Admiral David Anderson was very tired.
It had been six weeks since the Reapers had simply rolled over Earth's defenses and began a bloody occupation of humanity's birthplace. And for six weeks Anderson had been jumping from foxhole to foxhole in a desperate effort to remain one step ahead of the Reapers.
But today was different. Today was the day that the resistance reestablished communications with the Alliance Fleet.
Pulling up the controls to the salvaged QEC, Anderson tapped out a series of commands into the holographic interface. After a painfully long minute the blue LED lights of the machine began to wash over him, transmitting his image to the other end of the line.
"Admiral, you look like hell."
Anderson smiled at his old friend's greeting.
"I would have said thing to you, Steven, but you've looked like that for years."
Hackett laughed.
"Fair enough,"
A mutual silence fell as the two men recalled their memories of climbing up the ranks together and then about how their paths had separated. Hackett had moved on toward cruisers and dreadnoughts while Anderson played with being a SPECTRE candidate and becoming humanity's first Citadel Councilor.
"So, how have you been?" Hackett asked.
"Just trying to stay alive until you and Shepard get back here," Anderson said, rubbing the back of his neck, "You wouldn't happen to have an ETA on that would you?"
Hackett shook his head.
"Shepard is in the process of creating an alliance between the Krogan and the Turians. I'm not sure if I envy her position at the moment."
"Yeah, I'm not sure I'd envy her position either."
Silence once again descended between the two men as they contemplated the task set before the young woman that they had placed all their hope in.
"I need you to extract a classified asset out of Reaper held territory."
The sudden noise drew Anderson out of his trance.
"Excuse me, what?"
"I need you to extract a classified asset out of Reaper held territory." Hackett repeated.
"I don't know if you know this, but the whole planet is occupied by the Reapers. You're going to have to be more specific on where this 'asset' of yours is."
"It's in the Alliance Intelligence Headquarters building in Washington D.C."
Anderson felt his stomach churn.
"Steven, that whole sector has been overrun by Reaper forces. We had a whole infantry battalion stationed in Newport that we had to write off as MIA because of how quickly the Reapers moved in. We were only able to extract a handful of civilians from the surrounding suburbs. What kind of thing could we still have in that hell hole?"
"I'm not sure but according to some of the reports that I've received, there's still military presence in the area." Hackett replied, "I want you to meet up with whoever is in charge down there and get them to help you secure whatever this is."
"Sir, how do we even know if this information is reliable? It could just be another Reaper trap."
"We don't, but this information was sent to me by Liara T'Soni. Apparently she has been researching into pre spaceflight weaponry and stumbled upon this."
A nuke?
"But how do we know that it's even still there?" Anderson countered.
"The maintenance reports, Admiral, the maintenance reports." Hackett said calmly, lecturing his subordinate, "There's no record of what it actually is except for the fact that there are maintenance reports dating back to the early twenty-first century. Whatever this is, it's been worth maintaining for over a hundred years."
Probably a nuke.
"And the Reapers haven't found it yet?"
"They've cut off the weapon's power supply. Dr. T'Soni's report tells me that the object has maybe a week before its backup batteries run out and we lose the damn thing forever. So what I need you to do is go in and bring it back for the war effort. We're going to need all the help we can get. Hackett out."
Anderson felt his body rock slightly as the shuttle touched down on the debris covered LZ. Standing up, he activated the release latch to the side door. Standing in the doorway he barely had enough time to get a glimpse of the small military encampment before a large pair of hands reached up and yanked him out of the shuttle.
"Get those wounded moving!" A voice boomed as Anderson was tossed aside, "Critical cases only! Walking wounded to the taxi pad!"
Anderson's attention shifted from the line of stretcher bearing Marines to a set of sky cars that were being loaded with less critical wounded. Some of the men and women getting in were civilians, others, Marines; all of them appeared to have suffered the loss of a limb. Anderson watched as a man with no legs was placed in the back of a car and handed power cells before his two companions joined him; a young woman armed with a rocket launcher, missing a single leg, and an older man without his left arm and eye.
"What are they doing?" Anderson demanded, grabbing the arm of a passing resistance fighter, "Why are there wounded climbing into cars armed with rocket launchers?!"
"They're doing their jobs! Now fuck off!" The man spat and hurried to help load wounded into the shuttle.
"Alright, that's it! Let's get this bird back in the air."
Anderson turned to the booming voice that was shouting orders and saw a giant of a man walking toward him, carrying a rocket launcher.
"Hope you're better with a rocket launcher than you are with communications, Admiral." The man said, hauling Anderson to his feet and shoving the weapon into his arms. "Evac shuttle is ready to go, Matt, tell the boys on the north side to watch out for a 'Roach' and escort." The giant said, speaking into a hand held radio. There was a short beep of acknowledge and then the radio remained silent.
"Soldier, what's going on here?" Anderson demanded as he watched the shuttle and four cars lift off into the air and speed off toward the northern part of the military facility.
"We're carrying out an evacuation, Admiral," The man explained as he followed the disappearing convoy through the sights of his own launcher, "Those men on that shuttle are the most recent casualties from an attack on one of our recon squads yesterday. If they hadn't been working with a different squad in the area, they would have been Reaper bait."
Anderson watched the squadron take off and fly toward the ocean's edge at the northern end of the facility. As they passed over the city ruins that dotted the coastline a small Reaper squadron of Harvesters flew up from the ruins and began to fire upon the lead skycar. Anderson watched the car burst into flames and took a nosedive down into the ruins below. The doors to the other cars opened and began to return fire at the Harvesters. Anderson turned to the man next him and seized the radio that sat on his belt. Tuning into his shuttle's radio he listened as the pilot screamed for support as reaper rounds began to bounce off the side of his hull. Taking his eyes off of the radio, Anderson watched in horror as a Harvester avoided the barrage of rocket fire coming from the other cars and smashed into the shuttle.
"God. Fucking. Dammit!" The man beside him cursed, flinging his rocket launcher to the ground. Collapsing down in the dirt he held his face in his hands as the sound of the other cars being destroyed echoed in the distance. The pilots' voices could be heard over the radio, screaming in pain and anger as their cars were shot out of the sky one by one.
"Turn that damn thing off," Anderson jumped as the radio was jerked out of his hand, "I'm Lt. Cane, Admiral, welcome to the 101st Infiltration Battalion, Able Company. Lt. Karson is in charge at the command tent." Lt. Cane picked himself up off the ground and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Come on, I'll show you where it is."
Anderson followed Lt. Cane as he led him toward the center of the facility. As they walked through the base he noticed that none of the marines around them appeared to be close to the same age as the man leading him.
Walking up to the command tent, Lt. Cane opened the flap and motioned for Anderson to go in ahead of him. "Member of the brass to see, Lieutenant," Lt. Cane said as Anderson's eyes struggled to adjust to the low light visibility.
"Yeah? Their balls had better be made out of brass if they're just now trying to reach us." A gruff voice muttered from the center of the room.
As Anderson's eyes slowly began to adjust he could begin to make out a well-built man standing in front of a holographic display table in the center of the room. He watched as the man gave orders into a headset to direct troop movements as he tracked Reaper forces on the table in front of him.
"Squads 12 and 15, that Destroyer is inside your kill zone. Blow your charges and get the hell out of there!"
"Negative, sir!" A voice shouted back, "We're pinned down by Reaper heavy units and a platoon of infantry. Tell the boys goodbye, sir, we'll see you on the other side."
Anderson watched as the room inside the tent grew silent. He watched as Lt. Karson desperately tried to find reinforcements for his dying squads, his hands flying over the display table, his voice the only sound as he shouted for a sitrep from a nearby squad. Ripping his headset off from his ears he slammed his hand onto the table when the third squad told him that they were two kilometers from the battle zone. Hanging his head in defeat, he paused for a moment before speaking into his headset again.
"Give them hell, kid; we'll see you on the other side."
Anderson watched as the squads' locations blinked once on the display table and was gone. The sound of a muffled explosion echoed in the distance.
Silence followed as the echoed died away. Nobody in the tent moved as Lt. Cane gave a short nod to Anderson and walked over to Lt. Karson in the center of the room. Laying a hand on his shoulder, Lt. Cane whispered into his ear. Receiving a short nod, he turned toward the rest of the room.
"Everyone out," He said, waving his arms toward the entrance flap, "He's all yours, Admiral."
Anderson waited for a moment after everyone had left before approaching the Lieutenant
"What can I do you for, Admiral?" Karson asked as Anderson came near.
"Look, what you did there was one of the hardest things that a commanding officer could ever ask of his men." Anderson said, clearing his throat, "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry that you had to go through that."
"To hell with your sympathies."
Karson turned and faced Anderson, anger flashing in his steel grey eyes, boring into the superior officer.
"My men and I have been fighting in this hell-hole for six weeks, and for all that time, we haven't heard a single thing from the chain of command. So you'll excuse me if I don't give a damn about how sorry you feel. Now, what the hell do you want?"
Anderson was silent for a moment. Standing closer to the young officer, he could begin to make out the individual features of his face. Karson appeared to have been wounded in the near past: his right eye seemed to be a cybernetic replacement; a set of scars ran from the corner of his eye and back towards his ear. Small flecks of dried blood dotted the left side of his face where concrete shrapnel had flown up after a near death explosion. His fingers were bloody and bruised from the repetitive movement that came with firing an assault rifle. In a single image, Lieutenant Matthew Karson embodied the resistance movement of the Human Alliance.
"I need to get into Washington D.C." Anderson said bluntly. No point in dancing around the issue with this man. And Anderson didn't have the time for it anyway.
"Why?"
"Admiral Hackett, and what's left of the Alliance, are building a secret weapon that we believe can help win us the war." Anderson said, pulling up a report from his omni-tool, "We've received some intelligence reports that there is a classified item somewhere within the Alliance Intelligence building." Anderson picked up a nearby datapad and copied the report onto it. "Think you can get us there?" He handed the report over to Lt. Karson.
Karson examined the report for a moment before setting it down.
"No way in hell." He said calmly, and picked up his headset.
Anderson stared at the man, his jaw hanging open as the Lieutenant's words processed in his mind.
"Why the hell not?" Anderson demanded, picking the datapad and shoving it into Karson's face, "These orders come from the very top! Shepard and Hackett are out there trying to find a way to end this war! They're out there trying to save the entire goddamn galaxy! The least you can do is try and do your part!"
"Because Washington D.C. is Hell on Earth, that's why!" Karson shouted back, slapping the datapad from Anderson's hand. He continued as he advanced upon the older man, "Because the Alliance left me and this battalion to die. Because I lost a fourth of my fighting force on the first day. Because I've lost twice that amount in the past six weeks. And because I am getting MY. MEN. OUT."
Anderson found himself being pushed up against a munitions crate as he backed away from the young officer. Fury rolled off of Karson as he stared Anderson down; then his expression changed.
Karson's face softened as he looked at the mix of emotions expressed on Anderson's face. Turning away from him, and resting his arms on the holo-table, Karson let out a deep sigh.
"I wish I could help you, Admiral, I really do…." Karson's voice trailed off. After a moment, he straightened his back and turned to face the Admiral, "But I'm getting what little men that I have left out of here. That'll have to be worth enough to not bring back that secret weapon of yours."
"But why?"
Karson reached down into his pocket and pulled out a handful of dog tags.
"I don't know if you ever read my file but I was on Eden Prime when the Geth attacked, I was there when this whole thing got kicked off." Karson said as he handed the tags to Anderson, "I lost my eye there and then I got grounded planet side to recover. They stationed me here to train Marines in infiltration tactics and then pretty soon we had a full battalion. Admiral, I have trained every single man underneath my command." He stared down at the dog tags in his hand, "Admiral, I can't sit here and watch more of my men die. You've seen what happens when we try to get a bird in the air, so we're going to walk right out of here as soon as it gets dark. I'm sorry."
Anderson was silent as he watched Karson make preparations for the evacuation.
"What if there was a way to get us both what we wanted?" He asked.
"Back when the world was still alive I would have said such a thing might be possible," said Karson, looking down at the table display, tapping out a coded message to his squad leaders, "But I'm past the point of wishful thinking-"
"Just hear me out!" Anderson said quickly, "What if I could get all your people evacuated out of here?"
"How? The Reapers shoot down anything we try to send up."
"Don't tell me you didn't have other plans to get out of here besides just walking out. You had to have tried to do something else; otherwise you wouldn't have stayed here for so long."
After a moment Karson let out a small sigh.
"Our initial purpose in retaking this facility was to reestablish communications with the rest of the resistance. We had to abandon it in the beginning because as a high value target the Reapers sent in troops to wipe it off the map." Karson explained as he moved the table display sideways and began to zoom out.
"And that's where you took your initial casualties." Anderson ventured, connecting the dots with the lieutenant's story.
"Exactly, we knew that if we could keep control of the facility then we would be able establish communications with command, receive orders on what to do next, and then create a staging area to evacuate refugees out of the city." Karson zoomed out on the display table and then zoomed back in, marking specific locations on the map, "But things didn't pan out the way that we wanted."
"The Reapers overran you in the first wave, didn't they?"
Karson nodded.
"We were never able to establish a perimeter. The Reaper shock troops just crashed inside the compound and began slaughtering everybody. Only a few NCO's had their own personal firearms and the MP's didn't stand a chance a swarm of husks." Karson was silent for a brief second as he remembered back to the invasion six weeks ago, "We lost almost a whole company trying to secure the armory, and by the time we did secure it, it was all we could do to fight our way out."
"So you just hid out in the city?"
Karson shrugged.
"It's what we were trained to do. We hit the enemy where we could, stayed out of sight, and tried to convince the Reapers that we were a larger fighting force than what we were. Eventually they pulled more troops back into the city and left the military base largely unprotected." Karson glanced over at Anderson, "We retook the base three days ago."
"So what about your initial evacuation plan?" Anderson asked, leaning onto the table and examining the locations that Karson had marked out on the map.
"The initial evacuation plan went to shit, like I just said, but we had a contingency plan for when we went out into the city." Karson focused in on one of the locations that he had marked out, "This right here is one of the remaining skyscrapers in the greater D.C. area." He zoomed back out, "One squad for each building, one shuttle to pick up each squad."
"Lieutenant, I don't think this is possible…" Anderson began.
"Well then make it possible, Admiral!" Karson shouted. He turned away from the table and walked toward the tent opening. "You're the one who came here looking for help, Admiral. Now either you can help us get what we need or you can walk out of this hell hole by yourself."
"Lieutenant, you don't understand! We barely have any aircraft left and we can't afford to draw attention to us with such a large operation like this!"
"Then you can tell everyone else that you came here for nothing." Karson said, sticking his head out of the tent flap and shouted for his platoon leaders. Karson turned back towards Anderson as a handful of officers filed into the tent. "You come here, after leaving us to die for weeks on end, ask us for help with something that might not even exist, and then when I give you a plan on how to give you everything that you want, you say that the price is too high," He folded his arms across his chest, "Well then you've got another thing coming if you want our help."
Anderson could feel the atmosphere inside the tent change against him. He could recognize the expressions on the faces of the men around him: anger, and betrayal; these men felt like the Alliance had left them to die and for good reason. The simple truth was that the Alliance had left them to die and now here he was, asking them for help as if nothing had ever happened.
"Alright, Lt. Karson, what is it that you need from me?"