Yes, I am allowed to post chapters this early!
"Take point up ahead Fisher, do some recon for me." Shepard commanded.
"Yes sir." Tuchanka was an ugly planet, that was for sure, playing the game was one thing, but BEING there? It smelt like death, and it was not pretty to look at.
Shepard had briefed him on the situation, they were disarming the bomb to prevent Cerberus from shattering the fragile relationship between the Turians and Krogan forever. Up ahead was a very heavily fortified area, there was a turret set up by an engineer, several Cerberus troopers and a Nemesis.
"It's heavily fortified, they've got some sort of sniper, and her gun is similar to mine, and they have a turret set up. They've also got a handful of Assault troopers and an Engineer."
"Copy that, you're job is to take out that Engineer, after you do that we'll open fire to cover you so that you can get to cover."
"I'll overload his shields, and then take him out, on my mark." He started counting. "3...2...1...Mark!"
The Engineer went down instantly, he had absolutely no time to act as his only line of defense was stripped from him, followed up by a quick head shot. It was mayhem after that as Shepard and co. and the Assault troopers opened fire.
Tom managed to get into cover, and when the gunfire on Cerberus' side ceased he peeked out, only to get his shields decimated by the turret which was still functioning. He attempted to duck, but he was too slow Nemesis got a clean shot right into his shoulder, which incapacitated Tom. The pain was brutal, Tom's left shoulder felt like it was on fire, even though the bullet wound was small it had done significant damage to his shoulder. But he had fallen behind cover, so he was safe, for the time being.
Shepard couldn't even see Tom from where he was at, so he didn't even know that Tom was down.
The only thoughts swimming through Tom's head was that it was over, he was going to die, right here, either by bleeding out or by the Nemsis alerting her squad mates to dispose of him, he never though it would end this way. That's when Section saved his life.
I'm going to inject you with some epinephrine, and release a dose of Medi-gel in the area around your shoulder, it shouldn't substitute for full scale surgery, but it should stop the bleeding and get you back on your feet, I'm using up 50% of it, that should last you for a while.
The effects of the medication kicked in instantly, and Tom was back on his feet in less then a minute, and by then the only enemy that was alive was the Nemsis which did not expect to get shot in the side of the head, she had assumed that she had killed that guy.
Tom muted his microphone on his helmet. "Thank you, you may have possibly saved my life."
I'm just doing my job.
"How are you up and walking? That shoulder wound should've incapacitated you." Shepard said, worry was evident in his tone after seeing that shoulder wound.
"Medi-gel and maybe a little dose of adrenaline got me back on my feet, I'll have it looked at when we get back to the Normandy." Tom seemed calm on the outside, but on the inside he was gritting his teeth, that wound hurt, even with the Medi-gel sealing the wound and a does of epinephrine flowing through his system it still ached and he couldn't rotate his arm very much or it would hurt a lot more.
"They're retreating, I don't like the look of this." Shepard said, paranoid. The shuttles flew away, leaving a sense of foreboding in most of the squad, Tom already knew what was going to happen so that was a comfort to him. They eventually reached the bomb after a short walk.
"That bomb is huge." Liara said.
"If this bomb detonated it would cause countless casualties and destroy 95% of the land mass in this area." EDI said. Tom grimaced, that was definitely not a good thing.
"Let's get over there, the Turians are going to need our help."
"Commander Shepard, I'm glad you could make it." Victus seemed relieved to see Shepard.
"Will you be able to disable this bomb quickly?" Shepard asked.
"I'm going to have to created a bypass, that'll take time."
"How long?"
"About 10 minutes, it shouldn't be too long." Just then, one of Victus' men got shot in the back.
"That's too long, I'll have my best hacker take a look at it, he'll be able to do it much quicker then you would be able, I need you to defend him."
Victus looked crushed. "But I-"
"This isn't the time for arguing! Tom can get past it much faster then you would, and he needs protection while I face those Cerberus goons head on, do you understand?!"
Victus nodded. "Yes sir."
"Good, now cover one of my best men." Shepard said before jumping over a ledge to engage Cerberus.
"Victus I have a question for you." The Turian spun around.
"How good of a sniper are you?" Tom asked.
"Decent."
"Take this thing then." Tom handed him the Widow.
"Good luck! I'm going to hack this bomb now."
Hacking the bomb was easy, it was just that Tom knew the trap that Cerberus had planted so he coded a command into the bomb's interface. It was basically a script that said 'If x does this, execute n' in this case x was the bomb counting down and n was to drop the trigger mechanism, it was a pretty smart idea. So when he did use his pre-coded bypass to break the encrpytion on the bomb, he executed the command as soon as he saw the countdown.
"Bomb is disarmed." Tom said as he drew his Mattock and started laying down cover fire to Shepard's squad as they engaged Cerberus.
"Shepard, bomb is defused, there was a trap to set the bomb to blow up if a disarm operation was tried, but I stopped it."
"Copy that, the cover fire is appreciated, please continue to lay down fire as we finish these guys off." Shepard said.
Cerberus retreated soon after they realized that there was no point to continue fighting because the bomb had already been disarmed. Or maybe they were just sending more troops to attempt to kill Shepard which was kind of sad, considering they were sending those men to their deaths, and Cerberus should've seen that the bomb's trigger mechanism was not on the bomb. This disgusted Tom, why would they waste their own people like that?
"They're backing off, good thing we came prepared." Shepard said.
"Commander, I am in your debt, without you would never have been able to disable this bomb." Victus said.
"We can go over this later Victus, lets just get the hell out of here before Cerberus decides to throw some more troops at us." Shepard said, all business. This was a good thing for Tom too, since the adrenaline had worn off and his shoulder once again felt like it was on fire, he didn't feel very good either, he almost felt delirious.
"Victus I have one question for you..." He slightly slurred the 'you' but Victus ignored it.
"And what is that?"
"Can I... have my..." All the colour drained from Tom's face as he collapsed, but at least he got the last part of his sentence in.
"Sniip-r rif..." He fell unconscious.
...
Everything was blurry. His shoulder hurt like hell as well. "Chakwas, I think he's waking up."
"Oh dear, you just laid him down! I better dose him with another painkiller, if he woke up now he would just cause himself more pain and suffering."
Suddenly everything felt fuzzy as Tom felt a foreign substance flow through his veins.
"That worked, can you tell me why he's like this?" Tom fell unconscious after this statement.
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"His wound seems to have gotten infected, which is strange, considering that he had Medi-gel protecting it, do you know what shot him?"
"I believe it was a Cerberus sniper, why?"
"It seems from these readings that he has some radiation in his blood, he may have been hit by a sledge hammer round from that sniper, and back in the day that ammo was covered in polonium, which was meant to cause radiation sickness in the receiver."
"Will he be alright?"
"That adrenaline that seems to have worn off will have stopped it in it's tracks for about 45 minutes, but it would come back right after that, which is probably why he fell like that, he'll be fine with a drug I have here which will cure the disease, but he'll be out of action for a while since these pills make you extremely lethargic, the bullet wound should be easy to surgically remove.
"At least he'll get better, watch over him for me doc, he's a good man."
"That's my job, and you of all people should know how good I am at it, Shepard."
"I should go now, I have business to attend to."
"Commander."
There wasn't actually any business Shepard had to attend to, he just hated seeing his crew members like that, back when he was allied with Cerberus Garrus was a constant reminder, to him it felt like a beacon broadcasting his failure to keep Garrus safe, no one blamed him of course, the issue was the he was blaming himself.
Why did he have to be a hero? It felt like he was the only one actually doing anything in this bloody galaxy to ensure that everyone saw the next sunrise, it was exhausting and mentally taxing to play diplomat for 15 minutes and then shoot someone up 20 minutes later, he hated doing it, there better be a good reward for it at the end of all this.
At least he had people like Admiral Anderson and his crew to look to, they meant more to him they anyone else in this stupid war. If only they had listened to his warnings three years ago they might of been able to save more lives, at least Garrus had been able to do that, with enough shouting of course. He didn't even realized he was there until Specialist Traynor called out to him.
"Shepard are you alright?"
"Uh wha? Oh I'm fine, just think about some things."
She shot him a look. "You have some new messages at your private terminal."
"Right."
There were several of them, but he was barely paying attention, know he wouldn't get any work done if he went on like this, Shepard excused himself from the CIC and went up to the Captain's cabin, he needed some rest if he wanted to keep a level head.
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...
Tom didn't have a pleasant sleep, because he had a nightmare about drowning, which was pretty random. He woke up hyperventilating, and a shot of pain ran right through his shoulder at the sudden movement of his body.
"Oh dear, are you feeling alright Tom?"
"Just a bad dream, besides that I have some pretty bad shoulder pains, and I just don't feel right."
"That's because you have some moderate radiation poisoning, here take these pills, they should help."
Tom swallowed the pills, along with a whole glass of water unceremoniously.
"Thanks, why did I get radiation poisoning again? I thought I fell unconscious from a bullet wound."
"Sadly, that bullet was a Sledge hammer round, which is coated in a poison to make it a bit more lethal, which is odd, since I haven't seen that type of ammo since 3 years ago when Shepard was chasing down Saren and things were much simpler."
"Wasn't that like 3 years ago or something? That ammo is pretty old."
"It is, I'm still wondering how they adapted it into today's weapons, since that ammo was pretty cumbersome."
"So how long will I in the medbay for?"
"If all goes well then less then 5 days, but if there's complications you might have to stay for the entire week, but I doubt that. The surgery will be happening tomorrow to remove that bullet, so just rest for now."
"I think I'll do that, I don't feel very energetic anyway." Tom laid down, he could rest for now, which was all he needed.
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...
"Wrex keep going, the bridge is out, but don't let that stop you, just GO!" Wrex heeded Shepard's advice and went on ahead.
"The chances of the Turians alone being capable of taking out that reaper are low, I suggest a different plan of attack when we exit these ruins and regroup with Wrex." EDI said.
"I agree EDI, although I-" a violent tremor shook the area, which silenced Shepard.
"That didn't sound normal." Kaiden said.
"Let's hope what ever's down here isn't interested in us, keep quiet as well, I don't want us to attract any attention." Shepard said, tense.
After a while of walking through the tunnels, Shepard came upon a rachni corpse.
"Wrex, we've got reaper modified rachni here, you seeing the same thing?"
"Yeah, ran into a few of them, didn't make much of a difference though."
"Copy that, we're nearing the end of the ruins, standby."
Shepard couldn't have been more happy to get out of those ruins and see the sun again, he along with the rest of the squad were also surprised when they saw some actual plant life, hadn't the Krogan destroyed most of their eco-system?
"Eve, we're seeing some actual plant life here."
"That's hope, all that's left of it for Tuchunka."
"You guys bombed most of it with nuclear fire right?"
"Yes, this place was once a beautiful planet, I hope that maybe after all of this is over that we can rebuild it."
"Sounds like a good plan, I hope you can follow through with it."
"Shepard can you hurry up? We've still have to figure out how to deal with that reaper, step on it!"
"We're coming Wrex, hold on."
Kalros was definitely active, there were tremors above ground now, but Shepard wasn't worried about that right now, there was a brute in front of him that needed to die, right now. Why couldn't anything ever be simple?
A/N: And that's a rap! This chapter was definitely more interesting since I got to show that Tom is in fact, NOT invincible like most people believe, sure he's got all the cool gadgets and stuff, but he's terrible at unarmed combat, especially when he only has his fists. And yes, epinephrine is an actually a real life thing for those of you that don't know that it's just a fancy word for adrenaline, and since Section has to have perfect grammar I was forced to not use it's simplified term. I have big plans for the future.
Reviews:
general-joseph-dickson: - This guy knows it.
redcollecter: I aim to please.
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