AWell... SRP has started, which means I'll either be able to update more often, or not at all. It's strange how self-governed homeworks and projects can mess with your schedule. Anyway...
As we all know, I'm a slow-paced writer, so Virmire will be a step at the time, allowing for more in-depth action. That being said, shit is going down in this one, especially for our dear Latino Corporal. And no, Fisher is not a latino. And Ashley is not a corporal, which leaves only one candidate left for the job. Decided that just because we're nearing the end of this story, it doesn't mean I can't still throw a few bombs at you now and then. If you pay attention, you'll be bombed here as well.
I'm glad that you seem to have developed something of a liking to Tara and Magnus. To be honest they are kinda my attempt to see how I fare writing OC's. So far, I'm pretty happy with them. Sidonis too, of course, but he's more of a changed Character and less of an Original one. Little enough is known about him that I can do whatever I want with him.
And to forestall any questions: Yes, the gunship with an Asari-stripper riding a bomb is named 'Ladybug'... "Do not ask about the name".
Landing at Point Rain
Virmire, Hoc system
WASP-gunship "Ladybug"
15:43
In the pristine air of Virmire a small flock of birds, all somewhat similar to what might have once been found on Tuchanka before the nuclear holocaust, scattered to the winds from their otherwise calm course. To the naked eye, it might have been difficult seeing the reason, at first, due to the layer of clouds hanging over much of the skies. Most of these were caused by the humidity formed due to the water nearby having evaporated when the collective firepower of an entire fleet hit it. All that water now hung in the skies, forming a dark carpet across much of the continent.
And yet, even if one couldn't see the reason for the birds having scattered, there was a tell-tale reason in the air. At first it was only audible as a light whirring or buzzing, like a bumblebee somewhere above your head. Still, seeing as deflowering insects, such as bees, bumblebees were absent on the planet, in favor of what most would call "A mutated butterfly with horns and the size of a mouse", the sound was a dead give-away that something was wrong. Exactly what was wrong, not even the thousands of geth platforms on the planet could figure out until boxy shapes started breaking through the cover of clouds. A reason for the advanced VI's not being able to pick up the sound as something wrong could be that they were not programmed to listen for it, or it could be something entirely different.
Whatever the reason, lieutenant Janeth Satraze of the 6th Raiders took whatever luck she could get as she dived towards the surface in a loose formation of roughly a hundred other Wasp gunships. Most, like hers, were equipped with the repeating-particle turrets, or RPT's for short. While not very precise in flight, a result of having a human gunner in the balls, the weapons made up for it by reaching out, effective range up to a kilometer, with long, thin beams of emerald death to anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the sweeping patterns the gunners employed when they opened up.
While the lieutenant took care of the steering of the vessel, Flight sergeant Artemy Kalugin was in control of the secondary functions, more namely the arming, aiming and firing of the gunship's four chin-mounted 75mm chainguns. All belt fed with a system of tungsten-blocks and heat sinks to be replaced in less than a second, the quadruped gun barrels could decimate even armored vehicles if not shot down first. And honestly? He had seen the kind of armor and shields the Wasp was stocked with, and he didn't feel like praying just yet.
In front of Janeth, on the haptic displays, she could gauge the distance to the closest enemy anti-air emplacement. A good thing for her she wasn't carrying a tank towards the surface then. Thát would have made her a primary target, if the geth followed logic. The enemy encampments, as well as the range of their guns were roughly painted on her controls, allowing her to at least see the gun being pointed at her. She tapped the signal to their passengers, some twenty odd marines, plus a Krogan, a Quarian who was apparently the commander of the Normandy, and a pair of Turians. Still, she had flown stranger things. Somewhere in the hold, there should be a sergeant yelling 'ten seconds' right about now.
"Hey, Artemy?" She asked, craning her head just enough that one would think she could actually see him. Not that she could though, as the cockpits were separated in the case of a bull's-eye through the glass of one or the other's space. In a vacuum, that would mean a rapid venting of atmosphere, as well as the unlucky soul behind the glass. She made a mental note of asking why they had to have actual, reinforced albeit, glass for protection. Why they couldn't simply use exterior cameras and sensors was beyond her.
"Yeah?"
"You nervous?" She called, grinning behind her breather-mask.
"Fuck no, I'm all ready and waiting. Guns readied and primed. I only need a target." He called back in his usual bravado-like tone. Janeth shook her head before opening comms to her two gunners, Seya Boldyrev and Yuri Gusev. One was an old rat in the business, having killed people from Mantis-gunships since 2179, while Seya was a new addition to the crew, having been transferred from fighter-duty after she had been shot down over Aegis III in 2180, battling T'loak's pirates. If there was a single, high-defining difference between Petrovsky and Fisher, it was that he was trying to kill a certain Asari pirate-queen, while Fisher was dealing with said Pirate-queen.
"How about you two? Feelin' good?" She asked in Russian, seeing as both the gunners were from Skt. Petersburg. Artemy was from Ukraine, and had some difficulties understanding Russian, as well as an inherited disinterest in the language. Strange, how grudges could be help up to two-hundred years. Still, he got along just fine with the crew.
"Just fine Lieutenant." Yuri called back, tightening his fingers around the triggers for the, to him, somewhat surreal weapons.
"Feeling a little exposed here ma'am... how come these things are... glass?" Seya asked with a tingle of anxiousness in her voice. She too, was on the edge and waiting for a chance to unleash her frustrations in the form of physics going killer-mode against the geth.
"Beats me Boldyrev. Just try shooting anything made of metal that shoots at you and we should be just fine." Janeth said, keeping an eye on the maps and displays as the ships soared through the air, only engaged with small-arms fire so far. She silently thanked God that the geth had no anti-aircraft guns...
Great clouds of shrapnel, as well as hyper-accelerated slugs soared past her, filling the skies with explosions, shockwaves and streaks of light.
That was when she withdrew her thanks and instead opted for flipping off the man in the skies.
"Incoming flack! Gunships unload cargo and provide aerial support when needed." The voice of the commander came in through the speakers. Nodding to herself, Janeth soared closer to the surface, observing how rounds started pinging off of her shields, straight over her cockpit-window. To say it was a bit nerve-wracking was like saying Northern Siberia could be a bit chilly.
She gave a brief look to the skies, noting that the skies were starting to grow more dense. It was probably going to start raining soon. Fitting, really, since the brass had named the LZ 'Point Rain'.
Like a swarm of grasshoppers, they descended upon the surface. Those carrying the heavy Apocalypse-tanks only touched down long enough to safely drop off their load of killing-machines before ascending towards the skies again. As each tank touched down, its treads instantly started grinding through the sand and muck, propelling the vehicle across the beaches and towards their destinations.
Each Apocalypse was, with a fighting weight of seventy-nine tons, heavy plating and powerful shields, one piece of mechanical death you did not want to be fighting. The only way of combating an Apocalypse effectively was whittling it down with bug bites in the shape of massed anti-armor rounds and rockets. Thát, or have a bigger gun.
A difference in design from what had been seen in battles such as the one for Elysium, was a coaxial cylinder running beneath the space between the two barrels of the main guns. Normally one would have expected that the coaxial object was one of a machinegun, such as it had been on Elysium, this thing was different, and took up enough interior space that the rockets the tank would normally have stocked were replaced with the engines and power-fields needed to maintain it.
As the Ladybug, as well as the hundreds of others touched down on the ground, their side-panels opened and gave way for the soldiers inside. First on the ground, contrary to the 6th motto "First ones in, last ones out", was not a human marine with rifle held high in pride and battle lust. Neither was it one of the select, very few, Turians on board.
"Come on, let's get this shit over with!" The Krogan bellowed as he jumped from the craft while it was still a meter above ground. When he landed, it was with a shotgun the size of a grown human's leg on his back, and a minigun, usually meant for use with a system of servomotors and lifts, firmly held in his three-finger hands. As the craft touched the ground, the rest of its cargo exited it, running out in a long line. Janeth glanced to her right as the soldiers disembarked, watching as they all filed out on the ground. Then, she noticed something as odd as one of the soldiers carrying around a sword! She could only guess it was a man, but still, who on Earth would fight with a sword in these times? And as if it wasn't enough, it looked like it weighed enough that no human could use it anyway.
Just what was the deal with these SpecOps people that the Normandy seemed to be carrying around?
"Hey Artemy? See that guy down there? He's carrying a fucking sword!" She called back, waiting for her comrade in arms to notice the soldier.
"A sword? Good one Jan..." He started, but trailed off as he no-doubt saw the soldier in mention jog out behind a Turian with the same Alliance-issue Phase-II armor. It was odd, seeing aliens in human armor that was remodeled to fit a Turian. That was also when he probably, as she had, noticed that even the Krogan was wearing what could easily be identified as Phase-II armor.
"Since when did we start equipping the Krogans?" Janeth asked, scratching her brown through the flight-helmet. As one might expect, she wasn't wearing the same type of uniform as the people who were going to get shot at. Instead it was a solid, durable helmet of carbon-steel, allowing for light-weight protection of sufficient degree that he would survive getting a rock in the head, or his head against the panels, but not a shot to the head. It also was more filled with technology than the average helmet, holding direct uplinks to all the other gunships, as well as both the SSV Caucasus and the remaining cruisers in orbit. That, and it had an eye-feed that was linked to the systems of his ship and allowed him to think through where he wanted to go, in a pinch. While it had been used in basics for a hundred years, the usage of mind-to-computer technology was only now going through its second breakthrough. With a blink of her right eye, she had a vid-link open with Artemy, seeing the befuddled face of her co-pilot.
"Somewhere around today I think?" He answered, shrugging out of sight. She gave a glance back to the displays, revealing that the ferried troops had now exited the craft. With a sigh born more of foreshadowing anxiousness than tiredness, she lifted up again, causing the Wasp to lift to an altitude sufficient to dodge fire-and-forget missiles, but still low enough that the gunship's weapons would be effective.
Though, despite feeling confident in the protection offered by her gunship, Janeth didn't feel like tempting the universe by saying out loud that they were going to be just fine.
It would just be asking for trouble.
...
Zorya, Faia-system
Blue Suns facility
06:11
The interior of the large facility consisted of many more rooms and sections than he had seen during the fighting. When they had been busy shooting, he now realized, they had seen maybe a few percent of the entire place. Now, for example, he was being interrupted in his thoughts by the sound of a Hellhound-mech lumbering down the broad corridors. The concrete-floor resounded each time the heavy metallic feet of the war-machine took a new step forward. Sure it was capable of running down a man, but for the moment it was simply lumbering like a content giant.
The air, despite being so close to an open section of the facility, was a bit nauseating. The constant fumes from the machines, the buzzing of machines and the smell of grease, oil and carbon dioxide. He could see the shimmer in the air near the exit where the cooler air from the outside met the hot, facilitated air of the inside. Mechanics, none of them Batarians now, mulled about in their morning-stupor, rubbing their eyes with oil-stained gloves before noticing said mistake and cursing out loud before running to the nearest faucets to wash out the greasy substances before losing their eyesight.
The gathered squad was, big surprise, the same people Magnus had met on the Ashanti, as they seemed to be an actual squad now, and apparently with Tara as the leader.
He couldn't help think about it, couldn't forget it. He couldn't forget the words of the Turian from just a few minutes ago, outside in the morning air. He could still hear Sidonis talk, despite said Turian being quiet for the moment; She loves you..." The words caused him to shiver, though he was still in doubt as to why exactly.
Magnus caught himself going between letting his eyes wander to Tara, and more importantly, her body and contours, and averting his eyes whenever she looked anywhere in his direction. She looked away again, typing on a datapad. He found, once more, that his eyes went to her form. They started at her legs, somewhat liking the way they bent backwards where his own were straight. They then went to her hips, feeling his heart beat a little faster.
She looked up again, her eyes locking to him with a speed only a little slower than what he used to instead look at his rifle, the Mattock resting over his knees as he sat on the crate containing spare parts for a HAS-mech. Mainly joints for a leg, it would seem from the proclamation on the side.
As her eyes stayed on him, he slowly looked back, combating his urge to look away from her. His eyes slid, sideways, to hers, hidden as a pair of specks behind her helmet.
No one said anything, not yet. Most of the gathered troops were still groggy and hammered, having celebrated something last night. Magnus, never being the biggest partier, had not participated, instead opting to relax in a chair in one of the still intact relaxation-rooms, content with simply watching a game of gravity-ball as a Krogan tackled a Turian to the ground, seemingly forgetting the fact that the Turian did not have the ball. The entire game reminded him starkly of American Football, only with violence to a degree that the only human teams in the championships were either former N7-veterans, bodybuilders or the New Zealand Rugby-teams. The last ones had always been something of a legend, even back in the twenty-first century, famed for being the most violent version of the most violent game on the planet, if one excepted Irish hockey.
He looked at her eyes for a few moments, knowing what he did, before having to avert his eyes again. It wasn't that she was anything but physically gorgeous, at least from what he could tell from the outside. She was, and he knew it was even by human models' standards, the owner of a perfect body. Her character spoke heights as well, being that of a woman who could blow a man's brain out with a shotgun, then proceed to take care of a child.
In many ways, she reminded him a bit of Tali merged with Chief Williams. He hadn't known the latter all that well, but she had been a sympathetic, while harsh woman. Not his type, but he could see what Kaidan had seen in her.
As she looked away again, back to her datapad, he could feel his eyes being drawn, unwittingly so, back to her form. They went from her broad hips, up the slender outline of her body that the suit did so well portraying and showing off while still being decent, and to the pair of perky bumps suppressed beneath a tight rubber-like material that helped keep her alive and separated from the deadly bacteria in the air. His eyes, and he knew this was not only unacceptable and against all regulations but also something he should feel dirty and wrong about, stayed at her breasts, concealed as they were. His heart upped the pace with which it was beating, causing him to sweat, the salty waters causing his eyes to flicker.
Not wanting to be asked just why he looked like he had just exited a Finnish sweathouse, he pulled the helmet from where it was nestled on the crate, and put it back on. As the systems acknowledged his integration with it, the ocular points came to life, showing him the exact same view he would have seen without the helmet on. Tara turned her side to him, maybe knowing, maybe not, that he was looking. That he wanted to hit himself in the groin for looking. Nevertheless, her curves were only displayed all the clearer with her side to as it was now, and he had to strain himself not to shift visibly in his place, instead opting for the simplest solution there was. With a small tap to the side of his helmet, Magnus turned his vision off, allowing him to simply sit in total darkness.
He could still hear though.
"Good to see I didn't have to pull you from your beds... well other than you Nassir." Tara said with a dry voice, causing the woman in question, Siraní Matsuo, groaned under the irate weariness of having been pulled from her bed along with a befuddled, but also annoyed, Blue Sun trooper that she seemingly couldn't recognize but otherwise hadn't been bothered by. It would seem she had been hitting the bottles harder than the rest, or maybe she just wasn't all that good at holding her liquor.
"Now, the reason I have dragged the lot of you from your beds at this Ancestors-be-damming hour, is because orders just came down from above. We've lost contact with a depot on Daratar, in the Farya system. Now, it might be nothing, but it might as well be rivaling mercenaries or even happy-go-lucky smugglers. Whatever the reason, the depot has stopped calling in, and we're going to find out why... and no. Before you ask, no we will not have to use the Ashanti again." Tara said, adding the last part with a tone of annoyance.
"Huh... that's new. Then what are we flying?" Magnus asked, pointing his face at where he knew Tara was standing.
"I've been given command of a frigate. Small thing, not much past fifty meters in length, only one or two decks, but it's a ship, and a heck lot better than a scrap-turned-ship freighter like the Ashanti... are your optics broken Olafur?" Tara said, then changed to a question. Behind his helmet, Magnus ground his teeth in annoyance before switching the optics back on.
"No Captain Velan." He muttered, deliberately avoiding his eyes to go anywhere near her body. If need be, he could focus on her feet or the very top of her head. Loki mock him for his cowardice, what was wrong with him?
"Then why were they out?" She pressed, giving him the impression, just the slight impression, that she had a few ideas as to the reason.
"..."
He tried, but couldn't come up with any answers that wouldn't see him stutter or just outright mess up. It was excruciatingly annoying as well as frustrating. Ever since Sidonis had said what he said, Magnus had had difficulty even looking at Tara. Not because she was displeasing to the eyes, rather because she definitely wasn't.
"Well, if that's the best I can get, I suppose I'll make do with considering you hammered after last night." Tara said, not mentioning what everyone knew; that he hadn't been partying. She too, knew it, but didn't appear like it; "Now, I suggest you go get some breakfast, stock up on whatever you might need for a maximum of five days in the field, then report to area Fifty-one. Dismissed." the female Quarian said, waving them off and away.
As Magnus started for the doors leading to the eventual messhall, a filtered and pressing pair of coughs drew his face back to her. He looked at Tara, but she didn't say anything, instead just changing her posture completely, so radically that one would think her a new person entirely. With the suit on, one could be forgiven for said thought as well. She dropped the commanding air around her, starting instead to look around, her fingers intertwining and jumping around each other.
"Tara?" Magnus asked, seeing as he might as well start out. This was going to be awkward, he just knew it.
"Yes?" She said, sounding somewhere between eager and nervous. There was a heated silence in the air, the raw passion for burning in her eyes, hidden as luminescent sparks of lights behind her visor.
"...we have an Area Fifty-one here?"
"Oh..." She muttered, sounding just as put off as she looked like, visibly lowering her eyes. Despite it being somewhat against his nature, Magnus cringed a little at that; "it's just a landing area...why?"
"Funny naming-coincidence, that's all." He said, smiling a little. Being around her, smiling came easy;"So..."
"...so... ehm..." She muttered, wringing her hands around with clear discomfort. Magnus could feel the tension in the air, the very oxygen in the room screaming for him to break the ice.
"I ehm... wanted to know..." He said, rubbing his neck while trying to say something not-retarded. These situations had a way of making him do just that.
"Yes?" She asked, her voice perking up a few notches in a hopeful tone.
"So...what's this depot we're going to?" He asked, mentally cursing himself for not having the balls to simply say what had to be said, what needed to be said. Tara was visibly put down by it, her stance becoming a little defeated. To a Quarian observer, it would be clear that she had emotional trouble, heart-ache or deep grief.
"Daratar. We don't know why or what has happened, but we lost communications with them a week ago. It's likely they don't even know about the revolution yet, thinking Santiago is still in power." She shrugged.
"Rough wake-up call, huh?"
"Yes. The depot was stocked with mostly basics. Heat sinks, frozen foods, toothbrushes, seeds and electronic parts, that sort of things. We use it for supplying bases around the Verge." Tara said, sounding tired. Which was odd, seeing as Magnus had seen her head for her private rooms somewhere around ten o'clock that other night.
"How long ago was this again?" Magnus asked, scratching his chin through the fabric of the underlining synthetic tissue filling the gabs where the armor of the helmet didn't cover.
"A week. We only just went found the transmission-cut a few hours ago, there was a lot of data to go through." Tara muttered, taking hold of a chair she then proceeded to drag across the garage before setting it up next to Magnus. Behind the helmet, the Icelandic trooper just raised a brow at her behavior, trying to gauge if it really was the behavior of someone in love.
Then again, Quarians probably behaved differently than humans in that aspect, or maybe they didn't. Hard to say without any kind of experience or a helpful Tali around. There really were times when he missed the jumpy, energic girl. Tara would have to be, at least, a few years older than her.
"While I am damnable impressed that you got a frigate... what's going to happen to the Ashanti now?" He asked, turning to look at her instead of just looking next to her. Still, while he was tempted, this time he didn't have problems maintaining his eyes on hers.
"Repaired and used for hauling cargo. You're worried we spent so much time building it only to scrap it, aren't you?" She said with a soft voice. It was so different from her "captain voice", that it was almost strange to listen to. As if she had two personalities. Of course, maybe Quarians did indeed have that. Magnus remembered that Tali could be all nervous and itchy one moment, then stick the barrel of her shotgun beneath the eye of a geth before blowing the head clean off. Tara was something like that, he reasoned.
"A bit, yeah. I mean, it's pretty much the reason I'm here today, not leeching on Aethyta in Eternity." He muttered, chuckling a bit as he remembered the strange Asari. She had a personality that most would expect only to find in humans or Krogans. Of course, he knew her dad was a Krogan, so it explained a lot.
"I know." Tara said. Still, from her voice alone, he could tell there was more she wanted to say, but couldn't or didn't know how. He decided to try and brighten things up a bit, seeing how it was evident she was just as uncomfortable with the silence as he was, maybe even more.
"Come on, let's go get some breakfast." He said, patting her on the shoulder. Even while his hand was on its way towards her shoulder, his mind screamed for him to stop, to stop touching her. And yet, when he did, it wasn't a bad feeling. Mostly because it only lasted about a second before he pulled the hand back. It was a pat after all, not a placing of his hand on her shoulder.
He wouldn't have paid attention to it before, but now, he noticed the shiver that seemed to briefly go through her body simply from his light touch. While most men would have boasted and been proud that they could get women shivering and trembling in a good way from a single touch, Magnus wasn't most men.
He was many things, true. He could be cynical to the degree of malicious. He could be hard, inhuman even. He could look at a mass grave of children before something touched him, and he would more likely be pissed than appalled at what he saw then. He had seen more shitty situations than that, to tell the truth. Other people called him uncaring, or just sick. Some could argue that he had a special sense of humor, but few really understood it. All in all, he could by others be described as a generally unpleasant human being. There was one thing he was though.
Magnus was loyal to those he did care for.
Whether it was friends or loved ones or just the random person, he had more than once taken bullets or stood up for those he knew couldn't defend themselves. He could still remember the nervous, scared and frightened Lia'Vael he had met on the Citadel only a few days before his own death. She had been literally assaulted by both a Volus and a C-Sec officer. So, with the status and privileges of his position, he had beaten up the officer, then hurled the Volus down a Keeper-shaft, not really caring if the fetid little shit ended up in a protein-vat.
In retrospect, maybe it was that officer who had shot him down? Wouldn't lack for motives after that beating, and maybe the reason the attacker hadn't said a word was because the jaw was still broken. Didn't matter now though. What did matter, was that Magnus constantly felt as if he was betraying the trust he and Jane had shared with every single one of his breaths near Tara, with each time he even took in the Quarian's forms. Had he been more of an "honorable" man, he would have scalded himself for it, tried asking the Gods for advice or simply walk away.
And yet, he found he could not.
...
Virmire
16:07
"Contacts!" Was the first word heard shouted before the barrages and fusillades of hypersonic slugs were sent towards the army of geth amassing against the intruders. The synthetic constructs returned fire with extreme prejudice though, plasma cutting clean through the armor of whatever soldiers were caught out of cover, overconfident in the capabilities of their new armor. While the Phase-II armor could stop most kinds of small arms fire, neither shielding or armor stood much of a chance against concentrated firing from thousands of geth platforms.
To say that Corporal Teresa Aquila was having something of an issue with the mission would be an understatement. Of course, she wasn't scared, not anymore. Fear went out the window as soon as the shooting began and only entered the mind again when the whole thing was over. In most cases anyway. For her, she only felt the pounding of her boots as she rushed through the shallow waters of the beach, splashing down into the cover of a large rock before taking her time to breathe.
Around her, soldiers were screaming. Either in rage as they mowed down the countless troopers, sending so many grains downrange that it was like looking at a horizontal rainfall. Thát, or in panic and agony from when their armor gave up and their limps were burned away by superheated plasma, harmless gasses heated and compressed into one of the most dangerous ammunition-types she had ever known.
Figures that the bad guys had them.
Looking to her right, she saw Lieutenant Alenko, Kaidan to friends, drop down beside her, wielding his pistols like they were his only link to life. Considering the situation, they pretty much were. There were several scorch marks on his armor, most of them centered around his torso, but a few had hit his legs as well, miraculously not going through.
"Alenko! Where's the rest of the group?" She demanded, ignoring the fact that he was her superior. At the moment, the only thing that counted was that she had a big gun, and he had the Jedi-crap. Pulling his feet in behind the rock as plasma started hissing in the water, he looked around, then to her;
"I don't know. Closer to the cliffs I think. Had to dive from an Armature, didn't see them after that." He panted, gripping his pistol a little tighter.
"Well... they have Fisher, so they should be good. You've been shot, how come you ain't dead?" She asked, leaning out from the rock just in time to see a marine getting cut in half by what looked like a robot wielding a yellow-glowing sword. Great, so they had those Omni-blade things? Perfect.
She didn't bother questioning how it had gotten so close to him until she saw it flicker out of existence in a shimmering of light.
"Biotic barrier. Doesn't matter what you shoot at it, it stops it. Kinda like Thomas and his barriers, just doesn't put such a strain on my mind..." He said, almost sounding calm despite a situation that reminded Tequila about war movies with exaggerated numbers of enemies just bull rushing them with no regards for their own lives.
"Biotic what?" She said, having held on to the fact that the Jed- the biotic crap could just slug things around. It wasn't like she had seen much use of biotics in the time she had been on the team. She had always been on the squad with more guns than magic.
"Barriers. I can make a barrier, a sort of shield in front of me by concentrating on it." He breathed out, checking his gun for damage. A shitty time to do that, in Tequila's eyes, but men had to wait to the final moments she supposed.
"Can you make one on me then?" She asked, leaning out again before spraying at where the water clearly indicated the presence of the invisible Terminator. Robot. Geth. Whatever. The result was that the bullets, as they were indeed bullets and not grains of tungsten, passed through the shields as if they weren't there and shattered the knee-joints of the Hunter, sending it flailing backwards into the waters with an almost comical wail. Didn't last long though, before she sent a few more rounds into its now-visible flashlight. It was almost as if Tali and John's ancestors had designed these robots for headshots, making their faces lamps.
"Sure. On three." Kaidan said, flaring blue and purple already. Had she not been concerned with not getting shot, Tequila would have thought him a pretty damn scary sight. It just wasn't right that people looked like that. Aliens like Liara, sure, but not humans. Still...
"One"
"Two"
"Three!" With that, Kaidan coated Tequila in a purple barrier, the odd color followed by a brief sense of weightlessness before she found her focus again. The corporal jumped from the rock and took aim at the closest robot. Geth. Thing with a gun and a flashlight for eyes. It was a regular trooper, from what she could see. Didn't matter though. Four rapid squeezes on her trigger sent the thing back in a crumbling heap, the bypassing rounds having completely ignored the shields before delivering a payload of both kinetic and electromagnetic character.
She switched to a new target, the same kind of enemy as before. Three new squeezes saw to its demise, the flashlight having been ripped straight from its head by the powerful shells from an age so long past. While switching to the next target, a geth aiming a rocket launcher at one of the besieged tanks, she pondered at the irony that technology that had been abandoned for so long was actually more effective than modern weapons.
Even as she squeezed the trigger again, the robot let a rocket fly towards the tank. The monster of a tank, easily twice or thrice the size of the APC she had used once, didn't seem to notice as the missile rapidly closed the distance. Then, one of the small turrets on the tank swiftly turned to the incoming rocket and fired a single round. Basic and old-fashioned as it was, the anti-rocket system made short work of the missile, but was then instantly taxed from a new angle as more rockets closed in.
Tequila just kept shooting, annoyed that the rocket-bearing robot seemed to have more sturdy armor than the regular ones. Still, it went down like the rest, her ammunition having torn its torso in half before it even got to reload the weapon. She changed to a new target, even as an enemy somewhere seemed to grow annoyed at her.
The only warning she got was a thin, red beam of light that was visible even through the air. It didn't seem troubled by the barrier at all, and even as she threw herself bodily aside behind the rock, a round slammed into her right leg. It was stopped by the heavy armor, but left a dent that would probably mean a serious ache and some big bruises beneath it. Still, she thanked whatever deity watched over her, Mary most likely, for the save.
She also made a note of sending a 'thank-you' card to the designers of the armor.
"Damn... that was a close one." She muttered, gritting her teeth as she inspected the damage. It wasn't much, just the suspected dent in the surprisingly flexible armor, as well as a small burn where the light seemed to have scorched the dark paint stripe away from her armor. Lasers? It would, she deemed, really suck if the robots had real lasers the size of rifles.
"You okay?" Kaidan asked her, his eyes hidden behind the visor but his tone one of concern.
"Been hit worse. Still, that's gonna leave a mark. What happened to "it doesn't matter what they shoot"?" She said, scowling at him behind her helmet.
"Didn't account for lasers."
"Wasn't the laser that did this, it was a bullet. A solid round. Which means the geth are shooting with something else besides plasma. Good thing too, I'd hate to see a sharpshooter that could shoot plasma from that distance." She muttered, turning her attention back to the battle.
In all the chaos, it was close to impossible to see which side was gaining the most ground. The Alliance seemed to pack more of a punch per soldier, and they had the gunships performing strafing runs, their guns and green lasers craving long paths of destruction through the robots' ranks, if one could call them "ranks". They flew over the mass of geth troopers, carving and shooting into the countless constructs while absorbing an amount of fire that momentarily left Tequila speechless. It looked most of all like some sort of inverted rain, with plasma streaking in the thousands against the reinforced hulls of each single gunship.
Some, couldn't take it.
She looked away as a gunship was hurled from the skies by a large ball of plasma. The first clue as to what had shot was the blue streak the gas-made-weapon left, leading to the swaying head of one of the bigger quadruped robots. When it impacted, she could see the similarity in what must have happened when the dragon-like creature on Valhalla had shot their Mako. The plasma ate its way through the hull from the front, ending both pilots in a second before it stopped, its kinetic energy insufficient to eat up more of the hull than it already had. It would have been a mercy though, as the two gunners in each their respective seats could now only look and scream as their vessel crashed before the remaining rockets were ignited and became a ball of fire that swallowed the gunship along with anything nearby.
"Fuck me, why aren't we winning this?" She cursed, checking the counter on her rifle. 75 shots left before she had to reload. Plenty of rounds to take down the robots. Geth. Whatever.
"I'd wager it's be-" Kaidan started but was cut off when he found himself slammed into the water from behind. Tequila only heard the sound and looked behind her timely enough to be able to spot another cloaked robot decloaking before it pointed its surprisingly, as well as horrifyingly, big shotgun at her.
Reacting with the same speed and skill that had saved her life more times than she could count, she lashed out with her foot, kicking the weapon from the strong grip of the robot. It didn't work, but served to remove its aim from her and to the rock next to her as several small balls of whirring plasma bore into the rock. While it looked somewhat confused, Tequila noted how she couldn't see Kaidan, then looked down. The Canadian was being held beneath the water by a two-toed metal foot on his helmet, preventing him from getting back up, and possibly having served to knock him out as well, judging by the lack of trashing.
The robot then turned its cold and calculating eye back to her, only to find that the annoying human had whipped up her rifle, the muzzle going for its head. Even while it was pointing the shotgun at her head, she pulled the trigger and held it while the flashlight disappeared in an explosion of shrapnel and electric buzzing. She kicked it's still standing platform off Kaidan, then grabbed his neck and pulled him up against the rock, above the water.
She didn't have time to check him though, as she suddenly found herself slammed into the rock. Pushing off, she found that her attacker was nowhere to be seen. She scoured her line of sight, not seeing any robots beside those engaged in full combat less than ten meters away. And yet, it was as if it was a mile away, as the battle seemed to ignore her completely.
"What the fu-" She started, but was cut off as a new force, the same as before, slammed into her torso with enough force to hammer her against the stone and crack her armor like a tap on an egg. Hopefully, her armor would hold longer than an egg. She looked in the direction the attack had hit her from, growing increasingly desperate as she couldn't see anything. Then, there was a faint, just a faint, purple outline above the water in the form of a robot. A ball of the same purple Jedi... the same purple biotic force travelled the distance between those two points and slammed her against the rock again, accompanied by the sound of ribs creaking under the strain.
But now she at least knew where it was.
Just not what it was.
"I see you..." She mused, trying to get a cheerful tone past her no-doubt broken rib. The robot, if that was really what it was, didn't seem to hear her, and sent out a new ball of energy, this one pulsating more brightly than the one that had simply punched her in the gut. Sensing bad times ahead if she was hit, Tequila rolled out of the way, coming to a stand in the water with her rifle pointed in the general direction of the attacker. Behind her, the energy hit the stone.
Instead of dissipating as those biotic balls did when punching something too hard, it ate away at the rock, leaving a perfectly spherical hole just where she had been standing.
Instead of doing what she wanted most, which was uttering a profanity, Tequila pressed the trigger again, her eyes going between the hostile in the shallow water and her ammo-counter. Down to 50...
The rounds, all as one, bounced off of the purple barrier that sprung up. The positive change though, was that the cloak disappeared, revealing a purple robot with some strange modifications to its shoulders, arms and body. It didn't even bother looking around at the fact that its cloak was gone. Instead it just disappeared into thin air, leaving behind what almost looked like a shadow but with colors.
The next thing Tequila felt was a metallic fist slamming into her body, causing her armor to crack at the impact, slamming her rifle from her hands. The robot had suddenly reappeared into her, like it had been teleported. In the back of her mind, even as she struggled for air, Tequila came to the conclusion that the Jedi didn't have anything on biotics.
That thought was cut short however, when the arm fist left her chest, instead closing around her helmet where it blocked out a large part of her sight. She felt herself being raised out of the water, lifted into the air by the unnaturally strong machine. For a moment, it simply let her hang there. Then, it brought its arm a little back before sending it straight forward, slamming her, helmet first, into the rock behind her.
The first impact made the sound of cracking metal reach her, due to the fact that her helmet was being slammed towards a solid surface that could handle an impact of a few hundred Newtons. Still, she had her focus completely on the robot as it seemed to try making her brain become scrambled eggs. Great, so the robots could be sadistic as well?
Whatever her next thought was, it was halted as she was slammed into the rock again, stars appearing in her vision as the protective padding on the interior of the helmet lost whatever effect it had. She now felt the full blows that came with each impact, and her mind started screaming. She clawed at the hand, at the arm, trying to dislodge it. However, as it was with most machines, the simple hydraulics and mechanics of the arm far outweighed what she could muster. The light started fading from her vision as her breath was restricted. Her skin started to feel like it was burning under boiling blood.
The machine in front of her didn't seem to care. It didn't even adjust the pedals on the flashlight as it brought her back again before slamming her into the wall, causing her helmet to resound with an audible crack, as well as its systems shutting down, leaving Tequila in complete darkness for a few seconds while the polarized effect went haywire with the rest of her HUD. Finally, being able to see again, she could feel like she was starting to slip, only inside herself. The flow of air had been cut off and her brain was denied the oxygen it needed to keep her going.
Feeling her legs lose feeling, becoming numb with a strange, itching sensation, her hand slipped from the mechanical arm, lacking the focus to keep a meaningless grip on it. Instead, as the hand fell down, it touched upon her sidearm. While a VP-70 was a handy sidearm, she had realized after Valhalla that she really had no use for it. So instead her hand found itself touching upon the handle of a M-6 Carnifex, the modern version of the Magnum.
The feeling of her fingers recognizing the gun for what it was, a weapon, brought a little focus back into her mind. No. Not like this. She refused to survive the Alien hordes only to be killed by an advanced toaster on some shitty beach without parasols. She wanted to die old and in her bed, not strangled by the henchmen of an alien psychopath. Her fingers slid around the handle, struggling to fit the index finger through the gab with the trigger.
A new slam, and her hand slipped from the gun, her eyes starting to showcase bright sparks which she knew, both from personal experience and classes back in school, was signs that the brain was starting to shut down. It was bad enough that she couldn't breathe, now she was being slammed into unconsciousness each time she almost had a gun in her hands?
This wasn't even fair, not by a long shot.
As she was pulled back again, Tequila forced her entire body to shut the hell up and stop giving her spasms that would prevent her from reaching her sidearm. And, world of wonders, her body actually seemed to listen to her for once.
Her fingers found the handle again, the index finger going into the space in the first try. A small victory, if nothing else. Her fingers gripped tightly around it, forgetting about all other events and body parts.
A new slam, this one harder and more powerful than the others. As she refocused on the robot, Tequila could see that it glowed purple each time it slammed her into the rock. It reminded her about what Kaidan looked like when he powered up. Strange, to think about him right when she was dy- No! No. She would not die, not today, not this year, not this decade and not to a gun-toting toaster. The slam brought her gun out of its holster due to her fingers having gripped it. The pistol hung there for a moment, her arm unable to lift it, it seemed.
Hah! Told you I was stronger!
Everything seemed to slow down as she started hearing a voice in her mind. It was familiar, very much so, but it wasn't someone she knew from growing up, or even from her time in the Corp. It was much more... young, more innocent but still brash, jesting and boasting.
Fuck you Tequila!
Yeah you'd like that, wouldn't you?
The same voices came again, but now her own was among them... it. there only was one, she thought even as light started ebbing from her sight again.
She was slammed into the wall again, this time with enough force that the helmet started cracking down the top, falling apart.
So... what do ya wanna see?
That was when she recognized the voice. It was the only time she had been asked that particular question by someone else than her parents, which this definitely wasn't. This was a young man, around his early twenties. She couldn't remember his face at the moment, blamed it on the lack of air, but she knew who it was.
Hah, told you I was stronger!
Well fuck no, he wasn't. A shitty piece of... shit, like Tengberg wasn't going to get boasting rights over her just because she died to a toaster. That would just outright cause her to die from shame. With renewed grit and pain flaring through her body, sending what felt like electricity through her body, she whipped up the pistol, aiming it as high as she could, which in this case was some electrical nodes and coolant-tubes in the machine's chest area.
She started squeezing off shots, the first one stopped by the thing's shields as she hit them, forgetting the fact that the Carnifex was not able to piss on shields like her rifle was. The robot was startled by this, letting completely go of her as it jumped back. She kept on pulling the trigger, sending a new round downrange at the machine. This one was sent from far enough away that it hit the barrier instead, simply disappearing into the purple coat. Still, she could breathe again.
She couldn't see very well, but at least she could breathe.
The geth looked at her like she owed it money, something Tequila was fairly sure she would remember if she did. The it simply looked at her gun, emitting some strange electrical noises. She didn't care though, nor did she notice the red light her gun suddenly emitted, like it was overheated or empty. She might not know a lot about the way the heating systems worked, but Teresa knew for a fact that the gun was not overheated yet. So why did it stop working? And what was that high-pitched tone?
She pulled the trigger again, and again was rewarded with the same red symbol and the same empty clicking, and the tone was still there. Sneering, she did the only thing she could.
She threw the gun at the geth.
Which turned out to be one of her better ideas, seeing as the gun exploded only a moment after, causing roughly the same amount of damage that a grenade would have done. Better yet, it had just splashed to a standstill in front of the geth when it did. As a result, the robotic asshole was thrown backwards with a sound like a balloon being popped by a torch. The purple field vanished in a bright spark, leaving the geth without its weird protection, as well as lacking the right arm beyond the elbow-joint.
Allowing herself a smirk at that, Tequila coughed, finally being able to breathe properly after her windpipe had resumed its proper dimensions.
In front of her, the geth seemed briefly confused that it was now lacking its right arm's functionality. It didn't look mad, as such, just confused. Then, like it was nothing, it walked straight back to Tequila, who was now looking at it with clear annoyance in her eyes.
"I blew off your arm you asshole..." She muttered, looking at where the scrap was either floating on the surface or where it ought to be resting on the bottom.
The geth stopped shortly, looking at her as if to say "No you didn't." Regardless whether this was something she imagined or not, the Hispanic woman started propping herself up against the rock as the geth walked towards her.
"Then what's that thing?" She asked aloud, looking from the geth to a piece of plastic originating from the wrist, floating in the water. The geth just looked at her again, flaring its pedals briefly as if to say "That's nothing."
"Figures..." She muttered, leaning against the rock, looking around for her rifle while the machine closed the last meters. She wasn't given the time to find her gun, instead being heaved above the surface again. There was another of the strange feelings of electricity going through her body. It wasn't uncomfortable, or even strange. It was... rather nice actually.
Of course, when her air started leaving her again, 'nice' went out the window. The geth, this time not having the leverage to maintain balance while slamming her into the rock, opted for simply hitting her across the helmet, causing the visor to crack. It then grabbed her helmet again, tearing it clean off while revealing the face of a battered woman with blood coming out her nose as well as down her forehead, and bruises forming on her face. It then simply forced its three fingers around her throat and started squeezing.
Now, when a machine strong enough to kill a bull with a single punch was strangling you, things were looking less than peachy. Tequila found herself once more at the lacking mercy of the robot, feeling as her lungs were deprived of air again. As the machine heaved her above the water again, she did the only sane thing she had left.
She punched it in the flashlight.
Which had the surprising result of causing the entire thing to crumble on itself, the head and flashlight simply bending inwards while the arm still held her. While, unknown to her because Tequila wasn't a Quarian, most of a geth platform's processing was in the body, the parts responsible for cognitive responses and decisions was located in the head, behind the flashlight. As a following effect, when that part was turned to scrap by an impossible punch, the platform ceased to function.
Still with its fingers around her throat, the platform went on its knees, dragging Tequila with it to a crouch. Acting mostly out of the adrenaline rush, Tequila tore at the remaining hand.
And was borderline wetting herself when she simply tore apart the titanium alloys purposed for stopping bullets and angry tank-bred Krogans. Still with the geth hand and underarm, now just hanging from her armor's neckpiece, Tequila slumped back down against the rock, desperate for a chance to catch her breath. Sitting in the water, she numbly looked to the left, noting how Kaidan was still slumped against the wall. Still, he was making small movements, so it was needless to worry if he had gone and died while she was getting her ass kicked. Taking a new, fresh inhale of breath, Tequila looked down at the torn-off geth hand, unsure of how to process what had just happened. While she wasn't complaining, the fact that she had just torn apart reinforced metals was more than just a little disturbing.
Around Teresa Aquila, the battle was slowly starting to turn in favor of the Alliance, especially because of the actions of a single man who was drawing a lot of attention, both from friendly and hostile eyes. While she was too far away to make out any details of him, the way he was swinging a giant sword through the evil machines didn't leave much to be doubted as to who it was.
Codex Entry: Biotic Geth
First encountered on Virmire at Point Rain, this particular platform makes use of Element Zero cores distributed throughout the platform, allowing it to perform most regular biotic charges and attacks despite being a machine.
No further data is available at this time.
Well... first, before I start the regular ranting, let's take a moment to remember a man who left the world recently. While a man in flesh and blood, Nelson Mandela was so much more for so many. It is not an overstatement to say that he is one of the founding father of South Africa as it is or should be today. While this will no-doubt get lost in the stream, I would like you all to just... remember, for a moment, what Nelson Mandela has meant to you.
For me, he has been an example of what a human can do of good. What a human can do, if he stands by his beliefs and fight for equality.
...
Sigh... well, I suppose I should give the usual ranting. Though... I'm simply too tired, and I think I spent all my sensible words on the Mandela-part. So... just read and enjoy, and review so that I can enjoy as well. It's funny, but reviews could by some be viewed as payment for writing.
Well, let's see what your thoughts are on this, and what you thought of Tequila's part in this one. She's one of my favorites, and when I'm unsure of what perspective to choose, I choose her.
Also, I'm considering putting down the 1st person narrative, instead going by 3rd, as it is much easier to write and allows me some more freeway. Might not happen in this story, but I'm fairly sure the next book will be in 3rd person narrative.
Well, leave a review, and good night :)