A/N: Sorry for the late update, time got away from me. Anyway I don't own anything and without further ado I present to you Chapter 30.

CryNet Phantom Operative designation Wraith

Current assignment: SSV Normandy SR1. Aide to Lt. Com Shepard, Spectre

Current Location: Virmire, Ten minutes out from Saren's Base of Operations

Current Time: February 26th, 16:03

The mission was getting well on its way. I was currently on my stomach hidden inside a bush next to Vanyali, the rest of the squad, minus Ashley and Kaidan, arrayed out around us,. All of our teams were in position and ready to go. We had already received recon reports from Serpent detailing geth strengths and positions. Now all that was left was for the assault to start.

"Overlord to all Callsigns, report in, over."

"Mannovai reporting in."

"Jaeto reporting in."

The two Salarian led squads responded to Kirrahe's request first. Next to me, Vanyali called in our own readiness.

"Sable is ready to get this party started. "

"Raptor here, lets fuck these guys up."

"Serpent in position."

"Overlord copies all. All callsigns commence assault. Out."

Next to me Vanyali crawled out of the bush she had been hiding in. "Well, lets do this thing. Form up on me, Column formation. Wraith move up. Make sure that there's no bad surprises for us."

"On it." Turning away from the squad I jogged up ahead, continuously scanning my surroundings with my visor. Once I got about a hundred meters ahead for the rest of the squad I slowed down to a brisk walk in order to not get too far ahead. I continued using the vegetation as cover in order to make sure that I would spot any hidden threats before they spotted me.

Before long however our path led me straight to the water covered ground, nestled between two cliff faces. "Shepard, its Wraith. I've arrived at waypoint delta. Once we get down here, we'll be wide open until we can assault the outposts."

"Understood. Wait there. We'll catch up to you before we move on."

"Got it."

I settled down in a nearby bush as I waited for the squad to arrive. It didn't take more than a few minutes before the armored figures of the squad stepped out of the undergrowth with a soft rustle.

"Alright girls and guys, you ready to get this party started?" Vanyali asked as she stepped out into the water.

I gave her a nod, stepping out beside her. "I'm in, your kind of parties are always fun."

"I know right?" She turned and grinned at me "What do you say Wraith, first one to a hundred kills is bought dinner by the other?"

I chuckled "Well I don't know. Its generally the man who's supposed to be the one to pay."

"Shouldn't be a problem. After all we all know that I'm gonna win."

"I wouldn't be so sure about your victory here. After all I plan on winning myself. And my plans generally end up working."

"Can we get going? I'd rather not stand here listening to you two flirt." Kaiden grumbled.

"They'll probably be too busy flirting to kill anything anyway." Wrex grunted. "I bet we'll end up killing more than both of them combined."

"Oi!" I turned to glare at Wrex.

"We'll take that bet." Shepard said from next to me. "In fact I bet that we'll end up doubling all of your scores combined."

"You're on! If we win then you pay for a night of drinks." Ashley challenged.

"And when we win?" I asked crossing my arms.

"Why then they pay for our date."

I tilted my head to the side. "Interesting, having others pay for our private outing. I'm not sure what to think."

"Don't worry. I'm sure that you will have plenty of opportunities to spend money on me." Vanyali teased patting me on the shoulder.

"We aren't very conventional are we?"

"Of course not. Where's the fun in being conventional? Now we should probably get going. I have a feeling the others are getting ready to mutiny."

Chuckling I followed Shepard as she started striding over the water covered ground towards the back entrance of the base.

"Alright guys." Shepard's voice had slipped into her commander mode "It looks like sight lines are going to be fairly short around here so Garrus you're going to be the only one one sniper duty. If things start getting a little close for your comfort, you can switch to your assault rifle. I'll leave that decision up to you."

"That works just fine for me Shepard."

"Good. As such you'll be taking up the rear. Liara and Tali are going to stay at mid range. Hit em with what you got, use your biotics and tech abilities to support the rest. Ash you're the best marksman of that group. Keep the others safe and do whatever damage you can."

"You got it skipper. I'll keep them safe."

"Kaiden I'll leave you as team leader of those guys. I'll be heading up the front with Wrex so I might not spot everything in the midst of combat, so if you see anything important, call it in."

"Understood commander."

"Like I mentioned earlier Wrex, you and me, we'll be right in their faces, keeping their attention on us."

"Right where the fun is." Wrex grinned before turning to glare at the others "You better not shoot me by accident."

"I should hope that they won't shoot any of us." Shepard grinned. "I don't think we need to remind you to check your fire."

Kaiden nodded "No problem. We'll target the guys further back from you. It should minimize the risks."

"What about me Shepard?" I had noticed that she had yet to mention me.

"You." She said turning to face me with a vicious smile on her face "can do what you do best. I'll leave the details to your discretion."

I grinned underneath my mask, nodding "That I can do. It will be fun."

"I'm glad you think so. I am after all counting on you to get enough kills to pull your weight in our competition." She said grinning as she turned to survey us all "and talking about that, I don't want any of you to be taking any extra risks because of this. Our lives are far more important than this competition. Do you all understand me?"

When we had all voiced our agreement she smirked "Now then" She placed her helmet over her head "Up and at em!"

"Enemy outpost up ahead. I counted twenty four geth, mostly standard platforms, a couple shock troopers interspersed among them. Nothing really dangerous that I saw." I reported, uncloaking in front of the squad.

"Any sign of those mortars or their satellite uplink?"

I shook my head "No. Not that I could tell. We are a bit far out to encounter those yet."

"I didn't think so. Probably further in, better defended." Shepard mused "Alright, everyone ready to see some action? Excellent. Lets go!"

Surprisingly for his size, Wrex was the first to make a move, with a loud battle cry he sprinted around the corner of the cliff we were behind and ran directly for the geth outpost. Shepard and I followed close behind the charging krogan. The rest of the squad followed us a short ways before beginning to settle into cover while the three of us charged head on at the geth.

"Maximum power."

I felt the familiar rush of energy flow through my body as my suit quickly enhanced my musculature giving me massively enhanced strength and speed. A second later and I had already outpaced Shepard and Wrex as I sped across the open ground towards the lightly fortified outpost. They might have been AI with near instantaneous reactions, but before the geth could do little more than turn and start raising their weapons, I heard two loud shouts from behind me, one a deep guttural krogan roar and the other a higher pitched but no less intimidating female voice. A moment later two blue streaks flew past me and smashed into the midst of the geth. The streaks solidified into the large heavy krogan form of Wrex and the far smaller Shepard next to him. The size differences between the two seemed to make little difference as they both sent a geth smashing into the rear wall. Immediately Wrex let out another roar and smashed another two geth away with the back of his hand. Next to him, Shepard blasted a group of three geth away with her shotgun just as I vaulted over a low wall and into the midst of the group of geth alongside the Krogan and N7. My SCAR spat forth tungsten bullets at a geth, which pierced through its shielding and sent it crumpling to the ground. Landing I regained my footing before planting my boot into a shock trooper, sending it flying back five meters where it embedded itself in a barricade with a loud screech of metal on metal. Without pausing I brought my rifle to bear on another geth that had just opened fire on shepard.

A short pull of the trigger and the geth's shields failed, allowing me to finish it off with a double tap to the head. I heard the loud crack of a mantis as the Geth fell to the ground, sparking from the wreckage of what used to be its head and a vapor trail appeared over my shoulder, connected to another geth that just a moment ago still had its head. Another burst from my SCAR broke through the shields of a nearby geth however only a single round made it through to glance off of its body as my overheat warning sounded. Without a moment of hesitation I pulled my Nova Pistol from its holster and fired twice at the shieldless geth. The geth that had been attempting to run into cover dropped like a marrionette with its strings cut as my two rounds penetrated its head.

Jumping up I avoided the inital shots that had been aimed at me, however the geth reacted quickly. Shifting their aim upward, they opened fire and I was barely able to put up my armor before I felt the rounds impact with little more force than a flurry of light punches. The impacts did however, alter my fall so that instead of landing in front of a geth as I had planned I was currently going to land in a very uncomfortable position on a nearby barricade. Twisting myself around i was able to avoid crashing into the barricade, instead planting my feet ontop of it and pushing off at an angle so that I managed to land on solid ground in a roll on the other side. Pulling out my shogun I finished my roll on my feet and pulled the trigger sending a blast of shrapnel at the geth that I had originally planned to land in front of, which was no longer standing where it had been earlier. Rather it was flying toward me surrounded in the blue aura of Shepard's biotics. My shotgun blast met the flying geth headon ripping through its shields and a second blast tore its way through the vulnerable chassis. The force of the two blasts had completely reversed the geths flying course and it continued flying away from me for another few seconds before the biotics died out and it fell to the ground.

This was just something that I just barely caught in my peripheral vision because I suddenly ducked as my nanosuits sensors sent me a warning. The geth that had tried sneaking up on me in an attempt to bash my head in with its rifle, missed and in the split second it had to correct its balance, I reached up grabbing its arm and hooking my other arm around between its legs I heaved. My enahnced strength sent the geth flying over my head twoards shepard who had pulled out her majestic. The loud crack was easily heard over the sound of battle as Shepard sent a single hyperveloccity shard of tunggsten into the still flying geth. The shot pierced the getsh shielding and completely penetrated through the geth the fell limply to the ground with a loud clang as the shard of tungsten continued on its journey for another hundred meters before it embedded itself into a tree splintering the wood until it finally came to rest.

I spun around to confront my next targets and saw shepard fire five more shots from her hand cannon before sending a bolt of dark energy at a group of geth that were caught in Liara's singularity. The singularity detonated, destroying the three geth caught inside.

Meanwhile Wrex and I had run to engage a new group of geth that were coming to reinforce the geth under attack. Wrex repeated his earlier charge, smashing into the front ranks, ignoring the sparks from his shield as it deflected the many shots that impacted with it. I on the other hand cloaked and ran slightly off to the side, keeping my shotgun out. Once sufficiently out of the danger of being hit by stray fire I turned and sprinted towards the group of geth. Uncloaking just before I reached the group I fired off two blasts fromy my Leopard, the first shot shredding the shields of a geth while the second finished it off. Jumping up I recloaked mid flight and upon landing I ducked a geth that had been sent flying by Wrex. Uncloaking behind the group I felled another two geth before turning invisible once more. Zig zagging around I repeated my actions twice more, killing another three geth while Wrex finished the last four off.

As the electronic shreak of the last geth finally died down, I turned and surveyed the carnage. Scattered around the two of us lay twelve geth, six of which Wrex had dispatched. The outpost itself was littered with geth wreckage lying all around, sparking intermittently. Kicking one geth over i spotted shepard stepping delicately around the wreck of a geth shock trooper that I recognized having been taken out by a shot from garrus. I stepped towards her as she requested a sitrep from the group. I gave her a nod and recieved one in return as Garrus reported that his team had no injuries.

"Excellent. Regroup at the outpost and prepare to move out." Clicking off her radio she turned to me. "So what do you think?"

I shrugged. "Well the geth definitely know we're here now. We demolished them. But those salarians are still getting hammered by geth mortar fire out there."

"We'll have to see if we can find the emplacements then."

I nodded "Raptor's trying to trace the shells but the geth aren't making easy for em. They've taken to start firing a bunch of flares interspersed with the shells to throw off our tracking abilities."

"Well we'll see what we can find. We might be able to pick up the sounds of them firing along the way."

"Shepard!" She turned to face Garrus and Tali who were currently at a nearby geth terminal searching it for information "This outpost seems to be a communications outpost of some kind. It seems to be sending information between all the geth units."

"Excellent. Destroy it. That should slow the geth down somewhat."

I held up a hand interrupting her. "Wait. We could use it for ourselves. I should be able to infect the systems with a virus that will copy the data and reroute it to us. We would be able to get accurate intel on the geth movements and could plan accordingly."

"But wouldn't that mean that the geth will still be able to coordinate better?" Garrus asked.

I nodded "Well yes. But it would mean that we get the advantage over them, as opposed to merely leveling the playing field."

"I think its too dangerous. We should destroy this place."

I sighed, "If you destroy it, then yes the geth communications will be disrupted. But we still won't have any idea as to where the geth are aside from what Serpent can report, and while they are good, they can't see everything. This intel could tell us where those mortars are. it could tell us where the geth are. Battles are won by knowing more about the enemy than they know about you. And this is the best way of getting that all important knowledge."

Shepard nodded slowly. "I see where you're coming from garrus. I really do, shutting these comms down could save lives, but so could us knowing where the geth are hiding. where those mortars are at. What else they have in store for us. Wraith, go ahead and upload your virus."

I nodded once before turning to face the terminal that Garrus and Tali were standing at. With a quick thought SECOND began the upload. "Initiating TRAITOR protocols. Virus upload commencing… Virus upload complete. 100%. Receiving intelligence data now." The moment that the information started streaming in my HUD darkened and a 3d Map of the area portrayed in groups of small dots formed in front of my eyes. The map showed me my location along with that of the salarian and phantom groups around the area. But more importantly it also highlighted all the locations of the various geth units in red all over the map. At first the map was almost completely covered in red, but soon enough, most of the indicators vanished as SECOND filtered out the information that was relevant to us. At the same time, it marked three locations as priority targets. One was a satellite uplink, one was a refueling and rearming facility for geth flyers and one was marked as the Geth Mortar emplacement.

I nodded in satisfaction as I took a step back. "Like I thought, we have all kinds of intel now. The mortar emplacement, a satellite uplink facility and a resupply station for the geth flyers." I paused for a moment as I looked over the squad "Oh by the way they also have flyers."

"Alright, alright. You've made your point. It was a good idea. are any of those targets near us?"

"Yeah, the flyer resupply point is closest, directly on our way to the back entrance. Just one more outpost in our way."

"What about the mortars? Can't we take them out?" Garrus inquired.

"Well we could, but its quite the detour from our main objective. Raptor is much closer to those, while serpent is near the satellite uplink."

"Well go ahead and transmit that data. The sooner we take these targets out the better."

"Yup. Already initiating uplink with Prophet, Williams and Basilisk. I'm sure the salarians will appreciate the heads up about the HMG ahead of them."

"I'm sure they will. In the meantime lets head out to that next outpost. What are the defenses like there?"

"See for yourself. Data is being shared via our suit links."

"Hmm. Looks like they definitely know we're coming. Setting up all kinds of guns." Shepard muttered.

"And look at that, they've set up a couple mines on the main approach and brought a couple of those, what did basilisk call them, Hunters?" I said.

"Two snipers in overwatch positions, appear to also be equipped with cloaking. Their cloaking generators weakened their shielding, a single shot should pierce them." Garrus reported.

Tali started listing off the remaining geth "Four Destroyers, two juggernauts, an armature, one prime, a ghost, two sappers, two stalkers, eight shock troopers, two rocket troopers, sixteen troopers and currently six drones patrolling the outpost."

"Good" Wrex grinned wildly "Should be a fun fight."

"Your definition of fun is very different from mine." Liara told him.

"I got something else that will make it that much more enjoyable for you wrex." Vanyali said pulling something off of her back and tossing over to Wrex who caught it with a look of glee.

"You sure know how to keep a krogan happy Shepard." Wrex chuckled as he ran his hands over the grenade launcher. "You managed to rearm it?"

"Yeah, and I also brought some extra power cells from the normandy as well. Should let you keep it topped up."

"I said it before, I'll say it now. Probably I'll be saying it in a few minutes. This, will be fun."

"Good. Wrex, you're priority targets will be the larger geth, the armature, prime juggernauts and destroyers. Make sure the launchers fabricating on AT mode, should let you punch through their armor a bit easier. Garrus, Wraith, you two will start us off by taking out those snipers. Liara, use your biotics and eliminate the weaker geth. Tali, you're going to take out those hoppers, keep em from interfering with us if you can target their flyers as well, but your priority is neutralizing the hoppers."

"You can count on me Shepard. I'll keep those hoppers busy."

"Alright, well then I suggest we get moving huh? Get this party started up right?"

The plan went off without a hitch. The two snipers lost their heads instantly as Garrus and I timed our shots perfectly, our high powered rifles piercing through the snipers weakened shields and into the geths main optics and core. Loud thumps from wrex's grenade launcher heralded the imminent destruction of the Armature as four armor piercing anti tank grenades slammed into its shields and armor. A couple geth hoppers attempted to leap into the air only to immediately fall back to the ground sparking as electricity showered off of their frames, Tali's overloads weakening them. Biotic blasts shot out from where Liara had hid behind a rock tearing out various smaller geth from cover and sending them flying away into the forest. Finally a blur of biotic fire sped out from the overgrowth and slammed into a group of three geth materializing into the form of shepard who immediately blasted the three away before charging back behind a rock to avoid the returning fire of the geth.

With the snipers down I slung my DSG-1 back over my back and drew my SCAR and ran closer. My suit stabilized my rifle as I ran allowing me to pick off two geth before I slid into cover next to Vanyali. Turning around the rock to let loose another burst and felling another geth. I ducked back behind the rock as rounds started hitting my armored suit draining my energy.

As I turned to look at the commander I merely saw a streak of biotic energy as she charged back into the fray. Shrugging I waited for a few seconds for my suit to recharge before I armored back up and charged out to another piece of cover, taking out another group of geth as I did so. And so, we slowly but surely continued to push up along the series of elevated walkway making our way through the stiff geth resistance slowly but surely until we reached the geth resupply point. Here Vanyali set the charges that would destroy the geth fliers while being covered by the rest of the squad.

"I left a little surprise under their tree!" Vanyali called out jogging over to regroup with us where we were just pushing the geth back into the labs.

"They had a tree?" Garrus shouted over the sound of my SCAR as I dropped another two geth just before they vanished through the lab doors.

"No but it references a christmas tree!" Shepard shouted back.

"A what?"

"A tree we put presents under during christmas!" I answered as the last of the geth vanished inside the labs and the gunfire died down.

"You put presents under a tree for a holiday?" Garrus asked thoroughly confused.

"Its a human tradition of gift giving, they place their wrapped gifts underneath a small evergreen tree." Liara explained.

"Alright find cover, fire in the hole!" A second after Shepard's anouncement a flash of light followed by a shockwave of energy blasted out from behind us, where the geth flier resupply area and previously been. I looked back as the shockwave subsided and saw that the platform had been ripped completely in half. Half of the platform now lay in the water below while a tongue of flame spurted out from the remaining platform, where a fuel line had been ruptured.

"Sable to Overlord, geth flier resupply point has been eliminated."

"Understood Sable. Continue on through the labs."

"Well then. With that taken care of let's move on. More geth for us to kill." Shepard said.

A/N: So yeah, sorry for the late update, but I've run out of my backlog now so updates will be a bit slower, hopefully I'll still get one out per month at least until I get back into my groove.

Anyway I don't have much to say so I'm just gonna say until next time!

~LEGION