Chapter 32

"A man with no motive is a man no one suspects. Always keep your foes confused: if they don't know who you are or what you want, they can't know what you plan to do next."

— Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish, Game of Thrones

July 2220

Jorell awoke with a brief shout, his exhausted dreams having been addled and riddled by the horrible visions of the ancient alien husks devouring him alive with rivers of complex machines barely larger than an atom, and turning him into one of them, like the creatures from Human folklore. He felt stiff and sore, hot and sweaty, looking around Jorell saw the thick forest of alien trees that was surrounded his impromptu FOB, the leaves above a deep alien red, and the bark around them an odd mixture of white and blue, leading to an almost misty Fall atmosphere year-round. With a groan, Jorell lifted himself up - noting idly as he did so that his body was lighter, he wasn't wearing his chestplate. He inspected himself as quickly as his sore body allowed, the other armor plates were still where they were supposed to be - even the thin, clear plates that shored up his mask - but whomever had treated him had removed his chestplate and his tactical vest. He idly noted that, had it been just twenty years ago, such an operation would have been considered just a few steps below murder due to the large amounts of environmental exposure.

Jorell shook his pale, masked head, and took off his forest-green mask so he could wipe some sweat from his brow, again noting the almost suicidal stupidity that act would have shown not but two decades ago. Times had changed, he mused. After these thoughts ran through his mind, he noticed a medic and an Officer making their way to him. With a clenched chest, he sprung to his feet and fired off a salute for the Officer, who returned it.

"At ease." The officer commanded, Jorell complied. "How're you feeling, Private?" He inquired.

Jorell shrugged, "hungry and sore, sir." He said, not mentioning his wounded pride - he did remember falling out in a pool of his own vomit, after all.

The Lieutenant nodded, "don't we all?" He looked to the medic, who shrugged and said that there wasn't anything physically wrong with the Quarian that he hadn't already patched up, he should just watch himself and get something to eat. The lieutenant nodded and bade Jorell follow him. "Those alien creatures we took out in front of the vault were the last ones, the rest of the place was empty." He informed the engineer, as the latter stretched his slightly sore limbs. "There are a few rooms our guys can't get into the easy way, but we're not worrying about them, for now. We emptied out their armory save for a few things that we won't touch, so AI can have their fun with them."

"You're going to trust a vault filled with million year old technology to win an impossibly important battle, sir?" Jorell questioned, wondering where the two were headed as they walked.

"No, but I had Burt check it out. He said that they're definitely old, but they're still in working condition. The Painters had some kind of stasis module hooked into them, it keeps them in a hibernation state whenever they aren't being used. No power, no rust, no deterioration."

"Painters?"

"The aliens who built the place. We're calling their enemies the Black Beasts." Said the Lieutenant, "anyways, the Painters' stasis tech outmatches even Prothean tech. We don't want to, but we need to finish this mission as fast as possible, and those alien guns will be just the wild card we need to do so. And, bar none, we will be able to use them to make a push for the Rebel Jammer, and then we'll get reinforcements from the fleet." He paused, and added, wistfully, "maybe even a few SIGMA squads. The situation warrants."

"It does, sir?"

"Yes. Rebels aren't supposed to have this kind of tech. Where did they get it? Who did they get it from? Did they loot it from other Painter vaults? Or did they get infected just like our guys did by the BB's? Either way we look at it, we need something more reliable than hyper-advanced alien weapons." He shook his head, "but that's not necessarily why you're here." He said as he opened the tent-flap to allow Jorell entry.

Inside the officer's tent, Jorell found the other surviving officers huddled around a holographic projector, which was displaying images and a few videos of what was likely the enemy base. Given the angle the videos had been shot, it looked like they had been taken from orbit. The three officers were discussing the merits of various strategies, and the central point seemed to be their unmanned force and its role in the assault.

"We need to use them to supplement our alien gunners." Said a Chief Warrant Officer, as he extended a cybernetic hand and drew lines on their patchwork map. "They start blasting away here from the north. Our snipers take shots from the east, our main forces pierce in through the -"

"That's a kill-zone. Without the mechs, the south side would be defenseless." A lieutenant interrupted, "and if the rebels have alien tech, the point is moot."

Jorell stayed as small as he could, as the Lieutenant patted him on the shoulder. "What am I doing here?" Jorell whispered.

"You're with them." The lieutenant pointed at a table filled with NCO's, who too were discussing heatedly. "You're the only one who saw the Beasts in action, and your friend is the only ones who know how the alien guns work." True to word, Willard was also there, offering his opinions and his advice when prompted. "The officers are discussing plans of attack. You and the NCO's are discussing battle tactics." He nodded, his fierce green eyes boring holes in Jorell's mask.

Jorell cleared his throat with a chuckle, "can I consider this a promotion, sir?" He asked with a humorous grin.

"If we survive, I'll get the papers pushed through." The officer grinned as well, gave Jorell's shoulder another pat, and then he pushed him in the direction of the NCO table.

Willard noticed him immediately, he gave Jorell a nod and he got the attention of the various Sergeants. "This is him, the engineer Jorell."

The assembled non-commissioned officers, as one, looked to the forest-green Quarian. Jorell cleared his throat and nodded briefly, "sergeants." He greeted.

"So… You're Superman's dad?" One asked, seriously.

"Can you call up your son? That'd make things a whole hell of a lot easier." Said another, slightly less seriously than the first.

"I'd settle for Batman, honestly."

Oh… Great. Jorell sighed, "let's get to work, shall we?" He pulled up a chair.

The Marines' plan was simple, she mused. It was meant to be so it could be adapted in case of new elements, which this planet seemed to have in an overabundance. It would start with sniper fire from the forests and hills to the west of the rebel base, the snipers would pin the base down and keep everyone from being able to move in freely. After that would come the full frontal assault from the south - the Force Recon grunts and their mechs would smash through the base's defenses and hammer the hell out of the scrambling Rebels, their primary targets being the enemy mortars and their jammer - wherever such a thing would be found. Then from the north would come the alien gunners, they would use their weapons to burn through the north walls and then start slagging everyone inside that didn't wear Alliance Marine armor. Simple, straight, to the point, and adaptable if the situation called for it.

While she didn't at all know about their alien tech, and it might not have been exactly what the lone, newly minted, thoroughly untested Cerberus Agent wanted, Miranda Lawson could make it work. The Alliance's own fifth column agent had goals that came almost literally from the top - McGraw was the Intuitive Man, the only person with a higher rank than him in theory was The Illusive Man himself, and he often deferred to the former. This all meant that she couldn't fail, and she wouldn't let the Marines smash her objective; best case scenario was that she would be able to slip in and slip out while the Marines were causing trouble, taking with her all of the data from the building she'd scouted out days beforehand, and the building itself if she could plant the explosives quick enough, but the worst case was that the invading Marines made their way in while she was still inside. They would most assuredly win - those guys didn't like to lose - and if they did while she was still inside, she could convincingly make herself off as a captured Colonist - she had a pack of clothes on her that she could switch into, and she even had a cover story and everything else she may need to take on that role, there was no such thing as being too thorough.

No cover, no backup. Thought the agent as she swallowed through her dry throat. All she had to do was break in, steal the data, blow up the machines, and get out. The Marines first wanted to scout out the base, so they sent in their snipers - the snipers would spend twenty four hours watching patrols, cataloguing everything, and then they would leave to report back. In two days the Marines would storm in and cause chaos, that was the agent's window of opportunity.

Until then, the only thing she could do was scout the base with her spider-bot. It was an unmanned drone the same size and shape as an arachnid, but it held an advantage in that it used McGraw's QED technology - jammers wouldn't have an effect on it, so she could pilot it from the safety of the Nomad, parked a few dozen kilometers from the base, and shielded from aerial view by shrubbery and the forests, and from radar thanks to its ground-based position. She wouldn't be found, and she could make the trip to the base quickly enough on foot.

She creeped the drone in slowly, she was in deep in the base's command center. It was something of a tight squeeze, but she was able to make the drone sneak through the air ducts so it could make its way through the base without being too overt. Though she didn't know it, the regulations for air ducts were specifically 'smaller than an average child' for any Alliance military base, and though one may think that to be because of common sense and a lack of a desire to have spies crawling through them as she had her machine doing, the regulation had actually come from a high-ranking officer during the twenty-one-thirties, who had watched one of his grandfather's old sci-fi horror films too many times and decided he wanted to avoid that kind of scenario. The regulations were even stricter on Alliance naval vessels and hospital ships - they were specifically smaller than the average baby, which made sense, as commissioned hospital ships commonly had little ones crawling around.

She halted the drone when she picked up the modulated sounds of a SIGMA speaking through his helmet. Around the camera rotated, looking for the opening through which the sound was flowing. It was all too muffled, she must not be close enough; she creeped forward, the sounds became clearer as she rounded a bend and saw a few sharp rays of white light cutting straight through the jet-black air duct. Had her drone not had night vision, it would have been utterly blind.

"... Marine scouts…" She heard as the drone crept towards the opening.

"... trouble?" A second voice asked.

The drone neared the opening and got a better look inside, standing in the center of the room was a seven foot tall SIGMA deserter, standing starkly at attention as he gave his report to a bright television screen. Upon the screen glowed the image of a man wearing a formal gray suit, with a blood red tie and strictly attended to hair. She couldn't see any facial features, as they were all first cast under a very thorough scrambled mosaic, and then too were his eyes, cheekbones, and mouth covered by thick black bars.

"No, sir." Said the deserter. "My men engaged the scouts after one tripped down the hills and revealed their position. We killed three and took the fallen hostage, the rest fled. We believe one to be a washout, but I am in doubt - they tend to not go back into active service, last one I was aware of was Hannah S1 -"

"Do you have any reason to believe they have discovered any Ancient facilities?" The Mystery Man inquired, boldly cutting his SIGMA off.

For his part, the SIGMA kept his calm and held his tongue. "No sir. From what you've told us, the Ancients didn't have time to build more than one on their outer worlds, and we're pretty close to the galactic roof."

"That merely means that this world could have been hit last, as well as first. They had time to build one, and it was far enough into their war that they had begun using clones. You must assume they built another, and it was trapped as well."

"We burned those corpses -" The SIGMA defended, but the man cut him off again.

"The Alliance will not have. The seeds will be sown and I will lose a great many connections." Said MM, curtly. "I cannot risk revealing Project Everett with Him and his dog so close to us, so I have reinforcements coming through the usual methods, but they are far away, it will take two days for them to get there."

"What should we do in the meantime, sir?"

"Don't lose. And call an exterminator, I am disappointed."

Miranda cursed and retreated the drone, but the damage had been done, and not an instant later, a fist smashed through the wall and the steel of the vent, blocking off her escape. The drone scrambled forward, but it stumbled over the rubble, and the fist opened and closed around it, capturing it within its augmented grip. Miranda cursed again, she had another Spider drone, but these were dreadfully expensive to make, and it wouldn't look good on her if she lost two drones on her first mission. Though she didn't want to do it, she also didn't want to risk this SIGMA having some kind of way of tracing her to the Nomad, so she hit the detonation key and the drone exploded with the force of a grenade. She hoped it would be enough to breach the SIGMA's shields, and maybe even shred his hand up a bit, but she took on the assumption that it wouldn't, these were the soldiers who were reputed to tank man-portable railguns, after all.

Miranda sat back in her chair, taking in all that she had heard. The Mysterious Man had been careful in referring to whomever it was that he referred to, but she connected the dots soon enough and concluded that he knew about Cerberus, and the kind of political pull they had, which was alarming - they weren't supposed to be too particularly well known, the Illusive Man had been dreadfully careful to ensure that. The Alliance had a couple of vague ideas, certainly, but that was because the TIMs wanted them to have a few ideas. This guy seemed to have more than a few ideas, and had somehow been able to detect her drone, which meant he had power and skill.

The raven-haired operative sighed and placed the tablet on the counter next to her, leaning back in her chair and toying with her thoughts. It felt rather odd to be in the Nomad without McGraw's obnoxious voice carrying through from somewhere within, it felt empty.

Sufficiently advanced… Ancients… One mannerism she had picked up due to four years of exposure to the bombastic man was his scatterbrained nature of thought. Most of the people she knew on the MSS were straight, clear, and forward with their thoughts, she was able to read them like a book just by getting a brief glimpse of them, but McGraw's thoughts jumped anywhere and everywhere at the drop of a hat. Before she had met the man, she'd wondered how he could function like that, but now she realized that there was something to be said for his wisdom - one of the most fundamental ways that Human beings understood things was through comparison, and being able to pull up any memory at any time, or think of any subject at will, made comparison all the easier. This all meant that she drew the connection to McGraw's comments about the cloning technology predating the Protheans, them being 'sufficiently advanced', and the MM's words about the 'Ancients' far sooner than she would have with a straight mind.

The solution was that these 'Ancients' had to have pre-dated the Protheans, else MM would have simply called them Protheans. There was no reason to be overly vague about a subject that any person in modern society had at least a cursory knowledge about, the same that there was no doubt in her mind that he would do such a thing; based on the way he spoke and cut off the Deserter, the MM seemed to be a to-the-point, no-nonsense man, and Prothean wasn't suggestive a term enough to warrant code talking. Then he had mentioned 'vaults' and some kind of infection which had warranted the burning of corpses, and that the Alliance may have encountered this infection, which would mean he would lose some of his 'connections'. What could that mean? Did these 'ancients' get wiped out with some kind of disease, which spread into their disaster vaults, and ended their only chance of survival? No, one of the two had mentioned a war and that this colony could have been last on a list, which meant that one simple disease couldn't have eradicated all of them. So that meant they were fighting someone, had been fighting them for a long time, and had been pushed to the point where they just needed bodies, so they started cloning themselves. Maybe this disease had been introduced to the clone gene-pool, or had been left by a victorious enemy as a way to ensure any surviving Ancients would be exposed and killed upon checking their disaster vaults.

Could the enemies these Ancients have been fighting been Protheans? It would make a little sense, and it could also explain why the Protheans disappeared - the ancients built vaults and they built them with cloning facilities. Logic and reason would dictate that at least one of those vaults succeeded, and when they did, they cloned themselves an innumerable army and set about exterminating the Protheans. That, however, begged multiple questions pertaining to this virus, and where the Ancients went after winning.

With a huff, Miranda leaned forward and brushed a few stray locks of hair from her face. She looked around her pilot's cabin, a vast majority of the computers and holograms were deactivated and the shutters were drawn; she was completely and wholly separated from the outside world. From orbit, Manheim looked like any garden world, it had one major landmass and several smaller islands spread about its surface, it supported life and had a stable 0.9 G gravity, a perfect garden world. It was also out in the middle of galactic nowhere, which helped the rebels it was harboring avoid detection for so long. She placed her hands on her knees and pressed down as she stood up, she stretched her arms and her back, the catsuit she'd been given for her assignments stayed remarkably silent as she did. It was made of the same materials as Quarian enviro-suits, so it was designed to feel as natural as possible whilst also restricting nothing. She felt a little naked wearing it, but Hampton told her that it would soon feel like a second skin, and she could always just throw some clothes on over it if she felt the need.

In her opinion, she felt that someone was playing a joke on her - putting a curvaceous teen in a skin-tight catsuit, and those feelings had only been bolstered when McGraw had openly laughed at her appearance before launch, but he hadn't said anything much beyond that, so she hadn't requested anything else. Besides, it had some damn strong shields, a cloaking module, and, she had to admit, she did look good in it.

Miranda decided she would take a few hours to sleep, and then she would hike out for the base when she woke up. If the Rebels had reinforcements coming in from their mysterious benefactor, that meant she was operating on a much more desperate time schedule.

Two days passed by in the blink of an eye for Jorell'Sahn, and he was certain he'd gotten somewhere in the vicinity of five hours of sleep to go between them. Whenever he wasn't working with the various NCO's on discussing battle strategies, he was working on fixing up and beefing up their mechs, and whenever he wasn't working on the robots, he was looking for any excuse he could get to sleep. Jorell hadn't been privy to the scouting missions the Lieutenants had sent a few of their sniper teams out on, though he had gotten a pseudo-promotion, he was still a grunt and his job was to kill things, and fix the things that killed. All he really knew was his role in the general plan of assault: He had to keep his head the fuck down and not die, until they could fight their way to the signal jammer and he and his fellow engineers - and their AI, if it was free and could even make the wireless connection - could shut it down and make the call for reinforcements.

From what he'd gathered from the scuttlebut around their FOB, the general plan was a staggered assault - first the Snipers started firing, then the mechs and the grunts assaulted from the front and then the guys with the alien guns started hammering from the back. Jorell had only a few chances to talk with their AI about what these guns were and why they didn't respond to Quarian touches, to which point the sentient machine said it wasn't god and that its sensors and scanners couldn't do everything - it would need a whole hell of a lot more equipment to even guess at how alien technology worked.

After the machine had finished its rant, Jorell called it an asshole and told it to tell him what it really thought. The machine proceeded to tell him the guns clearly had some kind of biometric lock, but why they were keyed to Humans was anyone's guess - again, it didn't have the proper equipment to even try and make those kind of assumptions - but it was able to identify what it fired. The weapons fired continuous streams of ionized, superheated, plasma. Literally, no known species in the galaxy - even the protheans - were known to be advanced enough to weaponize plasma efficiently, and that helped to explain why these guns were able to take down the Black Beasts where conventional weapons hadn't been; they burned so hot that they skipped the first three degrees entirely and jumped straight to fourth-degree burns, and that was on the weaker pistols they'd found - the rifles were supposed to burn so hot they could melt through a mech's armor plating. The machine even went so far as to say that they could probably melt through a SIGMA's cocktail of precious metals in a timely manner.

A thunderclap stole Jorell from his memories, there was silence for a few moments before a cacophony of thunder came from the east, as Force Recon snipers blew apart the Rebel insurgents. "That's our signal! Turn on the mechs!" A Sergeant by the name of Hendricks shouted out.

Jorell needed no further instruction, he smashed the 'on' button on his smart watch and smiled evilly as the mechs inside the mech truck all systematically sprang to life, leapt out of the truck, and moved to guarding positions around the marines. When they were certain of their protection, the Marines thundered forward - three of their Heavy Weapons sent rockets screaming down range, the massive miniature warheads blew the Rebel fortifications apart completely, leaving a massive hole in their defense, through which the Marines would storm. The rebels inside the base were frenzied, no one knew what was going on and none of them knew from exactly where they were being attacked, all they knew was that they were being attacked.

In such a small amount of time, the rebels' best advantages - their fortifications and their superior numbers - were turned on them as the Marines started spreading out and sowing chaos amongst the Rebel ranks. Each squad had at least one Wolf Mech, and the Engineering squads had two and a Turtle as well, all mechs who weren't on protection duty were surging far past the offensive line, trying to force the rebels to stay on their back-foot and to not recover from their mass hysteria and confusion. Soon enough, bullets were flying in all directions - Rebels were shooting anyone and everyone they didn't recognize on sight, and some of them didn't even wait for that distinction, they simply shot back at anyone who shot at them.

"Keep moving forward, don't stop moving!" Sergeant Hendricks shouted out, as he stayed behind his squad's Turtle Mech, the machine belching out ammunition from its mouth-mounted gatling gun. The machine's rail-gun's loud report drowned out the sergeant's next words, but Jorell got the gist of it when the nav-beacon appeared in his HUD: The snipers had found the jammer.

"I'm setting the location! This turtle's going to book it, use it for cover!" Jorell reported - these Turtles were working on a simple Virtual Intelligence, as opposed to being directly slaved to an AI, they knew only the basic commands: Attack, Defend, Kill, Destroy, etc., it was cheaper than installing a positronic brain in them, those were reserved for the more variable Wolves.

The moment Jorell hit the button on his Smart-Watch, the turtle reared up and the rail gun extended from the splitting shell, its charge making an audible whirring sound. The turtle and the wolves began moving quickly - the turtle ate up ammunition that would have otherwise smashed into the Marines and turned them into swiss cheese, and the wolves and the Marines returned fire. They kept moving, not staying in one place for more than a few seconds, not letting the debris, the flying rounds, the dead bodies, or the massive explosions, delay them any longer than what was absolutely necessary.

Everywhere they went, battle was already waiting for them, because as time went on, the Rebels slowly got back on their game. They were still on the back-foot, still on the defensive, but it was like someone was coordinating them, someone with a great amount of experience fighting against impossible odds. Could this base really be the one with the Rebels' Leader?

"Holy shit, we've got SIGMAs!" Roared someone over the short-wave, before Bio-comm showed him flatlining just a moment later.

"SIGMAs confirmed! I just saw them, they're booking it!"

"SIGMAs?!" The sergeant was practically salivating, and as the Turtle picked up its pace, he jumped on the short-wave, unsecured channel. "This is Sergeant Hendricks calling Augmented Elite, respond on channel three!" If he could get them to protect their advance to the jammer, the battle would be theirs!

"Sergeant, where the hell did those SIGMAs come from?!" Jorell wondered, as the jammer came within sight, and the Turtle's railgun thundered once again.

"Who gives a shit? They're here!" Said a marine, who was nursing a bleeding wound in his shoulder and had a noticeable limp, but the Cell-Fluid running through his veins was dulling the pain.

"SIGMAs, we need you to get to the signal jammer! We've got an engineer with us and we need to take that thing down if we want assistance from the fleet!" Hendricks called out, before a rebel grenade exploded and crippled one of their wolves, which continued fighting by clawing its front-half forward, its mouth-mounted machine gun still barking lead.

"We'll be there, Marine." Was the only response they got.

"Yeah! We've got -" Hendricks, before a seven-foot-tall monster of a soldier leapt off of the Rebel mess hall and landed on him, snapping bones, rupturing organs, shredding muscles - the sergeant was dead before he could even twitch, and before any of the Marines could react, the SIGMA somersaulted forward and leapt upwards, bodily slamming into their turtle, causing a visible, massive dent in its armor and shifting its aim from the signal jammer to the building behind it. The debris from the resultant explosion pelted the shield around the signal jammer, leaving it wholly untouched.

Jorell managed not to freeze from the raw fear of seeing a SIGMA in action against him and his squad, but instead acted on another instinct: Here was a massive monster that he knew, perhaps not from experience but definitely from reputation, was simply impossible to kill, and it was doing everything it could to kill him. This was not a good situation, and it only got worse when the SIGMA flipped up onto the Turtle's back, ripped its rail-gun from its mount, and used the impossibly heavy weapon as a club to smash the Turtle's head in. The Turtle's machine gun tore apart its head and it died thinking it had fulfilled its programming - to fight for as long as it could and die protecting its creators.

Jorell scrambled away as fast as he could, "run for the jammer!" He shouted at his squad, before he switched to the short-wave, "all Alliance forces - the enemy has SIGMA Operatives! Do not trust the SIGMAS! I say again - DO NOT, TRUST, THE SIGMAS!" He practically screamed into the mic, as he felt his shields shatter and a round soar through his left arm.

Jorell and his squad kept running, and in their brief sprint, they made it to the jammer, to greet several Marines, two more engineers, and a load of mechs on a defensive setting, all setting up a load of explosives to piece the Jammer's shields. "We've got incoming!" Jorell roared, opening his smart-watch and trying to slave the mechs to his control, but unable to do much other than open up the control panel before he felt a round enter his back, and saw three Marines get downed by the impossibly accurate gunfire coming from the Augmented Elite.

Jorell hit the ground, lightning coursing through his back. Unlike Humans, Quarians lacked many of the pain-killing endorphins that Humans had, and no amount of synthetic re-writes of their immune system could change that, so whenever Quarians got hurt, they felt it until they took some kind of drug to get rid of it, or the wound itself healed. Jorell's suit sensed the injury and it automatically injected a few painkillers into his body and started growing into and pressing down on the wound, which would keep the Engineer going for a while, but a while would turn into an eternity thanks to his opponents, there was a reason everyone who fought SIGMAs feared them to their core.

"What the fuck is going on!?" An Engineer yelled from behind his Turtle, which wasn't firing on the SIGMAs, because the SIGMAs had what basically equated to automatic universal 'friend' codes when it came to mech IFF's.

Jorell was trying to manually overide the SIGMA's IFF tag, but such a thing would be difficult under normal circumstances, but in this stressed situation? It was damn impossible to do it in a timely manner, and the Quarian was getting frustrated. However, unlike many Humans, who would let their rage cloud their judgement and impair their work, Quarians - and Jorell more than most - were able to channel their rage into their work, creating an effect similar to what happened when Humans answered their fight-or-flight instinct: They worked harder, faster, and sometimes better, without even knowing what they were doing.

"The Rebels must have brainwashed some SIGMAs!" Jorell shouted, "you need to take down that jammer, we can't -" His words were drowned out by explosions, more gunfire, and the ringing noises of the Painters' plasma rifles, Jorell's blood ran cold - the alien gunners were coming, and they wouldn't have gotten his advisement on the enemy SIGMAs. "Get on the horn and see if you can't let them know! They need to focus everything they've got on the SIGMAs, else -" Jorell was interrupted by blood-curdling screams and death-throes: The SIGMA had rushed forward and broken their fragile defensive line, and was now engaged in melee combat with the Marines.

God damn it! God damn it all! Jorell was throwing caution to the wind and, like the SIGMA had bodily slammed into the Turtle before, he was brute-forcing his way into the nearby mechs' IFF's, not caring for whatever fragile programs and codes he may be damaging on the way.

"Oh shit, look out!" Someone shouted, before Jorell felt a hand close around his throat and the barrel of a gun get pressed to the back of his head. Jorell fought against the SIGMA's iron grip, but the SIGMA wasn't budging, it pulled the trigger with a deafeningly loud 'click'.

It was out of bullets.

Jorell scrambled, smashing every holographic button on his watch, hoping one of them would be the one he needed to hit. The SIGMA smashed Jorell into the ground as the few surviving, and some other nearby, Marines started pouring their ammunition onto him, his shields glowed blindingly bright before they finally shattered, but then they had to contend with his armor - the SIGMA still had time to kill them all and take their mechs for his own. He ripped a magazine from his tactical vest and leaped away for cover - knowing now that it was a bad idea to continue to engage in melee combat, but also well aware he still held the advantage in ranged combat.

Or, he would have, had Jorell not finished the desperate struggle to complete switching out all SIGMA IFF frequencies from 'friend' to 'invalid'. Now, instead of giving a proper reply to the mechs' IFF pings, the SIGMAs would send an invalid response - and because the mechs wouldn't recognize them as a friendly target, they would automatically assume they were enemy targets. When the SIGMA landed, his position was bombarded by heavy machine gun fire, and one rail slug.

"Any and all alien gunners, be advised, the situation has changed - the enemy has SIGMA forces! Do not trust the SIGMAs, they will kill you! All forces, converge on the signal jammer's location and stack up, we need to destroy it and hold out for reinforcements!" Jorell heard a muffled voice call out as a medic ran for him in his small crater and grabbed him by the chestplate. Jorell felt the cool feeling of cell-fluid running through his veins, temporarily fixing and repairing his injuries and killing his pain, keeping him in the fight until he could find proper medical attention.

The SIGMA, however, had other plans, and after it threw an EMP grenade and temporarily stunned the mechs, he leaped over his rubble and opened fire with a rifle. He tore into the Marines, two dying in twice as many seconds, and it seemed for a moment that every man in the galaxy was shouldering whatever weapon they had and was firing on the SIGMA with whatever they had, until finally, a beautiful green lance of super-heated plasma soared through the air and slammed into his armor.

All of this finally proved to be too much for the SIGMA's confidence - not in his life, but merely his confidence in being able to continue his life - and he used his augmented musculature and the doubly augmented power armor to leap out of the way of death, too fast for his enemies to trace. The SIGMA was on the backfoot, but even with his shields shattered and his armor scorched - and even partially melted in some spots - he was still an impossibly deadly threat, even before he landed, his flashbang stunned enough Marines to allow him to take down two, and critically injure one of their mechs - inadvertently hitting its power supply and detonating it, which ended up killing two more marines, including Jorell's medic.

This god damn thing won't die! Jorell silently screamed as the dead medic went down like a sack of potatoes, and the back of Jorell's head hit the concrete. Through his haze, as Jorell tried simultaneously to crawl to a retreat and force his head to clear, he noticed something.

The dust and debris, still flying through the raging winds, wasn't buffeting the Jammer's shields. The shields were down, but the explosives that had been set to detonate the shields were still there, waiting to be synced up to a detonator. The back of Jorell's head bumped up against a concrete divider being used as cover by some of the marines surviving the SIGMA's rampage.

Jorell's head lolled to his left, he tried to get the marine's attention, but he was too busy trying to kill the SIGMA, and just a moment later he was too busy trying to stem the flow of blood that was coming from a bullet-sized hole in his cheek. Jorell shook his head - worsening the pain he felt from his concussion - and tried to form a plan, because the SIGMA had to have realized his mistake in tossing an EMP grenade and overloading the Jammer's shields.

"Force-Recon, be advised: The Rebels have regrouped, they are being led by enemy SIGMA Operatives! They are trying to take prisoners, I say again - they are taking Prisoners of War! All forces converge on the damn jammer, we need reinforcements or we won't live through this!" A sergeant shouted out, as Jorell opened up his smart-watch.

He manually overrode the targeting systems of one of the mechs, and made it target the Jammer. Just a moment later a rail-slug smashed through the jammer, kept going, and impacted a building a few dozen meters away from the Marines - utterly destroying it, and killing any of the rebels and Marines fighting inside.

Almost instantly, the short-wave got a lot less clear, and the mid to long-range communications suites all fired up. Jorell heard Lieutenant Ferrel's voice instantly take over the long-range, and his plea for help was shot into space, and to whatever nearby Marine units could receive it.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Lieutenant Ferrel, Alliance Force Recon Marines, Alpha Division! We have just disabled an enemy signals jammer, the local rebels are far more organized and equipped than we were ready to deal with, and they have SIGMA Operatives fighting for them! Anyone who can hear this, we need immediate reinforcements and casevac, we have wounded and dead! I'm placing an e-beacon on my position, anyone who can hear me, PLEASE respond!"

"Anyone who can hear me, PLEASE respond!" Heard Hannah Shepard, Captain of the SSV Einstein, as her carrier ship crossed over low-orbit, right over the SOS sent by the Force Recon Lieutenant, she would be the first one to get it - her ship, and was less than a quarter of a light second away from the planet's surface, but the Destroyers, the Admiral's Flagship, all of those were a lot farther out than the Carrier Assault Groups and their escorts.

Hannah's crew were already springing into action, her head Communications Officer, Daniels, was already ordering his deck to get in contact with Fleet-Admiral Hackett, the few hundred remaining Marines from their detachment were all thundering towards the armory, in case they were to be deployed as a Quick Reaction Force.

"Hackett's on the line, ma'am." Said Daniels, after he stowed his 'good luck watch' in his fatigues and fired off a salute. "Marines are getting armed, we've got three jets ready to go on your order."

Hannah nodded, and brushed a hand through her dark red hair, before she flipped on the vid-comm and the visage of the grizzled war-veteran third-fleet Admiral flared to life. "Captain." He greeted.

"Admiral." She gave him a brief salute, her face set in grim determination. "We just got word from our Force Recon Alpha-Division. They confirmed our fears, sir, this is Manheim, and they're in trouble - they've been off the map because they've been jammed by the Rebels. They assaulted the rebel base to take down the jammers, but they're being hit hard by organized and equipped Rebel forces and their SIGMA operatives. Requesting permission to -"

"Captain Shepard, please verify - did you just say that we've got SIGMAs on this planet?!" Hackett had never been informed that anyone in his fleet was carrying SIGMAs, and that was the standard procedure - even on deniable operations, the Fleet Admiral was informed which SIGMAs would be in their fleet and what ship they would be flying on.

"No, sir. The Rebels have SIGMAs." She urged, "we don't have any more details than that, but they are enemy SIGMAs. If we don't get our men reinforcements, we'll lose them." But as she was speaking, she saw Hackett's face grow paler and paler.

She had no idea that he was slowly slipping into denial - there was no way that this world had the Deserting Three. The only SIGMAs to openly fight against the Alliance, they had a kill-on-sight order for any and all Special Forces Operatives, entire operations had been thrown away by the mere suspicion of their presence - these SIGMAs, the only enemy SIGMAs known to mankind, were higher up on the kill-list than the Rebel leader himself. If these Deserting Three were on Manheim - first off, they wouldn't be getting off, but secondly, Hackett didn't have the resources to kill them. In a paper co-written by several ranking Alliance military officials and the then-SIGMA General, it was said that, without other SIGMAs, the only possible way to kill an enemy of comparable skill would be to send in every available marine, every available bomber - they would have to dedicate literally every asset they had to kill however many enemies they were fighting. Even the 'creator' of the SIGMAs, Jason McGraw, had said that without other SIGMAs, the only real way to kill them was to overwhelm them or drop a great big bomb on them. Many believed that the papers were exaggerating, but the legends of the SIGMAs were backed up by fact, and they all pointed to one thing: If Hackett wanted to kill those three, without sending for Augmented Reinforcements, he would have to sacrifice his foothold on this planet, by sending in every Marine stationed with the Fifth Fleet, to make up for their lack of SIGMA quality through raw quantity. In other words, to die.

Hackett suppressed a glare, he had to think of the majority, here: If they took this planet, they would end the Rebellion, if they killed the SIGMAs, they would lose the planet. "Captain, Shepard, be advised: We will not send Alpha Division any reinforcements, you are not to order any air or orbital strikes. I am going to contact Arcturus and send for SIGMA reinforcements, I want you to get eyes on the Alpha Divison and make sure you follow their every move. If the enemy SIGMAs flee, you are to follow them. How copy?"

Shepard blinked, did Hackett just order her to allow the Marines to die? "Sir, say again? We can save them - I've got five squads of marines and three jets ready to go right now." She urged, not wanting to have to write any 'Your Son/Husband/Daughter/Wife Died' letters today if she could prevent it.

"Captain, the only way we can help those men is by getting our own augmented reinforcements. I've considered our options and those are our best ones." Even bombing the place from orbit would only cause more harm than good, and with the advent of Hardlight, more and more SIGMAs were surviving the 'Great Big Bomb' part of McGraw Senior's 'How to Kill SIGMAs' equation. "You have your orders, we cannot help them. Hackett out."

A/N:

This has been something I've always wanted to toy with - a SIGMA fight viewed from the other side. Seriously, super soldiers reputed to be nearly impossible to kill, from the side of the people trying to kill them. I think - well, I know - I could have done better, so I'll likely toy with it again at a later date.

I'm on Twitter, folks! -at-ProfFartBurger .
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'Till next time!

-PFB