She felt the recoil of the shot in the absolute silence of space. Far away, a borg lost his eye implants along with half of its head, and stopped functioning. The third in a row. A glowing thermoclip was ejected from the Valiant and caught by Sarah's dexterous hand. As soon as she had began her walk on the surface of the station, Borg had come after her. That was the 7th one she had killed, and they never even got a chance to aim at her.
The 8th coldly looked at the body parts floating around, most of her pursuer had attempted to flank her by sneaking out by different access shaft all around. None of them had even successfully got a firm footing before dying. Wisely, he decided not to take his chance. While the Borg seemed exempt of any survival instinct, they knew logic. And fighting her out there was a waste of resources.
All the while she shot, she was marching toward her destination, the hangar. Keeping an eye on everything wasn't the easiest thing in the world, especially considering how slow she could move in space. She could only walk, never taking both feet out of the ground for a second, and the grav boots only worked locally. Any movement felt weightless and required constant muscle control.
Shooting in space was very difficult. If your footing wasn't right, you could throw yourself out of the mass effect field and join the countless frozen corpses in deep space. Shooting while walking was expressly forbidden by any decent military book about fire-fights in 0g. And it was the first thing you needed to do during the N2 special force training.
Still worried about further attacks, Sarah couldn't just wait around doing nothing but walking. There was much to do, and maybe something about communication. While she had no way to know if her distress call had been heard, she had noticed that the Borg hadn't been able to block it immediately. The reason was probably because she used a different technology than the machines, and their adaptation to it was maybe incomplete.
She set her comm to the typical N7 frequency by Alliance military, and tried.
-Randomize frequency, stay op/
And she was cut. Damn, they were fast. But they weren't good enough. A few second, a burst transmission came in on a seemingly random frequency, as instructed.
-Techie? What the/
She smiled while randomizing her own frequencies, those short burst conversations was reminding her of the good old time...
-Yes. Status?
-Inside Borg HQ.
-Energy source?
-Not yet, you?
-Approaching object/
-Careful, Brog with Gr/
-Repeat.
-Borg eezo gun.
Sarah paused. The Borg were using eezo? She thought fast. Considering that nothing in the station seemed to be eezo based or even remotely made to be used with it, it could have been that they took it from Cutie Pie's pod. But it took years for humanity to even understand what eezo was and how it worked.
Those creatures had done it in less than an hour.
They had to destroy the station, along with every inch of eezo they couldn't recover, but she couldn't do anything from here. Her job was to find the hangar, prep an escape route, and leave the rest to her unwilling partner.
-Acknowledged, simply said Techie, on the other side of the comm.
Lauren pondered for a moment, crouched in the dark, watching the pods aligned along the corridor. Who was that woman really? Could she really be... her? Somehow, she knew everything Lauren knew, N7 communication, weapons, tactics, technology, everything about her pointed to another N7 human spectre. But she was so different from her. She was so... uptight, she could see it just by her face, her movements, all of it was oozing a by the book attitude. She reminded her of Kaidan.
And so, she knew she couldn't have mentioned the pods to her. She wouldn't have understood. Maybe she would have, but it would have put some strain on her moral principles, and unnecessarily so as there was only one way to handle it. Those people, those naked humans in the pod, were already dead anyway.
Walking through the Borg Cube, completely ignored by the ant-worker as long as she didn't tried to attack them, she had seen many things she didn't understood. But when she followed the yellow glow, hoping to find some clue to where the actual energy source was located, she learnt how Borgs were created. With humans. Unwilling ones.
There were men, women, children and elderly. Probably everything breathing in the station. Some of them were relatively intact, but others had been shot and deeply burned. All were now missing limbs, or had holes in their back, their torso, their arms, their head. She had witnessed the countless nano machines do their work as they buried themselves in the right eye of an old woman, dissolve it and prepared for the implant to be riveted to her eye socket and skull.
The children, they were injected through crude tubes with greyish matter and connected with cables. Some were mere toddlers. None would know the feeling of being human. In another time, she may have had some second thoughts about killing them all. She may have had the need to at least try to save them, to give them back their lives. Not anymore. She had a mission, no way to get them out, no way to be sure they wouldn't try to kill her once freed and no time to lose.
But the other. Yes, Lauren knew she wouldn't have stood for this.
Without another thought, she moved on.
The corridors were larger on this section, and her map wasn't of any help. The structure was seen as some big blur, mostly because the further they were from the pod, the less clear the data was. But the energy spikes had been detected around, that was for sure.
More than a few time she had to change course to make sure the armoured Borg wasn't on her trail. The Borg seemed to act like a rigid hierarchy, where someone's place wasn't anyone's. Only Borgs set on killing her were allowed to hurt her, unless she made the first move.
Or at least she hoped, because deep as she was into the gigantic cube, there would be no way out should they all turn on her.
The hangar doors were wide open. Like an enormous maw, gaping at the stars, its own entrails covered in darkness. HMWP in hand, Sarah was extremely careful. The Borg hadn't attempted to follow her further, but that enemy was fearsome, cunning, adaptable, and most of all, relentless. She couldn't believe for a second they just abandoned the pursuit, and was prepared for a trap.
Either they guessed her destination and were lying in ambush, or they were waiting for her to appear on their radar again. And there was the possibility that the whole hangar had been assimilated, leaving no shuttle to escape.
Too much question, not enough action. She took a deep breath and and went in.
A ghost drifted through the empty hangar. It was devoid of air, of gravity and of power. There was... nothing. Nothing except 3 ships, vaguely resembling the rectangular Kodiak shuttles, gently piled against each other, weightless, in a corner of the large shuttle bay. And no Borg around.
The cloak dissipated, revealing a slowly floating Shepard, progressing in the darkness. She had used the low light vision instead of her flash-light. It was less comfortable, but she didn't want to alert anybody. Not that there were anybody to warn.
The first thing she did was approaching the entrance doors. There were several, and intriguingly, they were all sealed. Not by automatic response, but from the inside. She could see the work of a welder, and several impact shot on the walls. There had been a battle here. People fought, and barricaded themselves behind the heavy doors of the bay, covering their escape. But why would the Borg had cut the power then?
A chill took hold of her as she realised what had happened. There had been a bunch of survivors here, and they put up too much of a fight. And the Borg spaced them before they could escape.
The terrible fate summoned unpleasant memories she shook off, she had to focus. If she was careful, she could try to activate one shuttle without the Borg knowing. They weren't waiting in ambush after all, but there was no doubt they were searching for her. With a simple push, she launched herself to the nearest shuttle.
Those were small space crafts, maybe big enough for 4 people, in a rectangular form. The front was slender, more curvy and covered in what seemed like a black plastic. The doors were on the side, and all locked. The inside was still pressurized. Maybe there were survivors, hiding in those pods! She tapped on the windows, banged on it, but no answer. There was a chance they were unconscious. Maybe she could/
-Problem energy source.
The sudden burst distraught her. Cutie pie had interrupted her thoughts.
-Specify.
-Hunted, haven't found it.
There was a short pause
-Found Eezo.
-Extract?
-No time. Destroy.
Dozens of thoughts submerged Sarah. She had thought of a way to destroy the Eezo for sure, but it was near suicidal. And offered no countdown. Time was up.
-Need more time
-No time.
-Found shuttle, more time.
-No time!
-Maybe survivors!
-Now or both dead!
Sarah bit her lips. The other one was right. The Borg were too monstrous, too powerful, they had no room for error or hesitation. She took a look at the cockpit of the shuttle, her thought drifting to the possible survivors in te lower levels. People she had never met. And never would. She made the call.
-Overload, Blakstorm collapse.
-... how big? Cutie pie asked after a moment.
-Everything, simply replied the Spectre.
And that was it.
With her omnitool, she forced the door to open. A gush of air stormed out, opening the door wide. When the bodies flew out, she coldly acknowledged them, and moved in.
Blackstorm collapse. Techie was annoying but she sure knew how to do her job.
The Borg had made a large circular room within their otherwise very Cubic architecture to house the Eezo, and the experimental tools that went with it. At the centre of the lab, held in suspension, was the Eezo. A little black rock out of its shell, levitating between two short, massive pillar. Five borgs were working on different monitors, sending several electric impulses, collecting data on the result, sending fragments of the element elsewhere in the Cube.
Lauren knew that they had to be stopped, by any means necessary and whatever the cost. She was too deep in the Cube anyway. A strange feeling of comfort took hold of her, things were at last... simple.
With her Eagle Pistol, she stormed in. Within only a few seconds, she had gunned down four borgs and sliced the last before he could reach her. Now every single Borg knew where she was. Including the armoured one. But that would soon be irrelevant.
So... an overload. Despite her tremendous training, Shepard had never quite took the time to learn the subtler sides of technology. She knew how to disarm a bomb, reroute a generator or operated an omnitool at peak efficiency, but xenotechnology was a little above her skills. She did however developed a tremendous talent for destruction.
Wasting no time, she went straight for the console where one of the borg was now sprawled on, several shots in the brain. Pushing it aside, Lauren did the exact same movement she saw it do a moment ago, when they raised the voltage of the machine. A loud buzzing made itself heard and... it shut down. An icon appeared on the console, resetting the voltage to minimum. There was a safety device in here!
A plasma shot splashed on her shield, disabling it in one go but stopping the projection dead in it track. Spinning, Valkyrie in hand, she headshoted the interrupting borg, and the two others that were taking heir aim. There was no time!
With her omniblade, she cut the cables alimenting the pillars, producing an impressive series of sparking explosions. She was going to bypass the security device the old fashion way, by applying the electric power directly to the source. Handling her rifle with one hand, she killed another Borg trying to sneak on her and violently pulled cable, dislodging it from its shackles on the wall.
Then, the armoured one appeared. Its grav gun on one hand, a plasma weapon on the other. Instinctively, Lauren shot him across the room, only denting his black protection, as he took aim.
-You gotta be shitting me!
Those damn shuttles!
Sarah had never seen anything like it. She had found a manual inside it that could guide her through the several checks before launching the pod or repressurizing it, but she couldn't just browse it fast enough. And figuring out how those things were supposed to work was out of the question, she just wasn't good enough for that.
And yet, she had to hurry. Any moments, the gravitational pull of the overcharged Eezo could trap her in the hangar and crushed the shuttles, and her with it. But the worse part was the explosion.
As soon as the Eezo would reached its limit, it would collapse and disintegrate, crushed under its own weight. Without the mass effect field to hold together whatever air or solid material it had been attracted during it overcharged time would then return to normal mass. Like a spring, suddenly without pressure, it would simply explode. And while that quantity of Eezo was unable to create a self sustaining black hole, it was big enough to tear the whole station apart.
She had no time.
A movement caught her attention, and she ducked. A Borg was peeking in her direction.
They had found her.
She rolled forward, evading the plasma fire and getting in range for close combat. She slashed her omniblade to cut it in half, but it parried her with surprising agility. She sheer force of the blow made him fall to the side however, just in time for another Borg to shoot at her in her back. Kneeling, she retaliated by a series of precise shots on the soft part of its body.
The grav gun crackled and she jumped away. Not fast enough. Her feet were caught in the mass effect field, sending her whirling across the room and crashing on the pillar, her gun leaving her hands. Out of breath, she saw the armoured borg walk at her, two darts out of his right hand, ready to stab her before she regained full mobility. Her hand grabbed the first thing she could, stabbed the Borg with it as it tried to kill her. It was a fragment of grid, tore apart by the battle, red hot from plasma fire. And with it, she sectioned the Achilles heel of the armoured.
As strong as it was, as augmented as it could have been, the loss of control of its foot unbalanced it long enough for Shepard to grab the power cable and slam it to the Eezo core.
The effect was immediate and spectacular.
A powerful mass effect field enveloped the pillars and began to expand. Overcharged with energy, the Eezo was augmenting the mass of everything around it exponentially. And soon, the gravitational pull was felt. Both Shepard and the armoured one were pulled toward the increasingly intense blue aura. Already her Valkyrie had slammed into the element zero like a magnet, and Shepard was putting all her strength in her arms, gripping at the grid, not to do the same.
But it was inevitable, the pull was just too strong. Her fingers screamed in pain, as if they were torn apart, and the grid grave away. Like falling down, she was propelled toward the centre of the circular room, and landed on her favourite enemy, the armoured one. He too was blocked, and it was a strange embrace they had, face to face, trying to overpower the pull that was now destroying the whole room.
Lauren looked down, and had a wicked smile. She extended her arm and pulled her Valkyrie back. She was weighting a ton, like pulling a Krogan out of a Thresher Maw's mouth, but she wasn't going anywhere without it. She then forced the partially tore apart grav-gun toward her stomach, battling against her own weight. She felt crushed, on the brink of being smashed and reduced to mush. The blue aura was already eating the Armoured borg, his back having been ripped off to envelop the Eezo, who was barely getting started. The borg's eyes were still vivid though, and when she finally had the grav gun in place, she placed her omnitool on it and screamed from the top of her lungs.
-Sayonara bitch!
And she electrocuted the damaged canon, activating the Eezo inside. She felt like exploding, as the pressure of the mass effect field suddenly vanished as she was propelled within another field toward the exit. She rammed a borg in the corridor, barely slowing her down as she flew through the tight space. Finally, she bounced on he walls and crashed on the ground, rolling over several time. Her whole body was hurting. Good, she was alive, and out of range.
For now.
As if fleeing a horde of Reapers, she ran away as far as she could, the whole Cube beginning to crumble behind her.
Third in a row and wasting time.
The borg had been shooting their plasma at her, but her biotic bullets were more than a match for them. Behind the cover of the shuttle, she was trying to buy herself some time. But to no avail. Already she could hear the metal cringing above them. Lauren had successfully initiated the Blackstorm. All the station was going down.
Another shot, piercing straight through the shield into the skull, and a fourth borg lost footing into space, firing wildly around.
She was not going to die here!
Quickly returning into the shuttle, she opened the manual to the emergency section. From the glass, she could see two Borg appearing and taking aim.
She entered the command to force the start despite the security check. Too slow. The shuttle powered up and the borg fired hell upon her.
An invisible shield absorbed the green fire just a few centimetres away from the glass. The Commander was stunned for an moment, then engaged the engines full speed. The spacecraft propelled itself forward, smashing the two borgs out of the way. Sarah moved to the open door and looked at the shrinking station. She was alive.
The last survivor. Again.
Shepard fell at least 10 meters, jumping out of the Cube by an opening. Rolling on the naked ground, she continued. Behind her, the Cube was bending onto itself, making the metal cringe in a horrible concert. The air itself was being absorbed, creating winds in front of her, slowing her progression. She could feel her own body being pulled too.
There was only one way out, and it all hinged on if Techie did her job.
Activating her grav-boots to glue herself to the ground, she drew her massive Black Widow. She could still see the impact of her shot on the outer wall, the whole metallic body having bend in a circle around the hole. Now she was just five meters away, and there was no force field protecting it. She activated her incendiary ammo, and shot.
The bullet crashed full force on the wall, and spread it infernal heat all around. The whole panel began to irradiate, and the hole itself was surrounded by a red hot circle. The second shot had an even worse impact. Drops of liquid metal splashed around, some being stopped in their track and sucked to the inside of the hole. She had pierced far enough to space!
But it was just a little hole, and she could feel the pull getting stronger. Soon, her own boots wouldn't be able to keep her still. It wasn't enough!
Activating her omnitool, she set her cryo ammo, and programmed the next shot to be concussive. The loud detonation was muffled by the sudden collapse of the whole Cube behind her, as the ceiling had been torn apart and plunged straight into the growingly massive Mass Effect Field. The shot of deep frost spread instead of concentrating on one point and created an explosion of sudden cold on the burning metal.
The shock was too much, and the hole expanded as the metal shattered to pieces, being sucked in space. Lauren saw before her the bullet hole become a gaping rift, and the wind brutally changed direction. She deactivated her grav boot and let herself be thrown into the dark space.
From the safety of distance, Sarah witnessed the station bending inward. Not long after that, the explosion happened.
Without a sound, without an once of fire or violence, the station bloomed like a flower. It separated in five chunks that bend away from each other, spreading debris around like pollen. The top and the bottom were thrown in opposite direction and began their endless course toward... nowhere. She could see what was the hangar being torn in two and hurled in different directions.
If there ever was any survivors, they were dead now, not knowing what had brought their fate to them. Even Cutie Pie. She hated her deep down, she wanted to blame her for the maybe death of maybe survivors. But that wasn't honest. The mission was accomplished, she did her job, and there was no saving anyone now.
But you never leave someone behind if there is even a chance she's still alive.
She opened the channel.
-Cutie pie? Cutie pie do your read me? If you're dead clap twice.
-Cut the crap, you're worse than Joker. I'm in space, between debris.
-You injured?, Sarah asked, masking her surprise.
-The suits fine. Activating distress beacon now.
A red dot appeared on her omnitool, indicating the position of a spaced operative. She had been launched along dozens of debris, but they weren't going nearly fast enough to lose the shuttle.
Handling it carefully, she manoeuvred herself in the trail of torn metal. Going at the same speed at the, they looked static pieces, gently spinning on themselves. She glided through them and finally located the other Spectre, clinging to a large panel. Sarah entered the instructions in the computer, and it began to mimic the spin of the chunk of metal.
Cutie pie jumped, without waiting for the doors to open. Of course Sarah had anticipated that and opened it just in time to let her enter the shuttle and she stabilized herself inside the small space available.
Sarah closed the door and pressurized the space craft, sealing it, pouring in oxygen, making gravity and activating the recycling procedures.
Both looked at the other a long moment in silence.
Despite being in a cockpit with limited supplies, they were at last they were alone and safe.
Safe to ask themselves the questions the emergency had taken their mind away from.
-Ok... sighted Lauren, Let's make things clear...
Notes: As we conclude the introduction, i would like to thank you for being so many to read this little project of mine. All your inputs are appreciated greatly, and to produce a story truly worthy of you, I'm going to do extensive research on the Star Trek timeline. It's been a while, and there is no way this story is going be plagued by mistakes and errors that can be avoided. The down side is that's going to take some time, so do not expect any chapter before next Monday.
Should there be no chapter ready by that time, you will have a little teaser for your patience nonetheless.
See you beyond the final frontier.
