Chapter Four: Storm Rising
So no longer will I lay down
Play dead
Play your doe in the headlights locked down and terrified
Your deer in the headlights shot down and horrified
When push comes to pull comes to shove
Comes to step around this
Self-destructing dance that never
would've ended till I
Rose,
I roared aloud here
I will
I am
A Perfect Circle, Rose
Va'ath stood over the limp form of the human, feeling a mix of frustration and utter boredom. Just when had things gotten so...dull? From the perspective of the outsider looking in, from the perspective of the fans no doubt even now screaming his name until their throats were raw, this was exciting stuff. Adrenaline pumping, pulse pounding entertainment, the tabloids wittered on. Idiots. This wasn't even a hunt, it was an exercise in repetition. Go out, lurk near the ruins the hunted always flocked towards, seeking sanctuary or just a place to curl up and die, take their lives in his taloned hands, squeeze mercilessly until nothing was left, go on to the next one.
And the next.
Va'ath sighed. Laid out before him like some sacrificial offering to an uncaring god, the woman's eyes flickered open and shut as she bled out from the wound in her stomach. The turian supposed he should quit stalling and just end her.
But he felt so tired all of a sudden. With a sudden burst of clarity, Va'ath understood Bex's frustration with the hunts. Bex cloaked himself in the mantle of the proud warrior, testing himself against the best this competition had to offer. Unfortunately, the best wasn't nearly good enough.
Va'ath's mandibles flicked with irritation. Enough already. Kill this miserable lump of flesh and-
But here was something different - running footsteps bearing down on him from behind. Va'ath spun around to meet this new foe head on, eyes widening in surprise as they took in the battered hardsuit aglow with the blue corona typical of biotics manifesting their abilities.
Mandibles flaring wide in the turian version of a grin, Va'ath saw that it was Shepard. The Spectre.
A gift. How nice.
Somewhere, way back in her mind, a little voice was telling her that what she was doing was tactically unsound. You had the chance to quietly get the drop on him while he was distracted and blow the back of his head off.
Shepard ignored the advice. Instead, a deeper, rabidly feral part of her psyche was urging her on, telling her that an all or nothing, damn the consequences approach was the only way to survive.
Manipulating the element zero nodes in her nervous system, Shepard shielded herself with a biotic barrier and, as she closed in on the smiling turian, executed the mnemonic that allowed her to warp the fabric of her enemy.
The hunter stiffened, head thrown back in agony as the dark energy flowed around him, rending his hardsuit's ablative layers as well as his flesh. Dropping to a crouch, Shepard detached the shotgun from her back, shouldered the weapon and fired. The blast took the turian in the upper right torso and, combined with the weakening effects of the warp field, blew a massive chunk out of his shoulder. Blue blood gouted and the turian reeled to one side, screaming wordlessly.
---
The pain was unlike anything he'd experienced before. Even during the military service required of his people, he'd never experienced such exquisite agony. For too long had he remained unchallenged, stagnant. Now, the challenge he'd been so willing to embrace only moments ago was rapidly killing him.
But not without a fight.
With a snarl, Va'ath's left hand scrabbled at the grip of his sidearm, finally bringing it into play. Blood cascaded from the crater in his torso, spattering to the ground in little rivulets. Spots danced before him and his heartbeat crashed in his ears, blotting out the world. Arm shaking, Va'ath raised the sidearm until the muzzle was aligned with Shepard.
"You're a persistent one, aren't you?" Shepard murmured as the turian began snapping off shots. The first one missed wide but the hunter quickly sighted in on her again. Two more shots were harmlessly deflected by her biotic and kinetic barriers. Shepard racked the shotgun; her barrier was about to come down, she had to end this now.
The shotgun spoke again, the shredder munitions making a mess of the turian's head. The mostly decapitated corpse collapsed but not before his talon squeezed a final, convulsive time on the trigger.
With a grunt of pain, the Spectre slapped a hand to her right thigh, removed it. The palm of her gloved hand was wet with her own blood. Lucky that final round didn't clip the femoral artery. Medi-gel'll fix that graze right up.
"Can't say the same for you," Shepard told the corpse. Her gaze travelled past the wreck that was the turian along the ground and came to a rest of the woman lying on her back a short distance away. "Storm?" the Commander called, breaking into a hobbling half-run. "Dammit, Lieutenant, hold on! I'm coming."
Faintly, as though from a great distance, Hailstorm heard a voice calling her name and her eyes flickered open momentarily. The voice called her name again. Hayley felt as though she was coming home.
---
Inside Kirin's Tavern, a shocked, horrified silence had descended. Va'ath was dead. The turian they called the Enforcer was dead. Only minutes ago the crowd, numbering over a hundred had been cheering and screaming themselves hoarse as Va'ath first pursued the human into the crumbling apartments and returning minutes later with her limp form casually tossed over his shoulder. As one, every patron in the room leaned in towards the vidscreen. They knew what was coming next - the things Va'ath did to a body with that blade of his bordered on horrific. Of course, that was why they watched. Stripped of the thin veneer of civilisation, they were but blood-thirsty voyeurs.
Then, the unthinkable. The cameras panned to focus on the incoming human. Computer-generated text appeared onscreen, offering up details on the woman for the viewers.
Species: Human
Sex: Female
Age: 32 years standard
Vocation: Systems Alliance Naval Officer. Spectre
Special Notes: Survivor of Akuze Incident and Saviour of the Citadel. Combat style known to be both hard-hitting and erratic. Unpredictable and dangerous. Current odds of victory: 100 to 1
Lurn turned to Karn, said confidently, "Va'aths going to tear her apart. Look at the way she's running straight at him, she's practically begging to be gutted. She..." Lurn's words trailed off as the human unleashed a biotic attack and the Enforcer's screams rang out from the speakers built into the walls like the shriek of the damned.
Throughout the tavern, hands holding beer steins stopped moving, halfway between tabletop and mouth as people gaped unbelieving at the spectacle before them. Va'ath was...dead.
Somewhere in the rear of the tavern, a young batarian woman began to cry softly.
---
Ignoring the burning of her leg wound, Shepard knelt beside the Lieutenant's head, assessing the damage. Storm's face was ashen and her lips a faint blue with shock. A pulse beat rapidly in her throat and even in her semi-conscious state, her hands were applying pressure on the wound in her stomach.
Shepard snapped open the thigh pocket on her armour, removed her stocks of purloined medi-gel and leaned over the Lieutenant.
Storm sensed somebody hovering over her, just within reach. She didn't know who it was; everything was so blurry and just wrong at the moment. The voice had sounded like Shepard's but where was the turian? It was a trick, it had to be. Shepard wasn't here. Couldn't be here. Her mind, addled from pain and shock was fucking with her.
The form lurking over her had to be the turian, ready to finish her at last. Suddenly furious at herself, at the turian, at the whole damn galaxy, Storm's eyes opened wide and her right hand pistoned out, fingers snapping closed around the throat of her assailant. Now squeeze. Hailstorm's fingers tightened, her lips pulling back from clenched teeth in a snarl. She wouldn't go out quietly. Not now, not ever.
As the Lieutenant's hand shot out and locked around the collar of her hardsuit, Shepard had time to think two things. The first was She still has some fight left in her. You go, girl. The second was She's strangling me!
Shepard locked her hand around the younger woman's right wrist, attempted to prise apart her fingers. Despite her apparent weakness, Storm wasn't about to let go. A pained gasp escaped Shepard's lips. "Damn it...I'm trying to...help.."
That voice again, so maddeningly close. It almost seemed to be coming from...with an effort, Hailstorm's eyes focused on her own arm and her gaze swept along the forearm, hand, clenched and straining up to...Shepard?
With a jolt, Hailstorm realised that she was choking her commanding officer and close friend to death. Oh. Damn. Her hand opened and fell back to her side. Exhausted by her recent ordeal, Storm was powerless to stop the tears that trickled from her eyes. What she'd almost done...
"Oh, Shepard..." she choked back a sob, "I'm sorry."
For a half-dead woman, the Lieutenant had a hell of a grip. Somewhere way back in her mind, Shepard made a mental note to ask her if she maintained any special exercise regimen. Finally, the hand at her throat relaxed, fell back and the swarm of dots that were filling her vision faded slightly.
Drawing in a welcome gasp of air that tasted sweeter than anything else at that point, Shepard took the Lieutenant's hand in hers and squeezed it encouragingly. "It's all right," she soothed with her now-raspy voice. "You mistook me for a turian, coulda happened to anybody."
Storm smiled and laughed softly. She winced as the laughter caused a fresh wave of pain from the stab wound to wash over her.
"How badly are you hurt?" Shepard asked, releasing Storm's hand and once again reaching for the medi-gel.
"I took a combat talon to the gut, Ma'am. I'm pretty damn messed up, I think. Could be worse, I guess. At least I'm still feeling pain. It's bad when you can't feel it, right?" Storm's brown eyes, dull with shock held Shepard's blue eyes.
"The hell happened to you, Commander? You look as bad as I feel."
Shepard didn't respond immediately. Instead she opened a pack of medi-gel, carefully unlocked the seals on Storm's chest-piece and laid it aside. The stab wound seemed almost too neat and small to have been responsible for the amount of blood slicking the younger woman's stomach.
Shepard applied the contents of the packet to the injured area and immediately the medi-gel sealed off the wound, preventing further blood loss. The analgesic component of the gel began to ease the Lieutenant's pain. Storm uttered a soft sigh of relief as the pain began to abate.
"What happened to me?" the Spectre finally answered. "Our delightful host decided he didn't like the look of my face and thought he'd rearrange it for me."
"Commander, I'm sorry for getting us into this."
"The hell? This isn't your fault, Lieutenant," Shepard said as she replaced the chest-piece and locked it into place. "You should start to feel better soon. Normally I'd order you to rest a few days but we don't have the luxury right now."
Storm shook her head, refuting the Spectre's earlier statement. "It is my fault. That stupid drinking contest was my idea! I...fucked up, Commander."
"Hayley, listen to me, OK? I don't blame you for what happened and you shouldn't blame yourself either. OK, maybe we shouldn't have gotten tanked the way we did but as long as we're parcelling out blame, I'm giving myself a nice big helping as well for letting us get so carried away."
"Not the same thing," Storm insisted.
"You're a stubborn bitch, do you know that?" Shepard smiled as she spoke. She got to her feet and helped the Lieutenant up. Storm pressed a hand to her side, wincing as she moved.
"What do we do now?"
"We start by stripping our friend over there of anything useful," Shepard said, jerking her head in the direction of the dead hunter. Storm walked slowly up to the corpse, whistled in admiration. "I don't think you left much of him to loot, Ma'am."
Storm carefully knelt by the turian and unhooked the talons of his left hand from the sidearm he still held. "Armax. Nice."
"Here, you'll get more use from these than I will," Shepard said from behind her. Storm turned to see her commanding officer holding a sniper rifle and omni-tool. For the first time since this mess began - your mess - Storm felt a glimmer of hope rising within her. She unfolded the rifle and spent several minutes calibrating the electronic sights. "I need to take a couple of test shots, make sure it's dialed in correctly."
Shepard pointed out the now-familiar glow of a holocamera mounted on the roof of a building several dozen metres away.
Storm assumed a firing stance, shouldered the rifle and took a few deep breaths before squeezing the trigger. The rifle spat a high-velocity round and the camera ceased to be. Nodding in satisfaction, the Lieutenant collapsed the weapon and slot it into her armour's rear plate.
The omni-tool was a basic Elkoss Combine model but the tech mines it produced would enable her to temporarily overheat enemy weapons, disrupt shields and counter tech and biotic talents.
"Let's see what we have here," she said to herself, fitting the device to her left forearm and accessing the data files. "Batarian, typical. Y'know, after Torfan, I kinda immersed myself in batarian culture. Know your enemy, you know?" Without waiting for a response, she went on, "I have a basic understanding of the major batarian language but this seems to have been written in another dialect. I can maybe understand one word in ten. Hmmm."
"What do you have, Storm?" Shepard prodded, her impatience growing. Hailstorm was an excellent shot with a sniper rifle or pistol and her engineering skills were almost a match to a quarian's but she tended to lose herself in her work at times and Shepard could ill afford that time to be now.
"Looks like a layout of the hunting grounds." A holographic map hovered in the cold evening air, projected by the omni-tool. Storm pointed out a block of apartment buildings. "We're here. The spaceport's way over here," she indicated a complex of buildings on the far side of the abandoned city.
"After they took me from their ship, I saw a large garage facility with rovers similar to the Mako. If we can get to one of those, we can make a run for the port," Shepard felt excitement building inside her as she spoke. They'd been reacting to the batarians for too long. It was time for them to start dictating how things were going to happen.
---
Karrick was well pleased. Ratings and Pay Per Slay subscriptions had hit record highs and even now, new subscribers were signing up as word of the Va'ath's death quickly flooded extranet chatrooms. The loss of the turian hunter was a minor inconvenience but it wasn't as though the galaxy wasn't full of combat veterans with a taste for mayhem. Shepard had gotten lucky, Karrick reflected. If the turian hadn't been so focused on the other human, he would have heard the Spectre coming much earlier than he had.
"Where do you suppose Shepard found those weapons?" Karrick asked Jorik.
"T'larn never made it back from preliminary hunts. I ordered a patrol to sweep the area and they found his corpse in the sewer tunnels Shepard passed through. The idiot must have ignored directives and thought he had a chance of taking the Spectre out before she arrived at the hunting grounds."
"Good, I despise weakness and stupidity," Karrick said as he turned back to the live, unedited footage broadcast from the multitude of holocams throughout the hunting grounds. Despite himself, he was most curious to know what the humans would try next.
---
"So how did you get here?" the Lieutenant asked. The two officers had decided to bunker down in the apartment block for the time being, to eat the last of the rations the salarian medic had given Shepard and to give Storm a chance to recover some of her strength.
"Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much..." Shepard began, handing the last MRE to her subordinate.
Storm merely scowled at her as she tore open the foil packet and began to eat. She was ravenous and the rations tasted finer than any cuisine at that point. From their position inside the building, hidden by shadow, Shepard's keen-eyed gaze scanned the area for threats. So far she saw nothing but that provided little comfort, considering the relative ease with which she herself had ambushed not one, but two hunters. If she allowed herself to lose focus for even a moment...
"You know that room with the three doors?" she finally went on.
"Yeah, like something out of an old gameshow."
Shepard nodded to herself. "So the door I chose just happened to lead down into a friggin' sewer pipe."
"Ah. So that's what I was smelling," Storm replied, swallowing the last of her rations.
"Yeah, you'd think a spacefaring people, even batarians could come up with a less nasally invasive way of dealing with organic waste, wouldn't you?" Shepard deadpanned. "I'm partway down this tunnel and a blip shows up on my sensors. I ducked into a short side tunnel and this batarian saunters past, not bothering to check his surroundings-"
"I bet that cost him," Storm cut in, gripping her pistol for reassurance.
"Oh yeah. I cut loose. They don't tell the cadets this during biotic training but it's something everybody figures out after a while."
"What's that?"
"Intense stress and strong emotions - say blinding rage - can strengthen the mental impulses of a biotic, give the abilities extra kick. I was so damn angry at myself, at Karrick, at the bloody sewer that I almost put that batarian through the wall of the pipe. I swear I could hear his spine snap."
"Good, wish I'd been there to see it," Storm replied, feeling her own anger simmering away inside her. Then, with a smile, she intoned, "Anger will lead to the dark side, young Jedi."
With an upward twitch of her bruised lips, Shepard replied, "Feel the Force, motherfucker."
The two officers laughed quietly until the Lieutenant gasped sharply, hand going to her side.
"Ohhh, if you hadn't already killed that turian, I'd love to ram his blade through his eye socket."
"Damn, Hayles, and here's me thinking I was the homicidal one."
"Alright, Ma'am, I think I've recovered as much as I'm going to without sleeping for thirty hours. We should probably get moving again."
"Agreed," the Commander replied climbing to her feet and leading the way outside.
---
News of Va'ath's death was quickly passed to the other hunters currently searching for the humans. Bex accepted the news stoically. He had liked and respected the turian but, in the wake of his death, what he felt more was a growing admiration of the human Spectre who had so far killed two hunters.
Granted, the batarian had been sloppy and had he kept his wits about him, should have been able to triumph over a single human but the turian? Even taken by surprise as he was, Va'ath would still have been a formidable opponent. For Shepard to evade death twice meant she was worthy of, if not respect, then wariness. Bex's only wish was that he would be the one to find her first. She deserved a warrior's death, not to be used as a plaything by a pair of sociopathic asari sisters, the Twins.
Walking with the slightly lumbering gait common to his people, the krogan quickly headed to the location where the turian had died. It was doubtful that the humans were still in the area but perhaps he could find some trace of where they went.
"So sad, so sad," Miriya said in her sing-song voice, having just received word of the Enforcer's death. Her sister nodded mutely, a single tear tracking down her face.
"Do not cry, dear sister," Miriya cooed to her, pausing to wipe away the tear with one gloved finger.
"But I loved him so," Selene said quietly. She sighed heavily. "He could be so tender and giving of himself and now that cold hearted bitch has taken him from me."
Miriya turned to her twin, gently cupped her face in her hands and kissed her on the forehead. "Selene, I swear on my life, we will avenge your lover. It won't bring him back but it may bring you a measure of peace." Selene stared into the depths of Miriya's eyes, blue like the skies of Thessia during the summer. She nodded.
"We'll put that bitch on ice," Selene whispered.
Hand in hand, the Twins began to close in on Shepard's last known position.
A/N: I've been wanting to put in that crack about the Force for the longest time and thought, why not? Admittedly, it isn't original, I saw it awhile back on this "List of things we want Samuel L. Jackson to say in the Star Wars Prequels."