handheld scanner from a bag at his side, "You bad. Hope coagulants work." He was getting out some supplies when Desolas pushed him gently aside.
"I'll take care of him, take down the shields." Desolas dug into his own supply kit, stolen from the dropship, and began to remove Saren's armor, "Ready brother?"
Saren nodded, tried to speak, but only coughed up more blood. He pushed his body too hard, he'd likely burst a few blood vessels in his lungs and they were now filling with blood.
In the background he could hear, "Provide authorization. Authorization accepted. Shields disabled." Then next to him, he heard a reverberating thud as the entire metal bulkhead shook.
"The horde has reached the settlement!" The communications officer shouted, as the screen before them showed a wall of tracers impacting the alien monstrosities. In less than an hour the creatures had mutated. Many of them had peeling skin and grotesque bleeding eyes. Bioluminescence flickered across many, and-
"What the fuck?! They have guns! Who the fuck gave them-" The view screen transformed into static and the audio picked up a final death rattle.
The screen changed to a new perspective, a Turian Marine keeping overwatch on a human machine gun team as they fired high caliber bullets into the horde, scything ranks of them down. A black shape took flight behind the main line of the horde, "Harpy harpy!" A human screamed, the translator finding no suitable substitute, and tried to turn his gun towards it, but was decapitated by a bone sliver the size of his forearm.
"Fornicate!" The gunner shouted as he gunned down the winged monster. But it had done its job, as now the nest was getting peppered by infected gunfire.
The Turian he was watching looked up and saw a small car being thrown at them, "Get back, get-" The sickening crunch made Vasilias wince.
"Sir, sir! The shield is down!"
"Good, get anything that can land over there, start evacuating the survivors from the roof. I want Orinia on the first bird that touches down, redirect our fire to the largest concentrations we can detect." Vasilias rapid fired his orders, and prayed. Maybe they could salvage this mess.
"Uhh, sir, Yularen's Will is reporting borders." A communications officer shouted.
Another spoke up, "Sir the Carmi is reporting borders as well-"
"By the spirits!" Someone interrupted and put a feed on the main viewscreen. It was an exterior camera for a light cruiser, as those "harpy" creatures landed on its exterior and began to try to make their way in, the disgusting creatures were dripping fluids from their mouths that they vomited onto the hatches- Oh no.
"Order them to put marines to those breaches right now!" Before their eyes the creatures vomited out acidic goop, which dissolved the ventral umbilical airlock before their eyes.
"How are they doing this!? They can't be that smart!" Vasilias shouted in alarm, "Get the- get the prisoner here on the bridge right now!"
"Sir! We got sensor contacts at the end of the star system- We've just lost contact with our picket!" The communications officer shouted above the uproar of chaos on the bridge.
"Go to full battlestations, initiate bombardment of the planet by the second flotilla-" The primary sensor screen reported spatial disruptions as a fleet emerged from a mass effect transition. Vasilias was stunned by the poor timing as half his fleet began to bombard the colony.
"Carmi is reporting she is no longer combat effective! Yularen's Will is breaking to orbit and venting all contaminated decks!" Someone screamed from their station.
A camera came up and showed the Carmi's command staff firing sidearms into oncoming infected alongside their marine guards. Vasilias killed the camera before the bloody details were shown to his command staff. Poor bastards were already dead.
"Order them out of the atmosphere, and keep bombarding the settlement!" Vasilias was starting to lose it, torn between retreating in the face of such an overwhelming force bearing down on him or maintaining his commitments to the troops on the ground.
He looked around to the fleet status boards and calmed down. He knew his duty, "Send one last wave of fleet transports, pick up everyone you can, we're evacuating the system!" He commanded. He made a personal note in his own operational diary, then sealed the document. Spirits guide those who wouldn't make it, "Intensify the bombardment! Use the high explosive shells, burn the continent to the ground if you have to."
Saren woke up to the sound of gunfire and screaming. Coughing, he turned over from his back to push himself up, the hallway leading to the bunker was strewn with corpses and cooling metal and concrete. The door itself had melted from some sort of acid that still sizzled on the ground even as more of the monsters tried to crawl their way into their room.
Already the floor was coated with a layer of casings from the human rifles. The cheery tinkling a contrast to the booming roars of the oversized rifles. Pushing himself up, Saren pulled out his pistol and fired into the tide of monsters. Windsor was screaming something, something about an emergency door release.
Stumbling to a nearby console, he found a big red button. Maybe it was the concussions talking, but Saren depressed the button, "Self destruct initiated." A voice announced.
Shoulder checked by Battlechief, he forced his rifle into Saren's hands while he began to rapidly type into the console. Checking over it quickly, the Turian tested the trigger, pointing the weapon at an oncoming gesticulating zhomby.
The thing's head exploded like an overripe fruit. But his shoulder now hurt like a riding krito had kicked it. He flicked to a new target, another head exploded. He fired single rounds scything down the infected as they clambered over the dead bodies of their comrades.
In the blink of an eye a new door slammed down. Windsor and Saren and Desolas kept firing, firing into the remaining infected who ran towards them, or crawled, or even twitched. Saren's ears rang with the tinnitus scream of close in gunfire, as he frantically looked over the carnage.
"Battlechief, get new door open, Desolas with me!" Windsor commanded in a universal tone that implied he was to be followed and not questioned. Windsor began to police the wounded infected with Desolas as Battlechief went to a new console and started to input a code.
With the danger passed, Saren relaxed, and looked over his comrades. Desolas was limping, from what Saren couldn't tell, but he had dented armor plates, bruised flesh, and the tip of his flange had been melted off so that only sickly green snot remained. He was policing the dead at Windsor's direction.
Windsor was limping as well, but his cause was obvious, he had needles and bone spikes sticking out of his side, his leg, and one even went through the side of his helmet and gas mask into where his cheek would be. He wasn't bleeding, so maybe his suit had some sort of automatic medical diagnostic system or some shit like that.
Battlechief was comparatively the least wounded of them all. His armor and rubber CBRN undersuit smoked, he was covered in guts and blood, but he stood straight and tall even while he worked at a console hunched over it like a parent to a baby.
Forcing himself to stand, Saren's entire body ached, "You, Saren, check the medical box, inject a blue bottle in yourself. Grab a green for everyone. Battlechief, open door in two minutes."
Windsor straightened and proceeded to walk towards a closed bulkhead, "We're getting out of here now."
"This is your last landing pilot, get who you can and get out!"
"Understood flight control." Kepla returned dispassionately as he turned his forward cannons on a flock of harpys. Exploding them into gore and twisted masses of flesh as they dropped from the sky. Those unharmed scattered, flitting downwards into the smoke haze of battle.
"I got General Arterius' IFF down there." Hergo shouted, indicating them on the hud, "Lots of movement around them but we got a couple minutes." Kepla angled his bird into a dive. Those harpys were another terrible surprise in a world full of them. Half the dropships had been taken out by them, and several legion transports were currently embattled with borders as they tried to escape into orbit with whoever they could grab.
It was a mess compounded by the apparent arrival of a human reinforcement fleet. Kepla winced as he aerobraked his bird into an upright position and burned his thrusters, several g-forces pressing down on him. He couldn't risk the harpy's landing on his bird, and vomiting more acid on it.
He crashed into the ground with a thud, his landing gear reported massive damage, the hydraulics probably wouldn't work any more, but fuck it. The boarding ramp couldn't open fast enough as he impatiently tapped his foot into the well beside the ascension pedal.
"More hostiles closing in!" Hergo announced and fired the canon into said hostiles without orders. They were about fifty meters away in the forest, and their heat signatures died as quickly as they appeared.
"We're all in pilot! Get us out of here!" General Arterius ordered and he didn't have to do it twice. His foot depressed the ascension pedal even before the loading dock started to close.
"Understood sir, we're going to return to the settlement, do a pick up, and burn out of here!" Kepla returned and angled the dropship towards the sky once more, to avoid the dust and battle fog.
It also allowed him to get a signal when the cruisers and frigates were firing. He didn't fancy being turned into debris from an errant shot of artillery. He heard muted screaming and cursing from his troop bay, one of the humans was removing needles from another, the injured man cursing and shouting every time one was removed. He winced in sympathy then turned off his view, "We're getting close to the outskirts now, get ready, it looks like the evac zone is hot!"
Spirits it was hot, the thermals he was getting showed they were barely holding on by a thread. Fires and bodies littered the ground like… well like hell. "Hergo, get the cannon spooled up, we'll strafe that group here and do a quick landing to pick up that group on that residential roof, if we still have room we'll get to the administration building and pick up a full load."
Hergo and the fireteam in the back gave an affirmative, "Alright, opening the bay door," The sound of gunfire and screaming flooded in with the hot air. The cannon vibrated the craft as it fired at large groups of heat signatures.
A fwoomp and ear piercing scream of a sonic boom sent the dropship flying, "We're hit we're hit!" Hergo screamed, "Pull it up pull it up!"
"Pilot what hit us!?" Desolas screamed in a warble as he and the others held on for dear life.
"Frigate round passed by! Come on you old bird hold it together." Kepla jerked at the control stick and depressed the ascension pedal. He repeated the mantra as if his life depended on it. Then something hard impacted the side of his ship, and consequently sucked into the engine intake. A fresh bang was a comical understatement for the effect it had, as the port engine exploded into shrapnel, he cried, "Nope, we're going down!"
They had ten more revolutions before slamming into a concrete blockhouse.
Saren's ears ringed as he pushed himself off the ground again. He coughed and didn't like the rattle in his throat or the way his chest squeezed around his lungs, but he considered himself lucky to be alive.
A pair of hands pulled him upright and a voice screamed in his ear.
Reality slowly reasserted itself, "Saren! Get the pilots! We have only a few minutes until the last dropship leaves!"
The younger brother hardly hesitated as he ran over the uneven deck plating to the pilot cabin and nearly slipped in the fresh blood oozing out. He ripped open the damaged door anyways and saw the copilot crushed beneath a concrete block the size of a car. The pilot however was still breathing, coughing and hacking as he fumbled with his flight couch straps.
Saren couldn't wait for him to undo it properly, taking his service knife he slit the straps and pulled the bird free, "Hergo, Hergo!" He cried, trying and failing to hear his copilot's voice in return.
"Come on pilot! We're getting out of here!" Saren cried out, dragging him out of the cabin, and towards his brother and the humans as they prepared to blow the emergency hatch in the side of the dropship, to enter the building they were crashed in.
"Once we blow door, they'll be all around us, prepare for the horde!" Windsor declared, loading his rifle, and taping some of his magazines together so that they could be quickly changed.
Pilot Kepla got his breathing back and pulled out his service pistol, "I-I can stand sir!"
Releasing him, Saren prepared his own rifle, then shook his head, threw it to Kepla, and grabbed a human rifle from a still intact crate, and grabbed as much ammo as he could reasonably carry.
They counted down, the banging on the hull was getting louder, and the temperature inside almost unbearable. The bang as the explosive bolts initiated was nearly deafening in the confines of the ship, and they charged forward, firing their rifles all the way. The building was infested with the zhombys, ripping and tearing and beating the dead bodies of their comrades, human and turian.
"Get to the tunnels!" Battlechief screamed, throwing a zhomby drone into a nearby wall while Saren finished it off with a clean headshot.
Saren almost shot a human soldier, as he emerged from the attic hatch, along with another human and a wounded turian, "With us!" The humans went up to Saren and took some of his clips, reloading their rifles as the Turian got a field suture by Kepla.
They cried out, and joined them, pushing into the ground floor and spotting the tunnel hatch. A warning was shouted, and a half a body of a turian marine was thrown at them, entrails spilling out as a massive human shaped creature emerged from the front parlor.
"Armored fighting vehicle!" The humans screamed in unison and fired, the explosive rounds tearing massive craters of armor thick muscle from the thing's body as it loped after them. Its small head comically undersized in comparison to the rest of its body, an arm protecting it as it charged. Saren took aim, had a moment of clarity, and squeezed the trigger.
"You will surrender your ships, and submit to full inspection and decontamination. Any vessel attempting to leave will be destroyed and all life pods destroyed along with it. All ships regardless of atmospheric status will land on the northern pole of the planet and destroy your mass effect cores. All civilians will be interned in solitary confinement cells and await treatment." The message repeated in a flat monotone. It was a stalling tactic, it had to be, because no foriegn nation would ever submit themselves to those orders.
"They're generous. Not blowing us out of the sky now." The prisoner related in a chuckle.
"I can't accept their terms."
"You can't fight that." The prisoner explained patiently.
"I'll be seen as a coward and a traitor."
"You'll be seen as the man who escalated an unjust war for the fear of being seen as a weak man to your peers." The human replied
"Your translator is surprisingly eloquent."
"I have received an updated translation matrix from my nation's fleet." He riposted elegantly, he paused, "I think the Citizen's League has been obfuscating how long they've known the Turian Hierarchy and the Citadel Council. I fear the ICL has been observing you for a long time." He paused, sighing in a too turian maner, "They'll destroy you and the fleet here. You are what, a few days away from reinforcement? You've been caught bombarding a garden world with dreadnought scale accelerators, your fleet is in disarray, a war on two fronts as the position below fights for their lives against your ground commander's failings. I cannot say the courts will be favorable to you but you have acted honorably to me and the rest of my staff and charges in this war. You cannot surrender, but you can depart with dignity and honor by at least allowing a relief force of our shock troopers to cleanse the infection down below. You have violated the sanctity of the quarantine world of Shaanxi, but you can redeem yourself by acknowledging the failures of your nation and its system, it is a forgivable crime."
He paused once more in thought, as he formulated a way he could message the impossible, "The greatest crime you could commit, is wasting the lives under your command. You cannot defeat this fleet, they will hunt you down, they will find you, they will destroy you. You have seen too much, gathered too much data, seen the horrors of our people." Vasilias could only imagine the grimace beneath that helmet, "You cannot run, you cannot hide, and to fight will only prolong the inevitable." He bowed his head and fell silent.
"Charger!" One of the human soldiers screamed and pointed to a new strain of hellish creature as it blustered its way through a hail of bullets and debris. The younger Arterias' rifle cracked and beheaded it with a clean shot, sending the monster tumbling to the dirt end over end. Another tally to add to his count.
Behind the falling creature a horde of its lesser brethren screamed and hollered as they closed the distance. So far their small but growing squad had accumulated the dregs and riff raff of whoever was left in this hellish landscape, and had been shrouded from view by the dust and smoke of the orbital bombardment and raging fires all around them. But their luck had its hiccups every now and then as both forces stumbled onto one another in the chaos.
"We're fifty meters away from the closest dropship!" Kepla shouted to Desolas who raised his own head and shouted into the screaming air.
"Fifty meters! Come on, we're almost there!" His words of encouragement invigorated the exhausted soldiers all around him picked up the pace, and the covering fire, scything down the horde chasing after them.
Kepla turned and fired his rifle at them, his accelerated rounds knocking each of his targets off their feet but it was like spitting into an ocean for all the good it did him. But every bit helped.
Alongside him the humans and turians fired their assault rifles, rippling waves of the infected were cut down. Unconsciously the two groups had formed a fire and maneuver element, one group firing until they needed to reload or discharge heat, the other moving into a suitable position and laying down covering fire for the first group to run back.
"Low on ammo!" One of the humans cried.
"Two magazines left! Two magazines left!" Another cried.
The turians weren't in much better shape.
"My ammo block is almost depleted!" A lieutenant announced nonplussed as she economically fired her rifle.
"My heatsink is malfunctioning!" A more panicky youth declared, his gauntlets and gloves melting into his weapon.
"We're almost there!" Desolas screamed into the air, drowned out by the sound of chittering gunfire. Before them the horde was reduced to so much biological wreckage.
"Go go go!" Windsor screamed at his men, shoving them toward the dropship, "Ignore infected, get on ship! Get on it now!"
Kepla did just that, racing towards where the dropship's IFF was pulsing, he got increasingly worried as it rose and rose. Was it leaving without them? In his distraction he nearly slammed straight into a concrete wall. He looked up and saw the swirling dust patterns of an endo-exo turbine space to ground shuttle engine. He desperately searched side to side, for some opening to get to the roof of the building- There!
A wrecked ground truck and debris formed a primitive ramp. A human slammed into the concrete wall back first, firing his rifle into a crowd of oncoming infected, Kepla gripped him and pushed him towards the ramp, "This way go!"
By luck the infected held off on their assault as the small understrength platoon raced to climb up the improvised ramp. The occasional deafening chatter of the dropship cannons a comforting reverb. The barking staccato of human rifles and the beingk biengk biengk of turian phaestons on the roof of the building served to speed up everyone's pace.
Windsor, Battlechief, and the Arterias brothers took up the rear guard, helping any who tired or strayed, ordering them up the ramp. The crew chief of the dropship waved people in, his words drowned out by screams and gunfire.
"We're almost there!" Battlechief declared, the last of the men clambered on, Kepla right behind them, preparing to take the crew chief's place, he looked back, about to get on the ramp, just in time to see a long prehensile tentacle grasp around the big human's throat and pull him off the side of the roof.
Chaos erupted around Saren as several tanks launched themselves in the air aiming for the dropship. With their bare hands they dented and tore armor plates. On reflex the dropship pilot rocketed into the sky, sending the tanks spiraling in the air as they either plummeted to the ground or held on for dear life. Leaving the brothers, pilot Kepla, and Windsor on the ground.
In rage and fury, Windsor pulled out his sword and charged the nearest surviving tank almost suicidally, screaming the name of his comrade and lifeguard as he did so. The human was going to get them killed!
Flicking to the nearest and largest of the tanks, Saren squeezed the trigger of his human made assault rifle. Its head exploded, the human rifles much more suited to killing the infected then the more economized turian phaeston rifles.
The downside of course was the lack of ammo.
"Des! Grab him! Pilot, is there any other way off this planet!" He shouted in turn to his companions.
The pilot was busy firing his new rifle into the horde around them, "Fuck fuck give me a minute!" He shouted in return.
Desolas recovered the human berserker, pulling him by the waist as he tried to escape the ironstrong grip of the bigger turian, his sword slashing and tearing into the air before the two. Throwing him behind Saren, the younger turian grabbed Windsor's shoulder, "Damnit hold it together and fight!" Pulling him back to his feet Windsor began to fire into the common infected around them.
Around them, hell rose to meet them. The orbital bombardment intensified, the sound of concrete buildings collapsing in on themselves as hyper accelerated slugs the size of Saren's head shattered them, sending shrapnel and splinters flying like bullets scything down the hordes like wheat. They all still fired, killing those who stood, then those who crawled, then those who drug themselves along the floor.
"There's one dropship left!" Kepla shouted, shaking Saren's head trying to get his attention.
"Where Pilot?!"
"Top of the main administration building!" He pointed in a seemingly random direction, "If the building is still standing! It got overrun by the flying ones!"
Saren looked around to the holocaust erupting around them all, "Windsor! Windsor!" When the human's attention was grabbed with the repeated screaming of his name, Saren asked, "Can we use the tunnels!"
He looked shocked, then began making his way towards a floor hatch that led into the building they were fighting on. Making a fighting retreat to a still usable floor hatch, the party fought their way through the building, turned into a charnel house by the horrific combat that had echoed through the halls a few minutes ago. It was a long shot, the bombardment was starting to use armor penetrating munitions to destroy all remnants of the town, but they would fire outwards in a creeping barrage of a curtain closing in around the concentration of infected forces on this planet.
They had time, or at least the illusion of time. If the tunnels hadn't been collapsed yet they could possibly make it to the central administration building and climb.