Chapter 10

Quark: Maybe, but I still don't want you anywhere near them. Let me tell you something about humans, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time, and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes. You know I'm right, don't you? Well? Aren't you going to say something?

Nog: I feel sorry for the Jem'Hadar.

— Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

April 3rd , 2216

"Nuclear weapon confirmed! Nuclear weapon confirmed! God damn, this thing's fucking huge!" Heard Sergeant Bill Sampson, "it's counting down! Sixty two seconds!"

"All Alliance ground forces in the vicinity of Operations Zone Charlie, this is Admiral Griebun. Evacuate, Evacuate, Evacuate! Get the hell out of there, the Batarians rigged the nuke to blow!" A second, more authoritative voice commanded.

Sampson laboriously hauled himself to his feet, his left arm a bloody, shredded mess, and sprinted away, as far and as fast as his legs and the mechanical servo-motors that encased them would carry him. The ground beneath him was shaking violently under the force of Batarian Artillery and the Mech Duels between Alliance Drones and Batarian Walkers. It was a mass exodus, the Alliance Armed Forces had just spent hours taking this city, tossed thousands of bodies at it, and now every Human and Quarian in the city was fleeing for his or her life. Never had Sampson seen something more dire, more downright scary, than the vision his drone-feed was giving him in the bottom left corner of his HUD. Every single bipedal being was rapidly fleeing the city, every vehicle was being driven out, carrying far more than its original occupant capacity. Jets, gunships, shuttles, even hijacked and hotwired skycars, were all fleeing by air, and anyone not lucky enough to get a vehicle, was running for their life.

Sampson was one of those people, but his mind wasn't on the nuke, it wasn't on his useless arm, it wasn't even on the fact that he didn't know if his power armor could get him to the minimum safe distance in time, and it wasn't even on the nearly one-sided battle that had taken place before he'd even heard about the nuke. It was on the single, horrifying vision he'd seen, mere seconds before the Nuke had been declared. He'd seen, just for an instant, before they disappeared, troopers in white, black and gold armor he could not recognize, but all with distinctly Humanoid shapes, gunning down the team sent in to investigate the thermonuclear rumor. They'd gunned the engineers down, they'd gunned a SIGMA down, and then had attempted to gun him down, but his armor, his shields, and his reflexes had saved his life.

As Sampson sprinted, as fast as he possibly could, only one thing ran through his mind: What just happened?

"Operation VANGUARD Oh-One is a go." Said the deep voice of the ex-lieutenant Boris Halberd.

He and his squad of six men stood as one, they were a half kilometer outside of a heavily contested and heavily defended Batarian city on the planet Siler. The Cerberus Commando Squad's goal was simple: Begin VANGUARD, and set the foundations for the best-laid plans. All six of them wore some of the most advanced sets of power armor in the Alliance, designed almost entirely by The Intuitive Man himself. The armor was designed to increase their strength to nearly SIGMA levels, and was made extremely durable via using OD3 PIAA armor plating, and crushing it under extreme Mass Effect treatment. Their 'smart skin' undersuits were exact replicas of the ones the SIGMAs wore, though these ones were designed with a contingency plan involved, if any one of them died, the suits would increase their temperatures to the point where their bodies would be liquefied, and their armor burned so badly that it wouldn't be recognizable. Their shields, while not as strong as Titan Armor shields, were still good enough to take a hit from a Krogan, running full-tilt, and putting everything he had in the swing. And then there was, of course, one feature that no Cerberus Commando's armor could go without, the black and gold finish.

The squad activated their tactical cloaks, and moved forward. In order to complete their objective, they had to martyr themselves, and several thousand Humans. They had to set up, initiate, and then detonate a city-breaker class nuclear weapon, a several megaton device which bore all of the design similarities to Krogan dirty bombs, right down to the ancestral dust packed around the detonator, that the Batarian Hegemony had become infamous for buying and using back during the Batarian/Vorcha war. It was well known the Batarians had stockpiles of the KDB's, but the Council's best Spectres had never been able to get proof, so the Hegemony had never been convicted. This only worked for the black-ops organization's advantage, of course: The commandos would set up, and detonate the Nuke, and then sensitive Hegemony secrets would be 'leaked' by the ever-gaining-popularity extremists within the Hegemony, and the effects would be so many, that Boris was truly amazed that this was simply the first step in Cerberus' 'master plan'.

Boris knew it, as well as his squad, and Cerberus' leader - who had never given his real name to anyone under his leadership, in spite of rumors that the also illusive 'Intuitive Man' knowing otherwise, Boris noted with a slight sense of offense. They all knew that a single nuclear detonation would turn this from a glorified 'rescue operation', to a war that demanded a shift to an Alliance War Economy. Even the Citadel would have to respond to this with cold hard cash, and the extra funding on both ends would increase tensions, which would increase funds. The war-minded Humans would either make better arms, invent some new weapon or technology, or they would simply increase their already mighty military power. The Citadel would make more ships, would make a barely noticeable service time increase on their troops, and would make more mechs. Everyone in Council territory knew, that if they joined the service that eventually - whether it be eventually now, or eventually way down the line - they would fight Humans, and that was something no one, not T'Loak's Terminus Systems, not the Citadel Council, and especially not the big Mercenary companies, wanted to do. A war with Humanity might have been a feasible option a decade ago, definitely two decades ago, but now? With Humanity's territory resting at dozens of planets, with billions of people, and a navy so strong it would take an entire galaxy to destroy it? The Human Systems Alliance was a sleeping giant, and their relationship with foreign powers was a time bomb. Boris didn't know Cerberus' plans exactly, but if the nuclear weapon was any indication, Cerberus wanted to detonate that time bomb, with, it seemed, a fuse lit by nuclear flames.

So that's what they would do. They'd gotten word that the Alliance had been sent to storm the targeted city, with overwhelming force. N7 Special Forces had been sent in beforehand - it wasn't a target worthy of SIGMA Operatives - to mark locations for Kinetic Strikes, before the OD3's had dropped in, the Marines had flown in, and the Army had rushed in. The Commandos could see it, even from this far away, the battle was being hard-fought, the Batarians weren't giving an inch, and the Humans were giving no quarter.

"Move." Boris ordered, and with that, his six cloaked commandos moved as one.

Their feet barely disturbed the dusty, war-torn, debris-strewn ground as they moved to the city's outskirts. Their advanced visors scanned their environment and placed a digital overlay upon it, marking important objects with yellow outlines, enemies with red outlines, friendlies with blue outlines, and everything else was outlined at the edges with green. The sky above was marked with hundreds of small, ever-moving dots, representing the Alliance Air/Space Force, and the slowly increasing blue and red masses would mark the ground forces, both friendly and not.

"Commander, twelve high." Advised one of the Commandoes, an ex-N7 Marine.

Boris looked up, and saw hundreds of massive fireballs descending through the atmosphere. They were far too big for them to be Orbital Dropping Death Dealers, or SIGMAs making 'naked' drops, so that only left drones. "Drones." Boris said, inwardly smiling. The Alliance obviously thought this was a big target, there had to be Human slaves here, a lot of Human slaves. They were deploying TITAN forces, which wasn't that big of a deal, but the only TITANs that could survive atmospheric deployments, were the drones' namesakes themselves, Titan-class mechanized infantry. The massive, Mark Three machines, stood tall at thirty six feet, a massive upgrade from the GenOne Mark One Titans, used during the Second Contact War, which stood at eighteen feet. Mark Three Titans, humanoid, massive infantry, were admittedly underused and under numbered, numbering at only five thousand total, as opposed to the tens of thousands of Wolves, Turtles, Scorpions, and the recent Dragons and Hornets. The Titan mechs, and the Turtle Mechs, were the only ones capable of using miniature Rail Guns as their primary weapons; they both had turrets and other weapons, but their main sources of destruction came from the massive magnetic accelerator cannons they wielded.

The Titans themselves were most commonly used for shock-and-awe, but were commonly used, thanks to their mechanized status, and that the AI's could remotely pilot multiple units at once, not at all like the prototype Sapiens Military Mechs, which required an entire AI Disk to function. Though, the namesake mechs, the massive thirty six foot tall humanoid Titans, they were the most uncommonly seen mechs, so if they were being used for this siege, it had to be an important target. Before Boris ordered his squad to continue on, he entertained the thought that the Alliance knew about the Nuke, or, at the very least, knew that something was going to happen in the city, that involved a Nuclear Weapon.

An hour passed, before they finally reached the city's outskirts. There were hundreds of yards of blank, open plains, that Boris immediately recognized as bomb-sites and no-mans-lands. The Alliance -or, he never knew, perhaps it was the Batarians! - had obviously bombed the surrounding areas to make flatlands - or relatively flatlands - upon which they could create the prerequisite no-mans-lands, that was needed when occupying a city. Unfortunately for the Humans, and the Commandos who were about to cross it, the no-mans-land worked both ways, as the Alliance had stormed it hours ago, it had claimed many lives, and now that the Batarians were forced to retreat through it, it was again claiming many lives, thanks to the straggling Human forces and the mechs and vehicles that had stayed behind.

"Three…" Boris began the countdown, deactivating his active camouflage as he braced himself for a long sprint. He could see bodies littering the rubble, either atop it or covered by it. He could see in the distance, anti-aircraft fire soaring through the air and in between the city's massive buildings.

"Two…" Boris crouched low and bent his knees. A bomber suddenly flew out of the air and into the city at high speeds. It weaved in and out of the buildings as several Batarian Fighters tracked it and fired upon it. It took several hits before it finally dropped its payload, and then exploded in a massive fireball. The Batarian fighters rocketed out of the fireball, to be met by the Alliance A/SF fighters that had been rushing to help their buddy, only to be a second to late to save him. The Alliance Fighters tore into the Batarian fighters, killing two and injuring the third, which tried to retreat, but was destroyed by the missiles from a gunship, which was climbing high to get a better vantage point, and a lock on its next ground target.

"ONE!" Boris and the Commandos tore off across the battlefield. Immediately it seemed to come alive, as Alliance and Batarian automated mortar targeters saw them, failed to recognize them as allied targets, and immediately chose to tag them as enemies. The ground around and behind them exploded, but the Cerberus Commandos were just barely managing to outrun the mortars, thanks to their advanced power armor.

"God damn, Commander! I love this armor!" Shouted a Commando, just a few seconds later, after they broke city-limits and took a moment to take cover in an alley, and catch their breath.

"Too bad you're not keeping it, el-tee." Quipped one of the other Commandos, as she stretched her back, and checked her rifle thereafter.

Boris too checked his rifle, making sure it hadn't been damaged by the mortar fire. It had some dust on its barrel, but a quick wipe with his skin suit solved that. They stayed stationary for another minute, before Boris requested a heading.

"North, northwest. About zero point three two klicks." Responded a Commando.

"Alright, move out." Boris ordered.

The six Commandos spread out into a 'V' formation, Boris had their front, Jess and Vin had the sides, Joe and Lamar had the rooftops, and William was the lucky lone operative who watched their rear side. When they reached the edge of the alley, they all froze and activated their camouflage modules in one fell swoop, because they'd unintentionally stumbled directly onto an ongoing skirmish between Human and Quarian forces, and their Batarian enemies.

The battle seemed to be going poorly for both sides. The Humans had been sent into a bad situation, that much was apparent. Every single Batarian in the city seemed to be taking up arms and firing at them, the slaves too, brainwashed as they were. But the superior technology of the Alliance still won out, and the raw firepower of the Human race was bringing the Batarians into submission.

"Bill. Throw a gas grenade into the Human ranks." Boris ordered, "form up when you're through." They moved out.

They had been equipped with chemical weapons, tailored exclusively so that only Batarians would be immune to it. When word got out and the cloud spread, the Alliance would realize that the Batarians were deploying chemical and biological weapons, the only Human and Quarian forces that could survive that would be Human Special Forces, and Quarians without suit punctures. Then, when the Nuke went off, it would be the very last straw for the Alliance.

"Tossing Gas." Said William, as he lobbed the bio-terror grenade into the midst of the Humans. Immediately a cloud of dark-green gas hugged the ground and enveloped the Alliance forces, who instantly began breathing it in and feeling its adverse effects.

Boris only had a second to see Cerberus' biological weapons work their magic, before the cloud enveloped him and removed his visibility. The Human Soldier had begun clawing at his throat, as the agent ate his body from the inside out. His eyes had begun to bleed and pop - literally pop - just as the cloud grew, thanks to the grenade's secondary detonation. Boris switched to thermal vision, and they continued forth. Their target building was, intentionally, the most Human looking of them all.

Human skyscrapers had, ever since the dawn of the twenty first century, either been large spires or enormous obelisks. Their target building was part of the latter party, and was interestingly enough, the smallest of its brother and sister buildings. Boris had been able to catch a glimpse of it before the cloud enveloped him. It had had its entire top section sheared off, whether it was by Human or Batarian missile strikes, or simple bad luck, he didn't know, but he was able see the fires raging from his vantage point, far beneath the building.

"Sir, contact left!" Shouted a Commando, just as soon as they exited the still-growing cloud. Immediately heavy cannon-fire raked their position and slammed into their shields, the commandos - all of them ex-special forces - acted upon instinct and ran forward for the nearest available cover, which came to them in the form of a destroyed Alliance Tank, its rail gun melted and smoldering. The Batarian Ground Combat Vehicle raked their position with heavy fire, as its soldiers no doubt began closing the distance between them.

"Vin! Fire sphere!" Boris shouted.

"Fire Sphere Copy! On your word!"

"Suppressing fire!" Boris swung out of cover and instantly started taking targets. His suppressed Special Forces Rifle spat quiet lead at the Batarians, two shots into their shields and one into their brains, he had taken two down in twice as many seconds, before he ordered Vin to launch the sphere.

The Fire Sphere was, essentially, an under barrel projectile, which flew into the air like a Frisbee, and then floated in the air like a drone. It spun at blinding, blistering speeds, and its massive batteries allowed it to fire its energy-projectiles for a full six seconds before it self destructed. The laser fire was enough to incinerate its target, the Batarian Vehicle, in half that time, but they made sure and let it drain its battery. Six seconds passed before all six Commandoes broke cover and swiftly - and mercilessly - dealt with the remaining Batarians.

"We move!" Boris roared, and his squad - abandoning their camouflage - thundered down the battle-torn streets.

The Cerberus soldiers weaved into and out of combat, racking up a large body count as they sprinted to their goal. Fifteen minutes passed before they finally made their destination, in a quieter part of the city. The second one of them entered the building, they realized why it was quiet, and why someone had attempted to fell the building. Vin screamed and shouted as he was raked with high-caliber auto-turret and machine gun fire. His Smart Skin's computers instantly caught on that he was dead, and in the second it took for him to hit the ground, had already become white-hot. Six seconds after that his skin was bubbly, and ten seconds following that he was inflamed and melting.

"They've got auto turrets!" Jess shouted, as they took cover from the cannon fire.

"Vin had our EMP Grenades!"

"Pop smoke!" Boris ordered, before he did just that. His squad followed suit, and the thermal-masking smoke filled the building. Immediately their position was raked with desperate fire, but they had been prepared for that, too.

"Deploying shield! Ten seconds!" Shouted William, before he shoved his right arm forward, and his smart-watch's holographic generator synched up with his armor's energy shields, and formed a nigh-indestructible, circular hard-light barrier.

William vaulted over his cover, and charged forward, his squad behind him and firing into the building, using their HUDs to find the enemies, mark them, and kill them. They entered after three seconds, and their last Fire Sphere was used to take down the auto-turret. Boris rued that they didn't have an AI to hack the turret, but to take an AI on a suicide mission was deemed 'too expensive', so they'd had to make do.

"Jess, bomb!"

"Give me cover!" Shouted Jess, as she vaulted into a small octagon created by cubicles and pressed a command on her smart-watch. Immediately an exit-warp appeared, and she called out "Two Minutes!"

"The Alliance comm-chatter just picked up, they're making for this building!"

"Did they notice the tear?!"

"Negative!"

"Kill all sons of bitches!" Shouted Lamar, before he set up behind cover and then let loose with his Light Machine Gun. The Alliance forces - who, Boris realized, were wearing N7 armor - immediately were pinned down, with two dying outright. A full second passed before the Alliance forces responded with their own gunfire, obviously realizing that the black-white-and-golden armored figured inside weren't friendly.

"They've got numbers on us!"

"Gas grenades won't work!"

"Pyro! Toss 'em!" The squad had been equipped with a single incendiary grenade for each man, and they all threw them simultaneously, creating a burning circle of fire at the building's entrance, melting it and burning the unlucky N7 alive in the extinguisher-resistant flames.

"Thirty seconds!"

"Give 'em hell!"

Gunfire flew across the battlefield from both ends. The smoke from the earlier grenades were finally clearing, and Boris realized the mistake he'd made, just as the bomb came through the portal. A single SIGMA operative, most probably the city's designated SIGMA, had breached their perimeter, and was already making to report his findings. The Commandos shifted fire onto him, but he activated his own hardlight shield, retreating as he did so.

"OD3, watching the action!"

"Get him!"

"Firing!"

"The bomb's here!"

"Set the timer!"

"Two minutes!"

"We're getting overrun!"

It had only taken six seconds, but in that six seconds dozens of enemy soldiers, marines, and N7, had all appeared and were all making desperate pushes for the Cerberus Operatives. Boris knew that either someone in Intel had dropped the ball, or the bomb was too recognizable for their own good.

"Bomb them!" Boris saw no other route. Another feature hidden in their armor was a single pound of explosives, with enough force to incinerate their bodies and whatever their target was. No evidence, and definitely not enough force to crack the nuke's casing. The Cerberus squad waited ten seconds exactly, and when the lull in the fire came, they jumped cover and bolted. Five explosions in as many seconds, and one SIGMA, two N7, and many more marines and soldiers were dead and injured, and just like that, the once dedicated Cerberus operatives were nothing more than ash and molten flesh.

Bill Sampson could hear the dead silence of the battlefield. The second one person had called Atom Bomb, word of mouth had carried it all through the city, and the battle halted, as hostilities were forgotten in the simple struggle to outrun and survive nuclear Armageddon. Sampson had set a clock for thirty seconds, and all he had was ten seconds left, and he was certain he hadn't hit the Minimum Safe Distance.

Sampson pushed his battered body as far as it would go, assisted along the way by his power armor. He ran as fast as he could, as far as he could, and as quickly as he could do so. He scaled a hill that had, when he'd rushed down it earlier that day, had seemed small, but now felt like a miniature mountain. He reached the top and leapt, hoping to put as much distance between him and the city as possible. As he reached the top of his cybernetically assisted vault, the timer reached zero, and time seemed to slow down.

The first thing he heard was the simple, utter silence. Then the loud thunderclap, that sounded like a thousand Rail Guns firing, in atmosphere, at the same time, only to have their projectiles slam into each other at speeds the low percentage of light speed. The EMP was the first thing to hit him, though his suit was, thankfully, hardened against such attack, but it did unfortunately take out his shields. The next thing to hit him was the shockwave, which propelled him forward several dozen meters. He slammed into the ground with a bone-breaking crunch, his shields having been hit by the EMP, he had nothing to break the fall. He felt several of his bones crack and break, but that was nothing compared to the heat wave that came next.

The hill had absorbed a lot of it, and his armor had taken much more, but it still burned and seared at his back for several seconds, before it dissipated. Sampson stayed still for what felt like an eternity, before he started coughing violently. Blood splattered onto his helmet. He slowly - achingly - got to his feet. He ripped off his helmet and vomited blood onto the ground, the suit had never felt so heavy.

Some sort of morbid curiosity drove the Death Dealer to drag his way up the hill, he had to see the city, he didn't know why. It took him several, painful minutes to reach the crest, and the image he saw would be burned into his mind just like the scar would be burned upon this world, with nuclear fire.

The sky was blood red, the city had been flattened and turned to glass. The planes in front of him were on fire. Air vehicles, Human and Batarian, that were too unfortunate to be unshielded for EMP's were hurtling towards the ground, exploding violently, and killing their pilots. In the distance, Sampson saw the horrifying sight, the enormous mushroom cloud, extending high into the sky. The cloud was still bright white, it still carrying blisteringly hot flames with it.

Sampson had been so enraptured and distracted by the beauty of annihilation, that he didn't hear the Batarian rushing towards hum until he felt the knife slip between his armor plating. His armor, thankfully, still functioned, and the second it felt the foreign object, it clamped down and sealed itself shut tight, the blade had pierced his Smart Skin suit and had drawn blood, but nothing like it would have, had he been wearing N7, Marine, or Army armor. Sampson acted on instinct and slammed the back of his fist into the Batarian, who pulled out a pistol and aimed it at the man.

Sampson shielded his face with his arms, and his armor was fortunately enough to block the two shots the pistol had before it overheated. Sampson acted quickly and hurled his helmet at the Batarian, the helmet slammed into the Batarian's nose with a loud 'crunch', and Sampson tackled the alien to the ground. Six blows to the face ended the sobbing Batarian's resistance.

"Why?!" It managed to croak, stopping Sampson, giving him time to look at his handiwork: its nose was broken, and two of its four eyes swelled shut, blood covered its face. "You monsters…" It looked at the cloud in the distance, just as it began to rain. "You… You monsters…" The black rain mixed with the dark red blood and washed it from his face, though the beings' tears weren't lost on the Death Dealer. "You killed them all… What did we truly do to you?!" He sobbed.

"You enslaved millions to -"

"To sustain our race! Our way of life!" The Batarian roared, "the same way your people do war to preserve your race! To preserve your way of life!"

"That wasn't my people!" Sampson roared in defiance.

"It wasn't ours! We do many things, Human, but we don't kill our own! We don't drop weapons of mass destruction because we might lose a colony!" The Batarian cried, his entire body going slack out of simple defeat. "Kill me… Do what your race has gotten good at. Do what its only good at… And end me in the name of your ideals… Of your wars." He spat on Sampson's face.

Sampson gave the Batarian what he wanted, he drew his pistol and fired, just a second before he heard something faint, coming from the speakers in his helmet. He crawled over to it, his suit suddenly becoming twice as heavy as it had been before, now that the adrenaline rush was wearing off and his injuries were revealing themselves again. Sampson grabbed the helmet and jammed it back on his head, hearing the faint hiss as it sealed itself from the contaminated environment around it.

"This is Sergeant Bill Samp -" Sampson began, but was interrupted.

"All Alliance forces in the vicinity of grid Two-Two-Three Charlie, evacuation order April is in effect. The radiation cloud is being carried to Ground Zero's southwest, we are calling to Arcturus to get NEST Teams in with Terraforming Disks, we have medical and emergency transport personnel en route. If you can hear this, pop green flares to signal your position for evac!" Came the voice of Admiral Hans Griebun.

Sampson could feel his suit getting heavier by the second, so he did what the voice said, and took out his two green flares. He barely heard the whomp-whomp-whomping of Alliance Shuttlecraft behind him, as they screamed towards the blast zone and searched for survivors. Sampson aimed the flare gun to the sky and fired, before he popped the second flare and then let his body finally shut down, hopefully they would see him, but as he saw the literally thousands of other flares launch into the air, he knew evac might be a while.

Sampson lost consciousness just a few seconds after he hit the ground, his last sight before his eyes shut was of the mushroom cloud.