Five years ago...
Mindoir burned.
That kind of pissed Charn off. The batarian pirate captain had plied his particular trade for a long time across a lot of worlds, and he had always held by the old mercenary's adage: Pillage first, then burn. But nooooo, they had to open this raid with an orbital bombardment, because they weren't sure if this was a baseline human colony or a colony filled with those abhumans. Like it was impossible for someone to do recon before they launched a raid.
Charn shook his head as he and his troops moved through the colony. Smoke rose from burning colonial homesteads and the prefab stacks of housing and industrial units. Bodies littered the streets, and every corpse annoyed Charn further. After all, corpses weren't profitable on slave runs, and the other pirate captains had either let them choke in the smoke or shot them dead. At this rate they'd make only a meager profit.
Charn's group had managed to haul quite a few humans from the remains of the houses as they marched across the colony. They'd had to wound a few of the crazier ones, and thankfully they'd run into almost no abhumans, save some with grossly enhanced musculature who'd taken quite a few hits with both guns and stunners to bring down. Those alone might bring in enough to offset expenses, but he'd have to keep them in his own pens, lest one of the morons in this fleet try to poach.
The pirates spread out as they got deeper into the colony, wary for defenders, but Charn doubted there would be many. Those who had shot back were put down quickly, but by now his forces were getting spread thin as more than half his crew were tasked with collaring, and escorting captives back to the pens and guarding the new stock. Charn blotted out the screams and cries from the prisoners; he took no pleasure in it, unlike some of his men. This was just business, after all.
He spotted movement ahead, down the street of this pre-fab stack, and raised his rifle. Something small and quick; either a child or an abhuman rat or midget. He had to be careful, as any of them could have been dangerous. He waved the squad forward, and they moved down the street, firelight flickering in their helmet visors. The smoke drifting past was hot enough to blur thermals.
They reached the spot where the human had gone, and Charn grunted. The human had run inside a storage unit. The air was mostly clear. Good; it make hunting the runt down easier.
"Check fire," he ordered. "Identify it before you shoot. If it's a baseline, stun it. If its a midget, just kill the damn thing." He'd tried selling human midgets before, but the things were worse than feral skags or varren, except these ferals could use shotguns. No one wanted to buy the little bastards.
They fanned out throughout the storage unit, checking around the crates and boxes. Charn moved slowly, carefully, finger tight on the trigger. He hoped it wasn't a midget; he didn't want his last sight to be a tiny, screaming human ripping his throat out with a boxcutter or something equally demeaning.
Charn rounded a corner, and spotted movement. A small figure ducking behind some crates. He tensed for a heartbeat, but then calmed as he realized the proportions on the human were correct for a child, not a midget. Also, the midget would likely have leapt onto his face and tried to crack his skull open instead of hiding. The pirate advanced, stepped around the crates, and leveled his weapon.
The human child screamed and huddled between the crates. Small, perhaps less than eight years old, female, blonde, pale-skinned. She tried to hide, pressing back against the wall between the boxes, covering her face with her arms.
Charn grunted and raised his stunner. It would be easier for everyone if the child was unconscious for the process.
"Hola, pendejos."
The low, gravelly voice was distinctly human, quietly amused, and . . . hungry. At least, that was how the translator in Charn's ear interpreted it. He spun away from the child and back toward the entrance to the storage unit.
Silhouetted in the firelight from outside was a squat, muscled form wearing ragged, bullet-riddled colonist's fatigues. In the flickering light, Charn could see a tremendous beard and mohawk.
And in either hand the human was hefting a pair of heavy, Vladof-built machineguns with rotary barrels.
Charn raised his rifle, as did the pirates around him, but before he could shout any orders, his voice was drowned out by a tremendous, laughing roar.
"ESTE ES MI BOOMSTICK!"
Then the world was bullets and muzzle flash.
The pirate raid on Mindoir came to a halt over the next twenty minutes. It was not a slow, grinding halt brought about by attrition, or a sporadic, jerking halt brought about by infighting, or even the panicked, terrified halt brought about by Alliance reinforcements.
It was the halt that came when a toy race car slammed headlong into a mack truck.
"BIENVENIDOS A LA FIESTA, PUTAS!"
Batarian pirates stood and fought, but they faced an avalanche of hypervelocity rounds.
"WELCOME TO MINDOIR!"
A swath of violence, bullets, and terrifying aromas was ripped through the pirates as the squad figure advanced behind a river of gunfire and profanity, leaving rent and splattered bodies in his wake.
"RAAAAAAGHABBLERARAGHAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!"
Pirates screamed and panicked and fled and died amidst the laughter of a thirsty, hairy dwarf.
"GARBAGE DAY!"
The pirates retreated, their pilots firing the thrusters of their landing craft, and many escaped without waiting to pick up survivors or any slave cargo. None wanted to risk letting this gun-toting berserker get onto their ship.
As the last ship lifted off, the remaining pirates, stranded on the colony, turned to desperately face the horror that approached, humming to himself, toting two guns, and with a feral, bloodthirsty grin on face.
"Me llamo Salvador," the gunzerker snarled, and the barrels began to spin. "You invaded my planet. Prepare to die."
The slavers' screams were buried under an avalanche of lead.
Chapter Five: Glorious Fisting
Present Day
Illium spun slowly beneath the Hyperion shuttle as Claptrap brought them down through the atmosphere toward the surface of the somewhat neutral gateway to the Terminus Systems. Lilith, Roland, and Kaidan crowded the cockpit around the the robot, watching through the forward viewports as they descended toward the asari planet. Their target was the city of Nos Astra, a plain of immense, elegant spires and glowing lights visible as evening fell on the city.
Lilith kept glancing to the sensor display, which showed the countless ships lifting from and descending toward the planet, with a particular eye toward a much, much larger vessel descending in their wake. The SSV London had been waiting for them when they'd emerged from the mass relay into the system, and was making a point of following them down to the surface. Nos Astra traffic control had already cleared two berths for them at the main spaceport with little fuss; they clearly didn't want to get in the way of any official Alliance or Hyperion business.
There was a flare of light as they descended, coming from several kilometers away among the high-rising corporate sector of the city. Claptrap let out a squeal of surprise and the shuttle rocked a bit.
"Whoa, what the hell was that?" Lilith asked. Kaidan leaned over past her to look at the display.
"Big thermal bloom," he said. "You think one of the corporations is shooting it out down there?"
"Not even they would be stupid enough to start something that big on Illium," Lilith said. "That looked like it took out half a building, and-"
"It's the new Torgue-Urdnot headquarters," Roland grunted.
"Ooooooohhhhh," everyone else said at once. That explained quite a bit.
The descent was otherwise unremarkable, though the shape of the explosion from the Torgue-Urdnot headquarters drew some attention, and a few annoyingly-appreciative remarks from Claptrap when he realized where the exploding middle-finger was leveled.
They descended among the elegant silver mountains of the city, and passed into the valley that Nos Astra's main spaceport formed among the spires. The wide, low structure housed berths for thousands of ships ranging from military cruisers and superheavy transports to smaller shuttles, light freighters, and pleasure yachts. Claptrap eased them into the berth they were provided.
Or rather, he attempted to. A deep, shuddering screech ran through the shuttle as it mangled the docking clamps at their berth, and alarms howled from the console. Metal crunched and twisted, and the collection of mercenaries and Marines were sent tumbling to the deck. They lay there until the shuttle stopped shaking.
"Docking sequence complete," reported the shuttle's cheery VI voice. Lilith was fairly certain that it was deliberately designed to mock them.
"Whoops," Claptrap said once the shuttle came to a complete halt.
"Alright," Roland grunted once the myriad complaints ended and everyone got back to their feet. "Let's get this exchange over with, alright?"
"Yeah," Lilith agreed. "The sooner we're off anything flown by Claptrap, the better."
"Hey, I think I did pretty well," the robot replied as he puttered down the ramp to the cargo bay. "Considering I've never flown anything at all since I was built."
The battered collection of marines, mercs and machinery stepped through the docking collar and walkway that extended to their wounded shuttle and back into non-canned air, the dizzying whirlwind of spaceport sound and aromas hitting them the moment they emerged. The roar of engines of various sizes mixed with the din of voices from the interior of the spaceport visible through doorways leading deeper into the building.
A deep, pounding roar sounded overhead, and they all looked up to see the narrow, blade-shaped bulk of the SSV London descending into its own berth, far more gracefully than Claptrap's not-quite-crash. Roland turned his eyes away from the landing warship, and found Lilith glancing across the dock with narrow, wary eyes.
"Something wrong?" Roland asked, doing the same. Lilith shrugged.
"It's Illium," she said. "Pays to be suspicious, especially anywhere that Maliwan and Hyperion have this much power."
"Right," he agreed. He'd heard the stories of this place. Anywhere that the corporations had this much power was a place to be wary, neutral or not. He looked back to the remains of his squad. "I agree. Keep an eye open. This isn't safe or cozy like Earth, or the Citadel."
Meanwhile, in the middle of the Citadel's Zakera Ward, a quarian shoved a shotgun almost all the way down a bandit's throat and blew his head apart.
Brick found his opinion of her growing with each passing second.
She pumped the shotgun - a modified Hyperion digistruct weapon, apparently rebuilt with a larger magazine and aftermarket aiming module - and the mecha-skag she was riding whirled in place. Its jaw opened, and a barrage of gunfire erupted from the shoulder cannons into a pair of bandits closing in from the pair's left. The lucky one caught only a couple of rounds and was blasted in half. The unlucky one caught half a dozen shots and was reduced to a tumbling cloud of bright red meat and a few bloody limbs.
They were in a rapidly-abandoned section of one of the upper levels of Zakera, outside an aircar hangar. The quarian girl had to have been headed there, and would have made it if one of Fist's bandits had not crashed a cargo hauler into the entrance and cut her off. The hauler had also been loaded with Fist's goons, who had leapt out and surrounded the quarian in the open high-rise street outside the hangar, with the only cover being those overengineered advertisement kiosks spread liberally around the street.
But neither quarian nor mecha-skag were going down without a fight, and more than half the bandits who'd been in the hauler were dead. Brick intended to make sure they had a clean sweep of the trash before Fist could send more backup.
He'd caught up with them by virtue of being huge and fast on his feet, but the fact that he'd found a quicker route through the Keepers' access tunnels overlooking the streets had helped him avoid the fleeing crowds. It also let him leap into the middle of the battlefield from overhead, delivering just the right amount of descending whoopass to make an impression. Brick slammed down onto the street right behind one of Fist's goons, and the bandit spun around just in time to have his face terminally rearranged by Brick's free hand. The other hand rose toward a bandit five meters away, leveled the Jakobs shotgun, and blew apart one of the bandit's arms and most of his chest.
"Surprise!" Brick shouted as he charged across the street toward another bandit. The man turned toward Brick and managed to let out a startled cry before a single massive fist launched him across the street. Another bandit a few meters away let out a shout of equal parts terror and fury, and his eezo-based submachinegun blazed, sending a river of hypervelocity rounds toward the hulking brute. Brick snarled, ignoring the grain-sized bullets smashing off his barriers, and blasted the bandit nearly in half with the shotgun's remaining shells.
In the middle of the street, the quarian crouched beside her mecha-skag, using it as cover. Bullets slammed into the skag's armored hide and bounced off, while it retaliated with lethal cannon fire. The quarian's shotgun boomed with multiple rapid-fire blasts. The bandits dove for whatever cover they could, and their fire shifted toward the new, tremendous arrival stomping across the street and blasting them to pieces. She didn't miss the abrupt swing the battle was taking.
"Chitikka, attack!" the quarian shouted over the gunfire, and the mecha-skag leapt away with a massive, grinding, industrial roar, lightning sparking between its jaws, and slammed straight through one of the kiosks several bandits were taking cover behind. The thugs started screaming and scattered as the massive four-legged mass of machine and mayhem tore into them, smashing and crunching and tearing.
Brick stomped around the perimeter the bandits had formed, blasting and punching and working his way toward the quarian one bloody, powder-fractured thug at a time. The mecha-skag kept the majority of the bandits busy in that way that only impending dismemberment could, and Brick saw a chance to move in toward the quarian while they were distracted with dying. He rushed toward her, reloading the Jakobs shotgun as he ran.
"Hey!" he called as he reached the quarian. "Quarian! You hurt-"
The quarian whirled toward him and pointed her shotgun at his face. She pulled the trigger, and the burst of buckshot tore into his barriers and dropped them to less than five percent power.
"Shit!" Brick yelped, ducking as blue light exploded over his face from the rounds shattering inches from his face. His free arm shot out and grabbed the barrel of the shotgun. Ignoring the heat boiling off the weapon, he wrenched it aside. Another shot howled from the weapon, passing over his shoulder, and Brick yanked the gun out of the quarian's hands.
"Listen-" he started, but a sudden burst of blue-while light appeared in the quarian girl's hands, and a pistol - one of those sleek, glowing Maliwan guns - digistructed in her fingers. She shouted something that didn't translate properly and the pistol rose toward Brick's face. He dropped the Jakobs shotgun and grabbed the pistol in a hand that dwarfed the petite little thing. The girl grunted as he yanked it out of her hands with a quick flick of his wrist and tossed it a couple of meters away.
"I'm not here to-" Another digistruct flash, another shout in her apostrophe-laden language, and she held a big, chrome-plated Vladof assault rifle. He grabbed that one as well, but she let go the moment his fingers touched it and whipped out a camo-pattern Dahl sniper rifle nearly as tall as she was. He grunted and kicked the barrel of the weapon, knocking it out of her hands before she got a good grip on the bulky weapon.
"Look, I'm here to help you-" Brick snarled, and found himself staring down the barrel of a rocket launcher as tall as he was. His head snapped forward, brow smacking into solid metal, and he knocked the weapon down enough that he could stomp on the barrel and pin the launcher's business end to the street.
"How many goddamned guns you got in there?" he demanded. "Can you stop trying to shoot me for a second and listen?"
He saw the glowing eyes behind the quarian's facemask blink as a thought managed to work through the terrified panic, and she hesitated to draw another gun from her SDU. Brick was about to continue talking, but he spotted a burst of movement behind the quarian.
"Gargle your spleen!" shouted the thug that leapt through the air behind the quarian, a spinning buzzsaw axe in hand. He was lean and shirtless, showing a body covered in scars and tattoos of various colors, and a gas mask hid the man's twisted, screaming face. Brick's eyes widened in surprise as the psychopath descended, then his fist lashed over the quarian's head and struck the lunatic in the middle of his stomach. Bones shattered, blood erupted over both quarian and berserker, and the psycho went spinning away into the air.
The quarian watched the psycho land in a boneless heap on the street five meters away, and she turned back toward Brick. The light on the front of her helmet where her mouth was glowing steadily, indicating a slack jaw.
"You're welcome," he replied with a grin, but he turned, scanning the street. A screaming bandit flew through the air courtesy of the mecha-skag, but he heard the roar of more aircar engines. The narrow shapes and glowing engines of additional cars were descending toward the wrecked garage, and none of them were the flashing lights of C-Sec. He could already see more bandits moving through the streets on either side of their position.
"We're surrounded," the quarian girl's filtered voice murmured,a mix of worry and determination in her tone. She reached down and grabbed her dropped shotgun.
"Worse than that," Brick grunted. "They're sending psychos after us."
"That's bad, right?" she murmured.
"Yeah, pretty much," Brick replied with a shrug. It was an understatement. Human "psychos" were the unlucky bastards who lost their minds due to one flavor or another of mutation-induced insanity and were reduced to berserk, babbling lunatics. They were a lot more common on the borderlands and Terminus, where the lawless environment meant that they could survive among other mutants and outlaw savages. They didn't show up in civilized space much, because raving lunatics stabbing people with sharp implements and screaming about riding bicycles made of meat didn't mesh well with sane, civilized society.
The fact that Fist kept a gang of psychos around on the Citadel was worrying. But the fact that he'd gone so far as to point his human attack dogs at the quarian girl meant he wanted her so badly it override self-preservation instincts. A round of loose psychos on the Citadel was going to provoke one hell of a response from C-Sec.
Which meant that Fist was desperate. And powerful, desperate men were dangerous.
And thus, Brick grinned as he raised his shotgun. Aircars settled down on either side of the street, and Fist's men dismounted, taking cover behind them.
"What are you smiling about?" the quarian girl asked as the bandits circled around them, gun-toting thugs in ballistic weave and sunglasses crouching with rifles and submachineguns, psychos prowling with blades and pistols in hand, and here and there a towering, muscular bruiser stomping into position. It was a chaotic mishmash of tattooed lunatics, professional thugs, and abhuman brutes.
"Because this much trouble means whatever you've got is genuine," he replied. "Name's Brick, by the way."
"Tali," the quarian replied. "Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."
"Pleased to meet," Brick said. "So, why are these jackasses trying to kill you?"
"That's a long story," Tali said, her words slow and careful, as she watched the gathering bandits. "Fist wanted something I have. I refused. He took it poorly."
"Makes sense," Brick said with a grunt. "We get out of this, maybe I'll help you deal with Fist. Agreed?"
"Fine by me," she said, her voice quiet and small. And that pissed Brick off. He glared at the bandits as they prepared to attack.
The was a shout from one of the massive bruisers, and half a dozen psychos leapt out of cover on either side of them, screaming and waving their weapons, ranting about fire, hammocks, lungs, and other things. Gunfire erupted from both sides, whipping toward them in a torrent of multicolored violence, and bandits advanced to attack.
"Let's kick some ass!" he shouted, and his shotgun thundered.
Maya leaned against the hood her rented aircar, crossed her arms, and considered the Spectre before her. Nihlus Kyrik moved with a distracted attentiveness, sweeping the garage with his omnitool and glancing around with quick, avian jerks of his head and bright green eyes, hunting for threats. Yet, despite the turian's activity, he spoke with focus and purpose.
"We appear to be secure here, for the moment," he said, the flanged voice clear and stiff, as though he were talking to the Citadel Council themselves. "Some of those humans must have escaped, however. They will report back soon."
"I didn't think the bandits operated so openly on the Citadel," Maya said, and Nihlus shook his head in a quick, sharp motion. It looked like an acquired gesture, likely picked up from humans or asari.
"This is not the borderlands," he said, his tone pensive. "Normally they are more discreet, and do not send entire platoons into marketplace sectors. Something has changed."
"Something other than a Siren coming to the Citadel?" Maya asked, raising an eyebrow.
"A Siren is a prize, but not worth the kind of exposure this attack will bring," the turian replied. His eyes flicked down to his omnitool for a moment. "This crime boss, Fist, has been making power grabs across the Citadel in recent weeks - a string of murders, assaults, and thefts that have been drawing attention. Including mine."
"And you saw a large movement of his men, followed them, and found me," Maya concluded, and Nihlus bobbed his head in agreement. The Siren frowned. Captain Bailey had indicated Fist was trouble, but not so insane as to draw down a Citadel Spectre on his head. Then again, he'd just taken a shot at a Siren too. Was what he wanted worth earning those kinds of enemies?
"Any idea what he's after?" she asked, and the Spectre looked up at her. His eyes and the painted cartilage mask that was his face were unreadable, and he spent a couple of seconds regarding the Siren, clearly considering his words.
Of course, she knew what he was after. Barla Von had already warned her.
"Eridian technology," Nihlus finally said. "He has made inquiries and launched several heists regarding Eridian artifacts and research information, in addition to more typical underworld power plays."
"Why would a crime lord care about Eridian technology?" Maya asked, only partially feigning confusion. After all, someone like Fist might make a lot of money selling the tech, but he wouldn't have the resources to use the materials, and the money he would make off of the technology wouldn't be worth the heat from his new enemies. She may have known what he wanted but not why. Yet, at least.
"Because he is in the employ of another party," Nihlus mused, his mandibles spreading and then clicking together. "He has already betrayed his former employer-"
"The Shadow Broker, yeah, I know," Maya replied, and Nihlus bobbed his again, apparently satisfied he wouldn't have to handle any more exposition. Maya exhaled, putting the pieces together.
"That was why he attacked me," Maya said. "I have data regarding the excavation of the device on Eden Prime. You know the one I'm talking about, right?"
Nihlus bobbed his head again, and despite his mask-like visage, she could see the thoughtfulness in his eyes.
"The device that disappeared during the attack on Eden Prime," he replied, mandibles tight against his jaw. The wheels spun in Maya's head as she put more pieces together.
"Fist making a huge power grab for Eridian tech," she said slowly, clicking together the evidence, "at the same time as a major attack on an Alliance colony over an Eridian device. Not a coincidence."
"Even if it is, I need to question him," Nihlus said, a sudden hardness in his voice.
"We need to question him," Maya replied, and the Spectre hesitated for just a heartbeat before another head-bob. "He already took a shot at me once today. I'd rather not let him think he can get away with it."
"Acceptable," Nihlus replied, and gestured toward her rental car. "You will follow my lead." It wasn't a request or even an order - just a stark truth. She nodded.
"Fine by me," Maya replied, opening the car door. As she settled into the driver's seat, Nihlus strode around the vehicle. His omnitool lit up, and he glanced down. He froze for a single step, them quickly flipped up the passenger door and sat down.
"There has been a disturbance in Zakera Ward, near Chora's Den."
"Never heard of it," Maya said.
"Fist's preferred base of operations." Nihlus stared at his omnitool as Maya started the car and ran through the pre-lift cycle. "Something is happening there."
"Care to elaborate?" she asked.
"Corpses, fire, explosions. What one would expect at a disturbance in a human Ward," he said. The car began to lift. "We will have to hurry if we're to find anything useful in the wreckage."
Maya nodded and gunned the engine, and they shot off into the perpetual twilight of the Wards.
When faced with a large number of well-armed enemies, most men would take cover and fight from safety, using fire-and-maneuver to assault and flank the enemy. That was what sane people did.
Brick was pounding toward the enemy instead of away, and Tali, despite her better judgment, was right behind him, covering his back.
He wasn't sure if Fist's bandits expected that. They certainly didn't act like they did - save the psychos, who leapt at the charging slab of muscle and shotgun with gleeful, nonsensical shouts and swinging blades.
"I'll slurp a coffee mixed from your souls and my pain!" one of the psychos screamed, right before Brick punched him across the street, landing in a jellied heap. Another chopped at his flank with a rusty, jagged blade that looked like it had been made from junkyard scrap, and the weapon cut into his shield. The barrier's charge dropped, but it held.
Tali shot the psycho in the gut, nearly blasting him in half and showering everybody in blood. She pumped the Hyperion weapon and pivoted, firing another blast at one of the baseline human thugs trying to flank them as Brick avalanched his way toward them. She saw barriers collapse and blood fly, but the bandit dove for cover while screaming in pain. Bullets ripped toward them from a dozen weapons directly ahead, but most deflected off their shields, and nothing came from behind them.
Chitikka made sure of that, in a way only a war machine built and programmed around the behavioral processes of an angry skag could manage. Mangled bodies flew through the air or were blasted apart by the robot's cannons as it charged among the bandits on the far side of the street, keeping their attention wholly locked on it and giving Tali and her unexpected ally a chance to charge the remaining thugs.
Which was still a completely insane tactic, she was convinced.
Humans.
"Might wanna get a step back," Brick snarled, and Tali thought she heard an edge of pleasure in his tone, He shoved his own shotgun into the face of the last remaining psycho and dlew his head to vapor, before dropping the weapon.
And Brick roared with such savage volume that his voice shook her bones, and then he truly charged.
It wasn't just a stomping, thundering advance, it was a screaming avalanche of meat and promised violence. The rampaging slab of muscle and lunacy that was her ally closed on the nearest car the bandits were taking cover behind. Fist's men let out shouts of fear and panic, but they were drowned out by a tremendous roar filled with random consonants, and Brick kicked the car with one huge leg. With horrific clash of metal and ceramic, the aircar flipped over on its side, and Brick hauled back one arm and punched it straight into the bandits, A solid ton of metal, plastic, and crash-glass smashed into the trio of bandits and carried them back into the wall of one of the shops several meters away, and a burst of expanding blood erupted from beneath the vehicle, accompanied by the screech and crash of the aircar.
"MORE."
That one word from Brick sent several of the nearest bandits fleeing in terror, but a human nearly as huge as Brick answered the challenge with a shout of his own and advanced, leveling a shotgun at Brick. The weapon roared, firing a volley of projectiles that ignited in mid-flight and screamed toward the berserker like rockets. They slammed into Brick's shield and collapsed it. Blood flew, and Brick staggered.
Then he laughed.
And the shield detonated in a tremendous blast of concussive force that blazed out, hurling shrapnel and debris and body parts in all directions and knocking Tali and the human bruiser on their butts.
"NOVA SHIELD, BITCH!" Brick thundered and he crashed into the sitting bruiser, one hand wrapping around the huge human's neck and lifting him over his head. Brick then choke-slammed the bruiser into the street so hard that Tali heard vertebrae shattering.
"Keelah," Tali swore quietly, equal parts amazed and horrified by the spectacle.
"WHO WANTS MORE?" the berserker screamed, starting toward the remaining bandits.
None of them did, as the remaining thugs simply threw their weapons down and started running in a well-advised state of berserker watched them running, panting for several seconds, before he started laughing.
"Pussies," Brick spat, grinning. He turned back toward Tali, who stared in amazement. "What, never seen a pissed off human before?"
"Not one so, ah," Tali said, fumbling for the words. "Not a human so . . . large."
Brick laughed again.
The rumble of aircar engines descended from overhead, and they both snapped their eyes up. Tali's HUD fed her data the moment her eyes locked on the trio of descending cars: model, known weak points, performance characteristics, passenger capacity. It also also highlighted items of interest, such as the rocket launcher poking out of one of the aircars' window.
Both quarian and berserker bolted, diving for cover behind other parked vehicles. The launcher spat out a trio of rockets a moment later - probably a Vladof design that shot multiple missiles per volley - that screamed down toward them. Tali managed to get the bulk of one of the aircars between herself and the unguided missiles, and a tremendous surge of noise and force shook the street. Shrapnel cut through the air, and she heard Brick snarl in pain a couple of meters away.
"Assholes," he grunted, and over the echoes of the detonation Tali could hear more gunfire and the roar of the engines as the aircars landed. A glance at her HUD showed reports from Chitikka's systems, and her blood went cold. The mecha-skag had taken a beating already, and her cannon ammunition was entirely depleted, but she was turning to face the new threats regardless.
Then the bandit with the missile launcher targeted the hulking, loyal machine and put three more missiles straight into her head.
"No, Chitikka!" Tali shouted, activating her control menu while the mecha-skag's systems reported multiple system failures. Not even her own engineering could compete with the kind of anti-armor firepower the bandits were bringing to bear. The mecha-skag leapt out of the cloud of smoke and fire and debris, trailing sparking wires and dangling components, and loosed a garbled, static-filled roar. Tali could see fluids leaking from crumpled panels, two of the cannons were warped to uselessness, and the jaws were locked open by damaged hydraulics.
"Retreat !" she commanded. Blue light swirled around the battered machine, components breaking down into glittering motes that vanished as the mecha-skag was broken down and phased into the digistruct space in Tali's own SDU.
"How long we got?" Brick grunted beside her.
"How long until what?" Tali asked.
"'Till that badass 'bot of yours fixes itself?" he asked.
"Hours, if I'm lucky! Chitikka's not a mass-produced turret like Dahl or Atlas uses!" Tali said. "She's much more complex! I can't just-"
"Right, okay, we're on our own," Brick said, poking his head out of cover as the bandits in the aircars fanned out. One of them toting the enormous rocket launcher that had mortally wounded Chitikka, hopped onto the top of one car. He was a tall, lean human who wore shoulderpads with flashing holographic lights and a gas mask covered in spikes. A large, flashing sign covered his crotch, gleaming with the words "SAFETY FIRST" in huge letters, according to her HUD's translator.
"Damn," she hissed, recognizing the lunatic human from what she'd seen inside Chora's Den. "That's Fist's second-in-command. They called him Nine-Toes."
"Why the hell would they call him that?" Brick asked.
"He's a charitable philanthropist who gives back to the community," Tali muttered, and Brick grunted a laugh.
"Give up the data, suit-stain!" shouted the bandit, hefting his rocket launcher. "And I'll kill you quick!"
"Suit . . . stain?" Brick muttered. "That's a new one."
"Do we have a plan?" Tali asked, mind racing. Brick shrugged.
"Punch 'em till they die from it?" he suggested.
"That's not a plan!" she muttered, glancing around the street for something they could use. They needed to at least reach cover. Nine-Toes couldn't risk blowing them to pieces with the launcher before he recovered the data, so-
"Running out of time, grinder!" Nine-Toes shouted. "This dog's getting hungry!" He leveled the launcher at their cover.
"Punching things has a fine history of successful conflict resolution, in my observation," Brick said.
"I can't throw cars with my bare hands," Tali hissed back. "And we won't survive a charge against that launcher."
"Says you," Brick grunted. He jabbed a meaty finger at his chest. "I think we've got a chance."
"Five!" Nine-Toes called, hungry glee in his words. "Four!"
"Alright, time to go punch him!" Brick said, cracking his knuckles. And to her horror, Tali couldn't find any other way out of the situation without Chitikka's help.
"Three!" Nine-Toes yelled.
Then he was on fire.
A roiling sphere of purple-tinged dark energy erupted around him, flames rolling off of it, and Nine-Toes was yanked off his feet. His bandits dove for cover at the unexpected attack, and then scrambled even faster as a barrage of gunfire rained down from above. Bullets tinged with the blue sparks of a shock-elemental weapon hammered the ground around them.
Another aircar screamed down from overhead, swooping toward the quarian and berserker. It landed with the heavy crash of a barely-controlled descent, and the driver-side doors flew open.
"Get inside!" shouted a turian sitting in the driver's seat, his face painted a deep red with white tribal markings. He waved furiously toward them, and neither Tali nor Brick hesitated, though Brick's expression shifted to disappointment as he ran toward the car. Tali scrambled toward the car, sudden hope lending speed to her legs.
The bandits began to return sporadic fire, fitful bursts of poorly-aimed bullets that deflected off the turian's vehicle. Nine-Toes screamed as the fire from the swirling energy around him burned his flesh, thrashing and shouting in pain and rage. Tali dove into the backseat of the car, with Brick right behind her, pausing only to scoop up his discarded shotgun.
"Stay down!" shouted the turian as he closed the door, and gunned the engine. The car jerked up into the air, bullets smashing against the metal frame. The vehicle swerved as it ascended, and the passenger door opened as it jerked to a halt two levels above the street.
Another human, a female clad in tight ballistic weaves with blue hair and strange skin markings running down the left side of her body, jumped into the passenger seat, a smoking Maliwan submachinegun in her hands.
"Get us out of here!" she shouted, pulling the door down, but the turian was already accelerating away as she spoke.
The silence in the aircar after all the noise and violence and gibbering about meat bicycles was rather jarring. Maya looked over their passengers as they flew, pointedly trying to ignore the damage to her rental after Nihlus had taken the driver's seat.
The quarian girl was shaking, likely withdrawal from adrenaline - or, well, whatever the quarians had for adrenaline. Otherwise she looked unharmed, though she gripped her shotgun in tight knuckles that only slowly relaxed. It took her a minute to put the weapon away into her SDU. The flickers of light highlighted the other, much more battered passenger. Maya wondered how much of the blood that was on the human bruiser's body was his own.
"You two injured?" Maya asked.
"Nah, I'm good," the bruiser said.
"No . . . no ruptures," the quarian girl said, slowly. She shivered once more and went still after taking some long breaths. "Thank you for the timely rescue," she added. "But who are you?"
"Nihlus Kyrik," the turian driver said. "Citadel Special Tactics and Recon."
"A Spectre?" the huge man said, surprised. "Didn't think we rated that kind of backup." He glanced toward Maya, and gave her a look she was familiar with as he inspected her left arm. "And a Siren, too? Man, I feel special!"
"Name's Maya," she said with a nod toward the hulking man.
"Brick," he replied with an ugly bit genuine smile. "I punch things."
Maya nodded and turned her eyes toward the quarian girl. The light on the front of her mask was flickering on and off, indicating she was still breathing hard, no matter how much she'd calmed down.
"You sure you're okay, ma'am?" she asked.
"Yes, I - I'm fine," the quarian said after a moment. "Uh. Tali. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Migrant Fleet Manufacturing. How, ah, did you find us?"
"You blew up Chora's Den and were shooting Fist's men," Maya said with a shrug. "We followed the flaming lines to the gun-toting dots."
"I see," Tali said, nodding.
"You're corporate?" Brick asked the quarian with a frown. It was the kind of frown reserved for discovering your honey jar still had live bees inside it.
"Long story," she said, shaking her head. "Not relevant to the current gunfights."
"I'll be the judge of that when we're done debriefing," Nihlus replied. Brick glared at him, and Maya did too. Nihlus' eyes flickered back and forth between them. "Do not take that the wrong way. I intend to bring you in for protective custody, considering that you're now being targeted by a human wanted for a number of serious crimes."
"I see," Tali said, shrinking back in her seat. That just made Maya more annoyed, and for a moment she was reminded of the monks on Athenas, and how they had treated the people under their rule.
"Don't worry," the Siren said, "We'll protect you."
"Damn straight," Brick growled. Nihlus again glanced between them, and his head bobbed quickly in acknowledgement to the unspoken statement. Tali relaxed a little bit more at their words, and sat up straighter, but still looked uncertain. Or that was what Maya guessed by her body language.
"What did those thugs want with you?" the Spectre asked after a few moments.
"I was on my Pilgrimage," she started, then paused and glanced around the car. "My passage into adulthood. I was searching for something useful for the Fleet."
"Something to refit?" Brick asked, and she shook her head.
"That's what the Fleet does, but we don't normally look for things to modify or refit for resale on Pilgrimage," she said. "I was searching for ships or resources, something with long-term value. Tradition is to keep corporate business outside of the Pilgrimage. But, um, well, what I found was something much more interesting than ships or unclaimed mineral or fuel resources. I found evidence of geth movements outside the Perseus Veil."
"When was this?" Nihlus asked, his interest becoming suddenly sharp and focused.
"About two weeks ago," Tali said. "About ten days before the attack on Eden Prime. I tracked down a geth ship to an uncharted world in the Terminus. I was able to disable one of the platforms and remotely access the ship's database through it. I didn't get much data, but what I did find was extraordinary." She took a sharp breath.
"The geth are searching for an Eridian Vault! And the data indicates they may know where it is!"
Maya's eyes widened, and Nihlus went very still. Brick, however . . he simply nodded. Interesting.
But holy crap, an Eridian Vault? The Holy Grail of Eridian technology? No wonder everyone was shooting each other over this data. The possibilities of a real Vault were endless. The things she could learn about Sirens and the Eridians . . . .
"What happened then?" Maya asked, shaking herself out of that line of thought. "You didn't take that data back to the Fleet?"
"I attempted to," Tali said. "But the geth detected my intrusion and pursued me out of the system. My ship was damaged and I fled to Citadel space to escape them. I came here on the Citadel to find the Migrant Fleet Manufacturing office on Zakera Ward, I contacted the officers here."
She paused, her fingers tapping together for a moment.
"We arranged a meeting. I reached the site, but when I arrived I was attacked and wounded. I had to summon Chitikka and shoot my way out of there." She paused again, and spoke very quietly. "A quarian betrayed me."
Maya suddenly felt like punching something, and Brick's growl indicated that he agreed.
"Why didn't you go to Citadel Security?" Nihlus asked. his tone a bit more gentle.
"The ones who attacked me were wearing C-Sec uniforms," Tali replied.
Yes. Maya really felt like punching something now.
"Awkward," Brick said, his knuckles cracking.
"I fled to the nearest clinic I could find," Tali continued. "Doctor Michel's clinic."
"Yeah, I was there," Brick added. "She put you in touch with Fist, huh? He sent some goons to shut her up."
"A bad idea," Maya said. Tali sighed.
"Fist said he could get me to safety. Maybe take my information to the Shadow Broker." Tali shook her head. "I didn't know who to trust. My own people were compromised. I realized the moment I was in Fist's back rooms that he was going to betray me. He didn't really try to hide it. So I summoned Chitikka and shot my way out of there."
"And that was how I found you," Brick said. Maya and Nihlus nodded.
"I hope I do not need to summon Chitikka and shoot my way out of wherever we're going," Tali added after a moment.
"Rest assured," Nihlus said. "Once we reach C-Sec I will personally protect you while we investigate and bring whoever was behind this to justice."
There was a deadly conviction in his tone. Maya had rarely heard true sincerity in someone's promises, but she recognized it in Nihlus' words. He meant them, and Tali picked up on that as well. She relaxed further at the Spectre's assurances.
Maya understood how the kid had to be feeling. Betrayed, alone, cut off . . . the Siren had felt the same way the day she had learned the truth about the people who had raised her. Unlike Tali, though, Maya had possessed the power and training to smash her way free from the monks who had planned to use her to cement their power.
Then again, maybe she was selling the quarian short. She had, after all, built what reports indicated was a massive walking tank that could fit into her backpack, and had already shot her way out of two ambushes when they'd rescued her.
"No," Maya said, glaring at Nihlus. "Tali doesn't need protection. She needs backup." The Siren glanced back to the quarian, who regarded her with interest. "Because you're not going to let these jackasses get away with this, are you?"
The quarian shook her head after a moment.
"No," she muttered, sitting up straighter. "We're going to find the bosh'tet who set me up and shove a missile launcher up his waste disposal port."
" . . . Agreed," Nihlus finally said after a moment's contemplation.
"Hell yeah!" Brick said, smacking his knuckles and palm together. "I'll get behind that."
The aircar descended toward a landing pad close to the central Presidium ring, connected to one of the C-Sec precinct buildings. The wide, open platform was mostly clear, save for a couple of squadcars and a pair of C-Sec officers on duty. A short walkway connected the pad and the building, and the door opened as Nihlus brought the aircar down.
"I hope I don't have to pay for the damages to this thing," Maya muttered as they landed. "I'm not being held responsible for what a Spectre does to my rental."
"We can reimburse the damages with a single call," Nihlus replied as they clambered out of the vehicle. Across the walkway, they could see a pair of C-Sec officers escorting a baseline human male wearing a cream-colored suit toward them. "Miss nar Rayya, we'll need to get you inside swiftly and begin a detailed debriefing. Everything you know about the geth, Fist, and this Vault will be essential, after what happened on Eden Prime."
"I understand," she said with a nod.
Then a heavy-lift aircar slammed with a screech of metal on metal into the pad, smashing one of the policemen standing there and leaving the other staring in shock. The quartet whirled toward the wrecked car, whose doors were hurled open.
Nine-Toes and a dozen bandits piled out, half of them psychos who loosed a torrent on insane gibbering as they charged.
"You pissed off the wrong dog, suit-stain!" Nine-Toes shouted. His skin was covered in livid red and black burns, but if that bothered him, it didn't show. He raised the same Vladof launcher he had been carrying earlier and pointed it at Tali.
She finally admitted that this was not her day.
Missiles erupted, and screams sounded as the quartet scattered. Tali dove for cover behind another aircar, only to feel a sudden, powerful blow of raw force that swatted her in midair. Heat bled through her suit, and noise hammered her helmet's audio filters while her helmet's faceplate turned nearly opaque from a flash of light.
She hit the pad and rolled several times before coming to a halt. She sucked in the air that the blast had knocked out of her lungs, and rolled over onto her back. She triggered her SDU as she rolled, heart pounding in sudden panic, and her shotgun appeared in her hands. The quarian looked up, her body shaking and head pounding.
"-alt the WOUND!" she heard as she was looking up, and caught sight of a lean, tattooed shape hurtling through the air, wielding an improvised axe. She blasted the psycho in mid-air with two hasty shots. His left leg exploded off of his body. He fell in a tumble of screaming pain and spraying blood, and Tali rolled away.
"But I can still hop-hop-hop to the playground!" he cried, thrashing toward her until she put another shell through his masked face.
Tali whirled away from the decapitated human, and saw chaos across the landing pad. C-Sec troops were trading fire with bandits. Brick was beating a psycho to death with another psycho. Nihlus was shooting a bandit held up in another of the Siren Maya's weird burning singularities.
And Nine-Toes was striding toward her, his spike-covered mask locked on Tali as he raised his launcher.
"Die like a good rat!" he shouted, raising the rocket launcher.
Her HUD warned her that his shields were fully intact, and she didn't have enough ammo in the shotgun to drop them. She did the next best thing, and her omnitool flashed as she pointed her free hand at him. A tech mine was digistructed and launched in a heartbeat, impacting Nine-Toes dead center in the forehead and releasing a burning burst of ECM. He growled, shaking his head, and Tali frantically reloaded the shotgun.
"Cute toy," he snarled, and raised the launcher. He pulled the trigger as Tali brought up her shotgun.
A poof of smoke escaped from the back of the launcher, but otherwise nothing happened.
"This one," Tali muttered, and pulled the trigger, "is much less so."
The last part of the sentence was drowned out as she emptied the magazine, putting a dozen shots through Nine-Toes' shield. The first eight blew apart the barriers in a storm of ripping buckshot, and the last four tore into meat and armor. Blood and chunks of flesh erupted out of Nine-Toes' back, and he jerked and fell to his knees.
But he didn't fall, somehow. Despite gaping holes in his flesh and weeping blood running down his stomach and legs, he was still alive, and hurled himself to his feet. A buzz-axe digistructed in his hands as he bolted straight toward a terrified and shocked Tali.
"Scream for me!" he half-shouted, half-gargled, and Tali dropped her shotgun, backing away and drawing a pistol. He leapt through the air, trailing blood, and she twisted and ducked. The spinning buzzsaw blade barely missed her but tore into her shields, triggering a bright flash of blue light as they deflected the blow. She fired as he stumbled past her, bullets blowing out chunks of muscle from his stomach and flank.
He had to be on his last legs, she knew. Mutant or not, no human could survive those injuries. But she also knew that in the time it would take him to bleed out or simply collapse from such massive trauma, she would be dead.
"Cut you open," Nine-Toes gargled. He spun toward her, his movements clumsy and drunken, and surged forward again, raising his axe. She kept firing as she backed away, and he stumbled, slowing with each step.
The pistol clicked empty, and Nine-Toes lurched forward again, axe igh.
A hand, crafted of gleaming black metal, grabbed the raised buzz-axe and twisted it out of Nine-Toes' hand with casual ease, He spun around, howling in fury, and the same metal arm hit him solidly under the chin in a rising uppercut. Nine-Toes was lifted clean off his feet and sent backflipping through the air.
A human with dark skin, iron-gray hair, a fine-tailored cream-colored suit, and a black eyepatch stepped into view, raising a Torgue pistol in his organic right hand. He shot Nine-Toes with a single round in midair as he fell back toward the ground, and the gyrojet missile hit the bandit dead center in the chest as he fell.
Exploded chunks of the bandit hit the pad a moment later.
Silence reigned, and the human turned toward Tali, holstering his pistol.
"Are you injured, miss?" he asked, his voice thickly accented. She was unfamiliar with human accents and couldn't place it.
"No, I am fine, thank you," she offered, exhaling, and turned to look across the pad. The rest of the bandits were thoroughly dead; between the Siren the Spectre, the berserker, and C-Sec, they'd made quick work of them. "Who are you?"
"Ambassador Donnel Udina," the eyepatch-wearing human offered with a short, polite nod. "At your service."
Codex - Technology - Shields
Kinetic barriers, more commonly referred to as "shields" provide effective defense against small arms, melee weaponry, and elemental-based energy ammunition. Whether a starship's massive barriers or a soldier's personal defense system, all shields separate on several basic principles. Kinetic barriers generate repulsive mass effect field from emitters, using built-in sensors to detect incoming objects moving at sufficient velocity. The rising threat of attacks by close assault - in part due to the prevalence of humanity in the galaxy - has led to modified shields with smarter sensor and computational capability to deflect melee attacks while still allowing the shield's user to sit down or be passed objects.
Shield systems vary depending on type. Many modern suits of armor incorporate full-body shields using a number of small emitters in the armor, allowing for greater overall shield strength. On the other hand, "personal" shields, in the form of self-contained shield devices, are commonly used by plainclothes police, private citizens, and mercenaries. These devices are often worn under clothes or on a belt. An added advantage of these personal shields is that they allow for specialized attachments and subsystems. Most shield subsystems are powered by the same generator mounted in the shield device itself, and provide a variety of benefits.
Codex - Technology - Shield Subsystems
Shield subsystems come in a variety of types, based on the preferences of each shield's manufacturing corporation. For this reason, certain mercenary and military forces prefer the shields of certain corporations due to the unique benefits that they offer. It is rare to find these subsystems used outside of shield devices, due to the "two-for-one" nature of the equipment.
"Nova" shields, manufactured by both Maliwan and Torgue-Urdnot, generate an expanding burst of energy - powered by an internal capacitor - when the shield's charge is depleted to ward off attackers. While a powerful defensive tool, these shields are frowned upon by many militaries for obvious reasons, and are favored by individuals, particularly assassins or wetworks operatives who are not concerned with collateral damage. A similar but much more common variant is the "Spike" shield, which generates a short, high-powered burst of thermal, electrical, or concussive force in response to close-quarters attacks. Some variants instead launch miniaturized acidic mines to deal with heavily-armored attackers.
"Adaptive" shields, manufactured by the Anshin Corporation, include a built-in adaptive technology that subtly adjusts the shield's properties to help repel attacks of a certain type upon detecting that form of attack being used. For example, the shield will intensify to defend against the concussive force of an explosive attack, or adjust the speed of barrier rotation to deflect acidic attacks. Adaptive shields also often contain a built-in medical suite that can assist onboard medical equipment for personal armor when properly interfaced.
A common, modified variant of the Adaptive shield is the "Roid" shield, which injects the user with a vicious cocktail of various psychoactive drugs and stimulants in response to the shield collapsing, supercharging the shield's wearer and making them tougher and stronger in battle. Users of Roid shields have been reported as being able to match krogan in close quarters and survive otherwise fatal wounds. Roid shields are common among human bandits and other outlaws.
Hyperion-built "Amp" shields serve the opposite purpose. When properly interfaced with a weapons system, the Amp shield can transfer a small amount of its capacitor's charge to boost the coil in a mass accelerator or digistruct weapon, giving a powerful boost to the weapon's first shot - at the cost of greatly enhanced recoil and a significant drain to the shield's strength.
Author's Notes:Chapter's original title was "Paychecks" but then I realized the chapter had very little to do with getting paid, but a great deal to do with terminal applications of knuckles.
One thing I struggled with in this chapter was writing Tali properly. I was having trouble writing her as this in-over-her-head girl who needed to be protected - until I had the same kind of realization that Maya has in this chapter. Tali doesn't need protection because she's some helpless wilting flower. She needs backup, because she's a badass whose only real flaw as a badass is lack of overall experience. This is No Gods, Only Guns. When in doubt, err on the side of kicking ass.
We'll be shifting back to our A plot with Roland and Lilith on Illium next chapter, as well as taking a look at a couple of other characters around the galaxy and seeing what they're up to.
Until next chapter . . . .