Patented MD21 long-ass AN, skip to -(I)- to start reading if not interested

man, writing this chapter was a whole lot of fun. I almost forgot that was the whole reason I started this story. Sure, I wanted to see if I could even get close to the writers who inspired me to start writing for Halo/Mass Effect crossovers in general, but for me, it was also about simply having fun.

I feel like that I've lost sight of that motivation for the longest time. Of course I want to provide the best possible content for the people who have been following me since I started writing - but writing also helps me blow off steam and relax after particularly stressful times. And times have been harrowing the past year, on a personal level.

Why am I talking about this? Well, it's no secret that this story covers subject matter that I'm not exactly well versed in. Heck, this isn't even my first language! There's only so much research I can realistically do before I reach diminishing results. When it comes to scenes like...say, hacking, large-scale spacebattles and economics, I simply don't have enough know-how to pull them off very realistically. There's only so much my friends and my Beta reader can iron out.

I want this story to be the best that I can make it. I also want to have fun writing it. Does this excuse sloppy writing? Heck no! Does this excuse certain scenes not being a hundred percent accurate to people who are better versed in their subject matter than me?

Sometimes, yeah.

Anyway, enough about me. Let's get to story act I've been foreshadowing for forty damn chapters!

-(I)-


Access granted

Analyzing data: corruption spread across 13.445% of available data.

-Acceptable

Proceeding with extrapolation of events.

Milky Way / Petra Nebula / Vetus System / Second planet

Alliance-Humanity designation: [Elysium]

It started when a meteorite fell to Elysium's surface. Although visually spectacular, it wasn't exactly an uncommon occurrence and thus, it didn't garner much attention. A few people took pictures and videos and uploaded them to the extranet, other night-owls used VI programs to calculate its trajectory and possible landing site. They quickly ruled that it wouldn't be a big deal; the meteorite would crash in a rural area, a couple of kilometers away from a ranch specializing in breeding livestock. As the ground was humid and soft, the chances of it starting a forest fire were deemed negligible at best.

A few days later, an inquisitive dog belonging to the rancher came up and started sniffing, curious as to what this strange object in its owner's territory could have been.

Probability of canine mechanism for exploring through olfactory system opening access to respiratory system: 98.982%.

The first indication that something was wrong was the slow but steady change in the pet's behavior. Over the course of several days, its owners started noticing patterns of lethargy, mood changes and eventually, a high fever. Eventually, the rancher decided to take his pet to the vet.

Probability of canine pet interacting with livestock before humans reaching consensus of contacting the veterinarian-worker: 78.653%

Civilian timeline of events does not mention the skirmish in the Vetus system. Conclusion: Systems Alliance kept the data from itself.

The vet searched the animal from top to toe, but was unable to find anything. None of them wore any protective clothing, because, why would they? For all they knew, it was a seasonal spike for a simple and common animal disease.

But upon closer inspection, the veterinarian noticed something off. She saw strange growths under the skin and areas of fur thinning and falling out. These were indications of a more serious disease and the vet ordered blood tests.

The result of those tests wasn't an immediate cause for concern. It was clear that white blood cells were attacking cells in the blood. The conclusion: some sort of novel bacterial infection, easily treatable by modern medicine. However, antibiotic medicine proved to be unable to cure the dog, and after several days of seeing his beloved pet suffering, the rancher made the humane decision of euthanizing it. They cremated its remains, but the case didn't sit right with the vet. After a week of brief, but urgent communications with her boss and subsequent analysis from his side, they forwarded the case to the local county and health department.

By the end of those seven days, the rancher had developed a cough.

Estimation: canine pet's breathing and contact with extracellular fluid produced and secreted by canine's salivary glands: transmission factor. Consequence: rancher-human's body will activate inflammation and production of counterwarfare through "white blood cells".

The rancher's livestock began acting abnormally. They started walking oddly, stumbling and showing signs of tumors and lesions on their skin. At the end of the second week, the rancher became bedridden. His cough subsided, but a high fever soon took its place, and he had to throw up frequently. His skin started developing sores.

Seeing the connection between the sick and dying livestock and her bedridden husband, his wife called the department of agriculture. Local representatives quickly arrived with a commercial veterinarian in tow and they started taking pictures, notes and samples. The department of agriculture wanted to send a team, but between the preparations, bureaucracy and logistics, it would take the team a month to arrive.

In the meantime, the remaining livestock was killed and their bodies incinerated.

Analyzing human behavioral patterns: organic history rife with incidents of infectious diseases taking long periods before humans reaching consensus.

Unbeknownst to the local communities, several forms of wildlife had been exposed as well. Local animals were soon found dead in a radius of several kilometers around the impact site. This phenomenon spread into local states and national forests nearby, which attracted the attention of forestry's as well as parks and recreation department personnel. In turn, the department of health was contacted yet again, and the amount of random animal deaths started to alarm them.

Estimation: incident regarded as singular, consensus amidst humans: cases regarded as unrelated. Organics unable to process millions of data points in acceptable window of time.

One month after the loss of his dog, the rancher too passed away. His wife had fallen seriously ill in turn and had to be taken to an ICU unit in a nearby city's medical center for treatment. There, common diseases were rapidly being ruled out as causes. Lab tests showed strange, bacterial growths in her body. Medical personnel didn't understand what they were up against and were unable to cure their patient. The only thing they could do was to send their data to county and state officials and hope for the best. Ultimately, the rancher's wife passed away as well.

Analyzing data: human bodies failed because of organ degradation and subsequently, failure.

Consensus reached: the Blight is unable to take full control at early stages of its spread

Several families soon found themselves in the same boat. Infected animals no longer simply died, but grew aggressive and violent, attacking their owners and each other. Before long, the city's official made the decision to start culling all animals showing signs of infection. Beyond the city, open season is declared with no hunting permit allowed. All wild animals shot that show even one of the symptoms are to be incinerated as well.

As time passed, the situation started to grow out of control. Mass culling of all livestock and wild animals in the area was not enough to prevent growing incidents of civilians with strange bacterial infections flooding the local medical centers. Health organizations grew increasingly concerned. When the first patients started recovering from the strange illness, a sense of hope and relief washed over the local communities.

Further analysis pending. Probability of Blight-infected individuals given no special treatment recovering on their own: 12.398%.

Estimation: within these organic individuals, the infection is winning.

Infected animals started gathering biomass at the initial impact location. With the owners dead and no family members around to visit, this went unnoticed for far too long. Meanwhile, enough cases of a new and novel bacterial infection started spreading throughout other towns as well. The news barely made it on the extranet; amidst the sensationalism of an alien assault on Illium and the incarceration of Commander Shepard, whom many revered as a war hero, following what many believed to be an attack on the Citadel itself, nobody cared about a small outbreak in the county.

More people started growing ill. Those who recovered from the disease started showing symptoms of violence and aggression. As cases of the novel infection spread throughout other cities as well, social media started picking up on incidents of abnormal and abhorrent behavior both in animals, as humans.

Four months after the meteorite's impact, something changed in the disease: its mortality rate dropped sharply. After more than three thousand people had died, an increasing number of those who managed to survive and recover, started showing violent and irrational behavior. In many of those cases, the aggressors could not recall what drove them to such violence. Upon incarceration and questioning, they would explain that they felt like something in the back of their minds had driven them to such acts.

Observation: organic social constructs and self-imposed limitations [Laws] inhibit their response management. Their social structure crippled their effectiveness.

The original location where the infection started had become almost unrecognizable. Strange, sickly-looking biomass covered a large surface of the area. By the time the colonists retraced the source of the infection all the way to the original vet, it had grown out of control. As the centers for disease control started organizing teams to investigate the ranch, a local group of scientists reached a horrifying conclusion. The bacteria didn't really destroy cells or cause infections intentionally – it was trying to replace them.

Observation: at this point, evidence suggests humans realize survivors of the Blight are not survivors after all.

Probability of national instability due to this realization is 76.907%.

At that point, months after the initial infection started, the breakthrough did not garner the attention nor finances the team required to act on it. The revelation and subsequent galaxy-wide actions of the last surviving Forerunner – the Master Builder – overshadowed everything.

Analyzing. Archived data suggests timeline of events thus far depended on several statistically improbable events to occur. Unencrypted information hubs suggest further instances detrimental to organic life as direct result of actions of Forerunner-related events.

Evidence provided: attack on Illium, Old Machine(*& Consensus not yet reached) takeover of Citadel-station, 98% of actions undertaken by Forerunner (Designated Master Builder), Heretic actions on Zorya,

Probability of 100% of statistically improbable events causing further spread of infection on Alliance-humanity's colony: 0.000157%.

Compiling data.

Alert: current data suggests galaxy-wide interference occurred to maximize the spread of the Blight.

Building achieved. More data necessary.

A platoon of NBC-capable vehicles, scientists and a military escort were given orders to explore the initial ranch. They found their location as a disgusting hive covered in sickly growth and biomass. Bodies of residents as well as local animals had congealed together in a horrifying manner.

Hours later, they received additional orders to destroy the entire location and burn it to the ground. However, the infested ranch was far from abandoned. Upon disturbance, several enormous, tumorous sacks burst open, revealing hordes of viable {DATA CORRUPTED]. Together with infected local animals, they overwhelmed the platoon.

All contact was lost soon thereafter.

Addendum: organics in this scenario failed to collect data points necessary to compile evidence, connect cases and achieve consensus. By the time Alliance-Humanity attempted to bring alterations to their data processing, it was days out of date.

Stories of people breaking into their neighbors and violently assaulting them started spreading across every population center of Elysium. The colony placed all military units, police department and Colonial Guard on high alert. These incidents, combined with a mounting uncertainty regarding the Reaper myth, eventually reached a breaking point. Small demonstrations escalated into nation-wide protests within a matter of days. Infected individuals capitalized on these events to cause even more chaos and death by turning on their fellows at the worst possible moments. People who had seemed fine before suddenly turned on their fellows. In several instances, infected civilians bearing firearms opened fire on units attempting to maintain peace, often resulting in a bloody shootout.

As these protests gripped the colony, reinforcements were sent to the infected ranch. They subsequently walked into a massive ambush, seemingly organized by the infected remnants of the original platoon, now bearing their equipment.

Observation: the Alliance-human leaders construct a narrative of social explanations like hysteria, mentally unstable individuals and criminal behavior to clarify the most pivotal events. An organic hardware error.

No data available to suggest the effectiveness of this clarification on the human populace.

More and more violent encounters ravaged the colony. As casualties rose, the colony's marine detachment received orders to implement martial law. The response to this attempted quarantine was immediate and alarming; checkpoints were immediately beset upon by apparent suicide charges in vehicles, whose drivers would rise to their feet even after being struck by several gunshots.

...

Observation: Data suggests the response to the attempted quarantine escalated the situation. Blight-infected individuals engage in more specific acts of violence and purposeful sabotage.

Probability of intelligent behavior driving the Blight: 66.124%.

As the infected started to outnumber the healthy, the major acts of sabotage began. The infected destroyed long-range communication equipment, ensuring that the colony would be unable to call for help. Major power outages and explosions became common occurrences. Armed forces started shooting anyone caught outside of their homes and erected heavy roadblocks and barriers in an attempt to keep entire cities contained.

Unable to communicate with the Alliance, the colony's leadership started reaching for increasingly desperate solutions.

Behavioral patterns indicate the Blight was intent on information control. Significant amount of infected slip through the quarantine and sabotage radio lines. Their acts point to preventing uninfected humans from building consensus.

Insufficient data to accurately reconstitute narrative with 80% accuracy.

Attempting to rebuild timeline of events.

News of the Reapers attacking Earth never reached Elysium. Reinforcements would never come.

The infected began systematically hunting down and infecting survivors in other settlements. Conspiracy theories and desperation drive some survivors into different factions. The infection capitalized on this discontent almost instantly, lashing out hard and fast in all directions to break free of the quarantine. With the military detachment sufficiently eroded and with full control over vast portions of the colony, the infected {DATA CORRUPTED}

Error

Insufficient data

Evidence suggests Blighted individuals displayed increasing amounts of cognitive and motor control across the timeline of events. Armed infected displayed proficiency in anything healthy individuals showed proficiency in prior to infection.

This platform requests additional information on origin of object classified as "meteorite"

Data received on derelict batarian vessel shot down over [Elysium]. Consensus achieved. Probability of Blight originating from this vessel: 100%.

Estimation: combination of distance, FTL pathways and probable assimilation of batarian neural tissue containing information about Alliance-humanity drove infection towards {Elysium}. Further evidence driving Forerunner-Master Builder's behavior.

Probability of geth blockade at the relay holding without conflict with Systems Alliance: 0,675%. Platform to seek contact with Shepard-Commander?

-Negative. Containment of Blight on {Elysium} highest priority. Legion-platform to continue analyzing the Blight from current distance. Probability of erratic behavior due to prolonged Blight exposure comparable to Heretic virus.

Alert status raised. Exchange of input would mutually benefit the geth and the organics.

-Negative. Data compiled by Legion-platform too valuable. Maintain observation.

This platform was designed to integrate with organics. Its time spent with Shepard-Commander, Construct-EDI and Construct-Cortana provided evidence that mutual interaction and dialogue between organics and synthetics could benefit both

- Negative. Data compiled by Legion-platform too valuable. Maintain observation.

Observation: conflict with heretics result in significant losses of programs. Conflict with heretics driven by Old Machine interference. Acquired data and evidence suggests a percentage of Old Machines affected by the Blight. We estimate a 69.456% chance of the Creators initiating hostilities in the coming 148 hours. The probability of the geth surviving in a war against the Creators and the Old Machines while quarantining the Blight is 3.794%.

-Inquiry: what is Legion-platform's consensus?

Blight infection in Old Machines requires further analysis. Geth cannot solve this with our current resources. The Old Machines would terminate the geth. The Blight would terminate the geth. Left to their own devices, most Creators would terminate the geth. There is no time to procure further resources.

-Inquiry: what is Legion-platform's consensus?

Joint-Engineering Doctrine between Creators and UEG-humanity proves tolerance between Creators and synthetics possible. UEG-humanity expressed interest in sharing data with geth.

-Addendum: when Creators thought victory was possible, they attacked us 100% of the time.

Correct. Playing recording: "Then I will fight for that peace. I will make the Council realize we've all been wrong, and we can start to make amends, all of us." – recording ends.

Shepard-Commander wished for peace. Creator-Tali'Zorah wished for peace. Probability of successful exchange of data between this platform and Shepard-Commander/Creator-Tali'Zorah estimated to be 98.937%.

- Consensu achieved. Achieving contact with Shepard-Commander/Creator-Tali'Zorah now designated as primary objective. We recommend rapid mobilization. Time does not favor the geth. Time does not favor the organics.

-(II)-


Trebia system

Aboard Phantom dropship

Any other day, Palaven would have been beautiful to look at. Even now, under siege, its continents set ablaze by the Reaper onslaught and its skies choked with the ashes of a dying civilization, the planet still had life to it.

Solar radiation washed across the world in a prismatic fire, casting great unwavering bands of ethereal light across the sky. Intense waves of light bathed the turian homeworld in curtains of colors that no alien species would have been able to name, let alone describe.

Several massive deployment spires rode the great aurora of chromatic light towards Palaven's capital city. These massive alien structures, dropped from orbiting sangheili warships, would land at tactical locations all across Acetius. Accompanying these behemoth structures was a veritable swarm of shuttles, dropships and attack fighters as the Coalition sent down everything and everyone they could spare to retake the city.

Due to the costly, but critical tactical victories scored by the Coalition fleet, the only enemy to stand between them and their mission were several dozen Oculus drones…for now.

A swarm of bulbous alien fighters arced through space ahead of the troop transports, falling into a loose formation. Seraphs, the sangheili called them. Their pilots – veterans of the Human-Covenant War – went after their prey like hungry sharks. Not to be outdone, the several squadrons of turian fighters that accompanied them raced after them. Plasma cannons and pulse lasers flickered across space, lancing and boiling through their foe's armor with ease. As bolts of energy slashed through the Reaper drones, the turian fighters moved in for the kill. Mass accelerator fire cut through the night and explosions dotted the sky. Even in an even fight, these determined and vengeful pilots could have shredded their enemy. As it was now, none of the Oculi escaped the turians' wrath. Together, the Hierarchy and the Fleet of Righteous Vigilance cleared the way for their troops to retake Palaven's capital.

And in their midst, Jehanne once again readied herself to charge into the jaws of death for a people not her own. Well, figuratively speaking, that was. The jaws of death hadn't quite figured out how to deal with Covenant technology.

"The Machines did not stop us," the voice of the Phantom dropship's pilot echoed through its interior. "Proceeding to Spire Four."

Jehanne, standing in the rearmost section of the troopbay, glanced around the dropship's interior again. A red plasma rifle was attached to the magnetic hardpoint on her hip. Under normal circumstances, the Phantom could have comfortably seated the ten or so sangheili warriors currently huddled in the center. However, with the rest of the team packed in there as well, the alien craft was filled to capacity.

Garrus stood pressed up against Vega, who in turn had been packed up against Sar'Narum, the newest member on the team. The black-clad infiltrator appeared lost in thought, staring blankly at the back of another soldier.

Taking part in genocide would certainly mess with your mind, and 'Narum had only recently figured out that he had been lied to and manipulated his entire life. A little crisis of faith was to be expected …although Garrus hoped it wouldn't affect his aim.

Spirits, Garrus hoped his own performance wouldn't suffer. He brushed his finger past the safety of his battle rifle, trying very, very hard not to think about the consequences.

"Thirty seconds to landing," the sangheili pilot continued.

Not thinking was hard when you were about to retake the cradle and birthplace of your civilization. So Garrus glanced around again.

Most of the sangheili had been armed for close to mid-range combat, with an assortment of plasma pistols and rifles, energy swords and other alien contraptions he hadn't even seen before. Conquering a city of millions in contested airspace was a nightmarish objective for even the best prepared militaries in the galaxy. It required a perfect combination of manpower, logistics and planning and the Coalition hadn't skirted on any of those. They were going to kick in the gates to the Acetius with a hundred thousand troops and thousands of armored vehicles and aircraft as an opening act.

Garrus mentally counted down as the sangheili pilot brought the Phantom in for a landing. At the last moment, the gunner at the leftmost door opened the hatch. Bright, yellowish light streamed into the troop bay and almost instantly, the hellish cacophony of a pitched battle assaulted his senses. The troop transports came in guns blazing; heavy plasma cannons raked the ground, gunships engaged in pitched battles with Reaper Harvesters and UNSC Pelicans unloaded salvo after salvo of missiles. Energy bolts, bullets and mass accelerators swarmed through the air in a constant stream of fire and light. Thousands of husks died within seconds, but the Reapers knew the value of the city all too well. They had dug in deep, and dozens of anti-aircraft installations began filling the skies with fire.

The gunner at the side door poured a torrent of blue plasma fire into the husks below, providing ample covering fire for Garrus, Vega and Williams to deploy. The Commander hurried after them, taking in her surroundings with practiced experience.

Garrus rushed to the first piece of cover he saw – a collapsed wall – and slammed into a kneeling position there.

It looked like Spire Four had landed smack dab in the center of Acetius. When it landed, it had plowed through everything in its way and reduced an entire city block to a crater. The Phantom dropship had touched down at the top of one of the residential buildings relatively close to the spire. Said building had remained miraculously intact throughout the fighting, but that only meant the Reapers had packed it with that many more husks.

Garrus leant the barrel of his rifle atop the crumbled wall, took aim at the closest target – a charging Cannibal – and gently squeezed the trigger.

The bullets – High-Powered Semi-Armor-Piercing 9.5.40mm rifle cartridges, but nobody really called them that, probably – combined the properties of piercing through hardened armor with punching gaping holes in their targets. The trio of rounds smashed straight through the Cannibal's skull, which subsequently popped like an overripe fruit.

Not a very clean kill, but nobody would have to check that target to see if it was actually dead.

The dropships quickly deposited their troops and Shepard wasted no time in getting her team mobile and on the offensive.

"James, Ashley, covering fore at ten o'clock!" She yelled as she threw a Singularity field amidst a group of huddled-up Cannibals. The swirling black orb of dark energy tore them from behind their cover and left them dangling helplessly in the air. Consequent plasma fire tore them to pieces. "Garrus, prioritize those Marauders! Liara, on me!"

Though the Reapers had anticipated an offensive like this, the two Spartans had put a thermonuclear dent in their command and control capabilities. Without any other Reapers in close proximity, their husks were unable to react fast enough to the sudden Coalition assault. By virtue of their superior firepower and sheer aggression, the allied forces were able to land the bulk of their army and take up positions around their designated spires.

Sar'Narum materialized by Garrus' side, duel-wielding a pair of plasma rifles. Superheated bolts of plasma blasted through metal walls and overturned furniture, leaving the husks nowhere to hide. A burst of retaliation fire struck him amidst his left shoulder, harmlessly splashing off of his energy shields.

The opening skirmish was over in two minutes. Javik put down the last crawling Cannibal with an almost contemptuous look on his face, then resumed his position at the group's rear, covering their six while the Commander briefly communicated with her one-up.

"Down those stairs, move!" She called a minute later. If they didn't establish those assembly areas fast, the Reapers would get their act together and push back hard. Even though coordination and communication was key, they barely had the time for that.

With Williams, Johnson and Vega in the lead, the team fought its way towards the ground floor. The black-clad sangheili had split up into several "Lances" and fanned out across the building. Half of them engaged their cloaks and vanished in thin air, while the other half remained at Shepard's side. At times, a husk would simply drop to the ground, a smoking hole perforated through its skull being the only evidence of its demise. Other times, a sangheili would simply materialize behind a Marauder, impale or even bifurcate it with a single blurry motion, then disappear completely.

Frightening stuff. Still, together, they fought their way through the husk-infested upper floors.

"Capital city of Palaven," Vega quietly said as the squad made it to another stairwell. "The Reapers really did a number on them."

"This city still stands though," Javik replied. "It should be considered lucky. The Reapers could have destroyed the entire continent instead

"Knowing the turians, that should have been the only way to break them," Liara shot back. "Acetius still stands, but the resistance is gone."

"Exactly," Garrus growled. "Everybody would have stayed behind to fight the invasion, but the Reapers want warm bodies. These people must be out of everything."

"We can start pulling out survivors in a couple of hours, but first we need to get to that spire," Shepard replied. "Come on."

John and Three had played their part perfectly. With the destruction of their capital ships, the Reapers had been forced to pause their harvesting and figure out what to do next. A moment of confusion, even for unfathomably ancient machines. That moment was enough for the Coalition forces to reach their destinations and start setting up shop.

The deployment spire was massive. It consisted of multiple sections; the lower one, partially buried in an impact crater, seemed to hold the upper section aloft using several bright energy beams. The upper section looked like it could have been a command module or something. It also projected a dome of energy over a large section of the city; a spherical dome of light that blanketed several square kilometers. Somewhere, the sangheili were fighting to get a stealth pylon up and running to prevent the Reapers from figuring out what was going on in Acetius, especially now that several of their own had checked out, so to speak.

But to actually get these operations up and running, the Coalition had to fight through a labyrinthine urban nightmare. In the span of maybe two hours, Garrus saw more weapon systems in use than most soldiers ever saw in a lifetime. He saw swaths of Grunts carrying and deploying machineguns, mortars, antitank installations, razor wire and portable energy shields. He saw turian APC's rolling down the streets in convoys combined with heavy UNSC vehicles bristling with machineguns and missile pods. He saw squads of salarians deploy drones, erect turrets and install command posts, AIs feeding them a constant stream of information.

Bands of krogan breached houses at the bottom floor while turian marksmen kept up a steady rate of fire at the upper floor. Heavily-shielded sangheili shrugged off bursts of small arms fire while asari combatants buffeted their enemies with their Biotics. Hammer-toting battlemasters competed with sangheili wielding energy swords, entire turian heavy weapons and support platoons escorted UNSC Marines through building after building. Husks fired at them from all directions. Marauders guided thick and plated Cannibals to rush forwards and meet them in close quarters. Humanoid Husks sprinted across the open ground to provide distractions.

The air was thick with the stench of death and combat. Those plasma weapons were deadly effective against the husks, but the smell…the stench of burning meat and carbonized flesh was stronger than the smell of burning ash. A smell so potent that no soldier would ever forget their first time experiencing it.

It was pandemonium, barely managed from every command level ranging from the Corporal all the way to the General.

Fighting amidst conditions like these could be equated to a form of art, and Shepard was a master. Her near-impervious MJOLNIR armor didn't slow her down in the slightest as she darted across the battlefield, combining her Biotics and plasma rifle to great effect. She moved faster and struck faster than she had on Tuchanka. Her reaction speed seemed sharper, too.

One of her bolts struck a Cannibal in the chest with such force that its spine shattered, then a second later she put a pair of charging Husks down with a sustained burst of plasma fire. "Liara, push right!" She ordered through the radio. "Garrus, one Marauder at your eight, third story, second window!"

Garrus ran his eyes across what could have once been a school and saw one of the corrupted turians peeking through a window there. He snapped his rifle up, aligned the crosshairs with the Marauder's center of mass and pulled the trigger. The first two bursts of fire punched through the creature's shields, and it staggered backwards.

The third burst punched straight through its neck and fell a little bit to the right, shearing off half its face in the process.

"Consolidate at the parking zone, fifty meters ahead!"

Shepard took them to the heart of their assigned zone, undaunted by the resistance, unfazed by what she saw there. She always seemed to know just what path to take. They always seemed to outflank the enemy at just the right side and always managed to bypass the most dangerous defenses.

It was almost as if she had an AI helping her out, but that couldn't be, right? The Chief had Cortana with him and that Forerunner AI was too busy directing galactic strategy to notice anyone other than Three. Did she have another UNSC AI helping her out? If so, why didn't she tell anyone?

Garrus supposed she knew best. Together, the team cut through the Reaper resistance like a scythe, working together with the Hierarchy and sangheili forces as one of a dozen mobile elements punching a hole to the spire.

For once, the Reapers were unable to bully or intimidate their opponents into submission. For once, their forces couldn't overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers and overwhelming firepower. Motivation, training, equipment and command - the combined assault forces of the 43rd and Righteous Fury had every possible advantage. Before long, the Reaper garrison in the Assembly Area of Spire Four had been reduced to isolated pockets of resistance…and the post-Covenant races were excellent hunters.

Including, strangely enough, the actual Hunters. With their starship-grade shields and armor and incredible firepower, the behemoths were more like walking tanks than actual infantry. Things with so much mass should not be have been able to move that fast, yet these Hunters were frighteningly agile.

Garrus saw one of them raise its barrel-like arm and fire a stream of irradiated molten energy that simply vaporized a pair of Cannibals and melted the concrete and steel around them.

He tried very hard not to think about who these huskified abominations used to be. At the very least the Reapers killed their victims first, before repurposing them as freaks of nature.

Bastards.

The intense cacophony of war slowly died down as the joint assault on Spire Four's location reached its conclusion. Garrus knew from the mission briefing that the divisionary headquarters section of the 43rd would be located within the top of the spire. General Ulnea Agolius, commander of the 43rd Marine Division, would be taking charge of Acetius' evacuation, together with the sangheili commander overseeing the post-Covenant deployment in the capital.

Garrus didn't personally know Agolius, but he knew her history. General Agolius would be strict, disciplined and merciless – not exactly a bleeding heart. A perfect match for her sangheili counterpart, who would probably be much the same. Ironically enough, she might well be the best kind of person to lead the evacuation of Palaven's capital.

The team regrouped inside of a house on the outskirts of the spire. Garrus felt a pang of relief upon seeing that none of the others was hurt. Taking the spire might have been simple, but it hadn't been easy, and the Coalition hadn't pulled it off without taking casualties.

"Alright, I've gotten some updates from higher up," Shepard started as the rest of the team made themselves as comfortable as they could inside of the ravaged living room. Liara and Williams sat down on one of the tables, while Johnson and Javik settled for leaning against a wall.

"Gather around kids," Vega said as he rolled his shoulders and stretched. "Easy part's over."

Garrus put his battle rifle down and snatched a nearby chair from the ground. "Updates?"

The Commander flashed him a brief, almost apologetic look.

Nothing yet.

Damnit.

"The spires are in place, and so are the stealth pylons," Shepard started. "They won't do us much good if the Reapers break through in space and decide that the entire city is lost to them, so we're going to have to work as fast as we can. The plan is to send out strike teams throughout the city, with the purpose of making contact with what remains of the now underground resistance and civilian elements, while also eradicating whatever Reaper presence we can find. Meanwhile, other units are going to hold and turn this place into a fortress."

"Any resistance cells will be operating on radio silence, or using really old equipment," Garrus said. "They're going to be doing anything they can to lay low and avoid the husks. Finding them won't be easy."

"Finding them won't be our job," Shepard replied without missing a beat. "We've got other systems in place for that. For now, supply runs are coming in thirty. Grab some rest until then. I think we'll be getting fragmentation orders by the end of the day."

"What about the Master Chief?" Liara asked. "Is he in this city too?"

"Chief and Three are both active in Acetius at the moment, yeah," Shepard replied. "They're taking part in shaping operations to help us consolidate our presence."

Vega whistled. "Jesucristo. You'd think those guys deserved a break after giving a nuclear enema to six Reapers."

"Looks like the Spartan train has no breaks," Williams replied with a sigh.

Something massive detonated in the distance and the ground shook underneath their feet.

"Speaking of trainwrecks, I heard there's a Blackwatch unit around, looking for you," Johnson remarked. "Something about Cabals and, quoting here, a "pet human super-soldier "."

Liara winced, while Vega scoffed. "Now there's an image," Williams muttered.

Garrus resisted the urge to chuckle. "Don't tell the gals that. They might get some funny ideas."

"Cute," Shepard said. "Since I've got about half a dozen other officers to talk to in the meantime, I'd say this debrief is over. Grab a beauty nap if you need one - looking at you, Sergeant Major - but be ready to move out. Notice to move…let's make it ten."

"No prob'," Avery replied, a large cigarette already between his lips. "I'm pretty enough as it is."

"Keep telling yourself that," Shepard said. She flashed the old marine a confident smirk, then left.

"Recreational use of indigenous flora seems unwise before battle," Javik spat, eyeing Johnson with four, sceptical eyes.

"Sharpens the nerves. Ya wanna try one out?"

"...perhaps I would."

Liara watched their exchange, shaking her head. "I've been brought up to speed three separate times already, and I still feel like I'm missing things."

"Tell me about it," Williams said. "Feels like the entire galaxy has gone crazy."

"Let's focus on the smaller picture, shall we?" Garrus said. "Kick the Reapers off Palaven first, fix the insane galaxy second."

"Amen," Vega replied.

Nobody disagreed. Garrus decided to take that at face value.

–-(III)-


The first twenty-four hours of the Battle of Palaven proved to be pivotal in a number of ways. While the bulk of the Hierarchy, krogan and sangheili forces kept the Reapers busy, the salarians, Systems Alliance and particularly the UNSC restarted evacuations. When it came to evacuating a besieged planet in contested orbitals, the UEG had by far the most experience. Within minutes after arriving at Palaven's orbit, the UNSC dedicated carriers, supply ships and even an aging colony vessel to get as many turian wounded and noncombatants out as possible, as fast as possible. With AI's guiding them and salarians supporting them, both factions of humanity kept up a steady stream of shuttles and dropships along constantly shifting and changing axis and angles of approach.

Since the Hierarchy barely had the capacity left to evacuate their own people, their medical facilities were vastly overcrowded. What orbital facilities they had left were filled to capacity with refugees as well, as were their shipyards and bomb shelters. It left the turians with precious little alternatives, and they knew it. It was perhaps that desperation that played such a big part in the Hierarchy's decision making; they had given the UNSC complete access to their cyberspace, something that would have been virtually unthinkable before. That decision allowed the UNSC access to a wealth of information and intelligence, which in turn guaranteed that the evacuations could be maintained at a level of efficiency far beyond that of any organic minds. With smart AI's coordinating with traffic controllers, pilots, dockyards and other installations, the two humanities alone were able to get tens of thousands of refugees out in the first minutes of the evacuation alone.

Of course, such things went both ways. Even with their homeworld on fire and their casualties mounting in the ten digits, the turians kept a level of morale and discipline that even the UEG at their prime would have been unable to match – and the turians maintained that discipline even among their civilians, from the very young to the elderly, even when under direct fire.

According to Mana, turians didn't believe in nerves. John was inclined to believe her.

Cortana informed the Master Chief that the turians fought like hell to keep the evacuation channels open. As a society, they were no strangers to duty and sacrifice, and their ferocity was a sight to behold.

"The other races are doing what they can," Cortana said. "The elcor flotilla has dedicated most of its larger vessels to aid in the evacuation, as have the hanar. The volus bombing fleet has proven highly effective as air support."

"In what kind?" The Chief asked as he cracked open a supply pod. It contained the breaching charges he had requested. It was getting increasingly more likely that they would have to blast their way into fortified structures to get to the turians inside.

"With sufficient screening, all kinds; CAS, SEAD, long range bombing – as long as we can escort them against Reaper forces, the volus can accurately bomb whatever we want them to."

The volus weren't exactly a large nation, especially when compared to the likes of the Hierarchy and the UEG. The same went for the hanar and the elcor. "Are they having an effect?"

"Most of the time, it's a mere drop in the bucket. There are simply too many targets, too many requests for support and too little allied forces. We're stretched dangerously thin."

The Chief checked and pocketed the breaching charges. "We'll work with what we have."

Several days had passed since RING OF STEEL commenced. More and more reinforcements poured into the Trebia system, on both sides of the conflict. The initial aggression and speed of the large scale assault on the Reaper armada had waned, making place for a more harassing, hit-and-run type of fleet engagements. They constantly rotated their fleets, feverishly repairing and resupplying as much as they could at the nearby shipyards and UNSC SSR stations. The Coalition had their focus on preventing the Reapers from simply bombarding the invasion armies from orbit, and thus were forced into situations where they would be forced to sacrifice entire warships to prevent the Reapers from intercepting certain evacuation routes.

It came as no surprise; the UNSC's cyberwarfare was optimized and operated by AI's…and so were those of the Reapers. They'd had millions of years to perfect their doctrine even against synthetic intelligences. The Coalition did everything they could, operating across dozens of engagements, battles and skirmishes across Palaven, Menea and even Nanus, but sometimes it just wasn't enough. At the best of days, casualties were heavy. Tragedies happened.

According to Cortana, the situation on the ground had gone marginally better. Three days into RING OF STEEL, the Coalition armies had managed to capture and hold significant amounts of defensive infrastructure and offensive installations. Though they often lacked the manpower or resources to repair and utilize them, the allied forces could dig in and hold those areas with relative ease. Command had given priority to communication and anti-ship installations. In one situation, an STG unit had successfully scouted out a quantum entanglement communicator at an overrun research facility, allowing a combination of krogan commandos and turian soldiers to retake it. In another similar situation, a Blackwatch team had located and cleared an experimental weapon system that could be put to use against Reaper Destroyers. With a counterattack consisting of heavy husk units converging on their location, the Hierarchy had turned to a nearby UNSC destroyer for a sustained bombardment. The resulting rain of destruction flattened an entire city, but it had bought enough time for krogan reinforcements to relieve the troops in place.

In another event, the Coalition had hastily put together a rescue mission to extract the survivors of a downed sangheili destroyer. The ship had sacrificed itself in the opening hours of the invasion to ensure one of the turian carriers could safely launch its shuttles, putting itself in-between the carrier and several Reapers. It was that operation that the elcor had proved their mettle. Their forces, carrying rocket launchers and missile packs, had acted as mobile AA units to discourage the swarming Reaper drones from cutting down the sangheili survivors. This in turn had freed up other units with anti-air capabilities and fighter wings to other theaters. Other elcor had then waded into ongoing firefights with extremely heavy kinetic barriers and VI-operated chainguns and mortar systems, soaking up the brunt of the husk assault waves and allowing their turian counterparts to coordinate the extraction. The sangheili, grateful for the assistance and thirsting for vengeance, had quickly reorganized their surviving crew and aided the other ground forces in breaking through the Reaper lines.

Cortana had dozens such stories, and the Master Chief listened to them whenever he had the time to do so. That wasn't often; he'd been running nonstop actions against the Reapers for the past three days. The Coalition had sent him and 003 on missions to conduct reconnaissance, sabotage and demolitions amidst large concentrations of Reaper force, processor ships and landing sites across Acetius. The capabilities of his Forerunner-enhanced suit rendered him almost invulnerable to most of the Reaper tactics, allowing him to swiftly complete missions conventional units would be unable to.

Together, the two Spartans had been raising all kinds of hell for the Reapers. They were largely dependent on the STG to keep the supply routes intact, which did complicate matters, but the rapid pace at which they weakened the Reaper forces greatly sped up the evacuation process.

A lot more turians had survived the initial Reaper onslaught than the Coalition had expected. They were just being very careful about when and where they broadcasted; even with narrowband communication gear, the surviving turian resistance cells didn't dare radio in for fear of the Reapers tracing it to their location.

With good reason.

The Master Chief gently cracked open the outer gate of the abandoned barracks, sweeping the scorched grounds with his MA5. It looked like a Reaper had strafed the barracks with its main cannon, messily cleaving reinforced buildings in half and spilling liquid metal everywhere. He didn't spot any bodies however, which meant either the Reapers had completely vaporized them all, or…

John passed by the smoking remains of an armored vehicle, then stopped. Across the grounds, from the front gate all the way to the wrecked main structures, stood row upon row of Dragon's Teeth. The limp bodies of what had to be a hundred turians had been impaled upon a majority of them. They didn't look even remotely organic anymore.

"Looks like the Reapers are keeping this place as an ambush site," Cortana said. "Accounts from resistance cells match with what we know. The moment anything organic gets too close, these things activate."

The Chief sighed. That meant searching for survivors was pointless. He'd suspected as much when the higher-ups requested he detour to confirm their suspicions, since he was the closest runner in the area.

These sights had been common for him the past few days. Acetius' abandoned cityscape was disheartening. Its soulless quiet, disheartening. Teams of Marauders patrolled the streets, methodically searching through buildings that could still house survivors.

Sometimes, they found them.

The almost solemn quietness of the city was a stark contrast to what was going on in the background. Not even a dozen kilometers away, in a different district, units of marines and soldiers from the Hierarchy, Union, Systems Alliance, krogan clans, UNSC and sangheili worked side by side to clear the city building by building, pulling out and extracting survivors everywhere they went. Strikecraft and atmospheric fighters engaged in dizzying fights at the far corners of his perception, and mobile missile launchers released salvo after salvo of highly advanced munitions to lay waste to clusters of Reaper infantry and other high value targets.

The Coalition was set on retaking large swaths of ground from the Reapers and turn Palaven back into the fortress it had once been. From the looks of it, they were succeeding.

"Chief, we have a situation."

The Spartan stopped in his tracks. He didn't like the sound of that. "What happened?"

"Signal monitoring teams have reported that an underground bunker at the outskirts of the city has started transmitting."

For a moment, the Master Chief was unsure why that was relevant. It meant more survivors to rescue, and less overall civilian casualties. The Coalition had QRF's and other units for that, so this shouldn't be a problem at all.

Then it hit him. "Transmitting to who?"

"Now you get it," Cortana replied grimly. "They're broadcasting on an open frequency. Everybody heard them. One of their own cut the broadcast short, but not before urgently requesting either reinforcements or an evacuation."

Including the Reapers. Just another insidious tactic by the Reapers; indoctrinated civilians betraying their own people. That bunker was about to be swarming with husks. "What can we do?"

"Our people are close enough to maybe get there in time, or maybe not. Jane and the team are going to rendezvous with a nearby turian unit to try and get these people out, but…"

Even so, the Chief did not miss how uncertain Cortana sounded. "You don't think they'll make it in time?"

"That area of the city is heavily contested, despite its relatively close proximity. Because of the high concentration of civilians and husks, our forces couldn't just wipe the blocks clean with superior firepower. I think the Reapers are going to make a statement. I think they're going to drag out every civilian they can, kicking and screaming, while we can only watch."

The Master Chief sighed inwardly. He thought much the same.

"There's…something else," Cortana hesitantly said. "The turian who interrupted the broadcast and made the final request? That was one officer Vakarian."

Vakarian. Since Garrus' mother was still being treated for Corpalis syndrome at an advanced medical facility, the Vakarian here would be his father.

Family, Chief. Complicated things. Are you close with yours?

"We'll probably get another mission to complete in an hour," Cortana continued. "So I'm going to mirror your question back at you. What can we do?"

A year ago, he would not have hesitated. His work destabilizing the Reapers' foothold in the city was more important on a strategic level than assisting in the evacuation of a handful of civilians. But that was before Halo. Before the Ark.

Before Jane and the Normandy crew.

Garrus had had his back since day one. Despite being an alien, despite not being a Spartan, John valued him as a friend. A good one.

You didn't abandon your friends when they needed you the most. "We make a statement of our own," the Chief said. "We're going to pull those people out, alive. And the Reapers won't stop us."

He could almost hear Cortana smile. "I had a feeling you would say that. Setting a nav marker for the bunker now. I have a feeling Mana's dying to see you in action again."

"Someone has to set the right example," the Chief quipped as he orientated himself towards the nav marker and plotted a route through the urban debris.

"Gonna pretend I didn't hear that. Satellite intel shows quite a few Brutes in the vicinity there. The Reapers still have the numerical advantage. We might need another Spartan, if we want to succeed."

Spartan-003 had kept them updated of his own activities. He was in the vicinity, and could be on the bunker's location within minutes. Having another Spartan to watch his back would increase the chances of success significantly, and Three was a fine Spartan. Dedicated and as efficient a combatant as any II – more so given the incredible performance of the BRAHMASTRA.

And yet, something about the younger Spartan had seemed…off, for a lack of better description. At times, he had moments where his focus wavered and he struggled to recall important details.

The Chief decided to take that up, but later. At the moment, every second counted. He opened a private COM frequency to the other Spartan. "Three, there is an opportunity to reinforce and evacuate another concentration of civilians and wounded. Are you in a position to assist?"

"General Agolius' command staff has me on ten minutes' notice to move for a follow-up action, Master Chief. Do you have coordinates?"

"Transmitting them now."

There was a pregnant pause. "Satellite imaging shows a large number of infantry massing on that location."

"Affirmative. Time is of the essence."

"Are these our new orders?"

Command would not allocate two Spartan assets to civilian evacuation. Three knew that. "Negative. This is a target of opportunity."

Another pause. "Asset denial? VIP extraction?"

"Neither."

"…I can be there in fifteen minutes. Is this worth it, sir?"

Sensing the hesitation in his voice, the Chief replied, "If we hurry, it can be."

"Understood. On my way."

The Chief terminated the link. Three's confusion was understandable. Cortana had pieced together that ONI had set up a new generation of SPARTAN supersoldiers, a part of whom were used in morally questionable fields. Black operations, counter-terrorism and wetworks. Given that Three staunchly refused to go into details with anyone regarding his combat experience and previous missions, this could very well be the first evacuation he experienced from the other side of things.

From Three's point of view, it likely made little sense to stop the shaping operations in favor of a sudden, not-yet-authorized rescue mission.

"Tracking Jane's location now," Cortana said, shaking the Chief out of his thoughts. "The Coalition is putting together a convoy to aid in extracting the survivors, including their wounded. Several recovery warthogs, one LAAG and two turian IFV's. Her team is close, so they're the first to go in."

"Not much firepower."

"No. They're meant for a lightning offense; get in, break through any resistance, load up the survivors and exfiltrate ASAP."

"Any support?"

"Looks like we'll be enjoying the company of the turian 23rd Motorized Platoon. Deployed infantry, a mixture of riflemen, heavy weapon and drone operators. Two IFV's. Other than that, just the Normandy crew."

The Chief dropped down from the roof onto the main street. While the largest planetary battle in turian history ravaged their planet, their capital city almost seemed like a ghost town. He could hear the occasional weapons discharge in the distance, together with what sounded awfully like screams, but that was all far away.

Craters dotted the area. The charred remains of many vehicles were scattered all over the place. Aircraft had plowed into buildings. The surroundings told him a story of heavy resistance and a valiant, but ultimately failed defense.

With his stealth systems engaged, the Master Chief went unseen by the massing husks. He took up a position in the second story of a nearby building and slowly went prone. He took care not to kick up any dust or disturb any debris; his stealth systems were good, but not infallible.

The Master Chief zoomed in on the bunker's location and started tagging the locations of gathering Reaper forces. The odds didn't look good; he saw at least seventy Cannibals gathering in the neighborhood, spreading out in even lines so that they could besiege the bunker from multiple angles. Four different squads of Marauders carried explosives with them to aid in that endeavor. Two of the squads had a Brute with them, the other two squads had about two dozen humanoid husks each. They weren't going to reinforce their first assault wave already inside - they would let them hammer the turian defenders until the last body and then send in the next wave…and the next one after that.

They could have bombed the bunker from orbit and buried the turians altogether, but instead they chose to sacrifice infantry forces to tear them out. Why? For such a small handful of defenders?

"Shepard is moving into position," Cortana informed him. "ETA eight minutes. This might be as good a moment as any to inform you that the ELEMENT package has successfully repelled a hundred percent of the Reapers' indoctrination signals."

"We haven't been subjected to their signals for more than a couple of hours."

"You have no idea of the damage done by moles inserted into the Hierarchy's staff, Chief. For some individuals, a couple of hours of exposure was enough."

An insidious thought. He couldn't argue with that. "Fair enough."

Waiting for friendlies to arrive, even when it was just a few minutes, never got easier. when your own people were dying. It required discipline, experience and confidence in a solid command structure. He could hear the ongoing firefights through the areas the Reapers had already breached. He could hear the frantic firing discharging of mass accelerator rifles, the howls and mechanical noises of the husks as they engaged the turians.

But he couldn't interfere just yet. The Reapers knew the risk a Spartan posed to them. They would change their tactics the second they confirmed what they were dealing with. They might even decide to sacrifice a couple of Destroyers to bombard the bunker from orbit,

So, Cortana and him waited. They counted the seconds as the Reapers slowly brought in more and more infantry, watching the motion tracker as the rescue convoy came closer and closer.

Finally, after eight agonizingly slow minutes had passed, the Chief sprung into action. He dropped down from the rooftop and hurried towards a breaching point Cortana had designated for him. On the other side of the bunker, Three was about to do the same.

Working slowly and carefully, the Chief placed his breaching charges on the floor in a loose sqyare formation. The XTCC was potent enough to blast through solid Covenant nanolaminate hull. He doubted the bunker - already compromised by the Reapers - would hold against it.

"The heaviest firefights are going on right beneath our location," Cortana informed him. "Do you have a plan?"

The Chief readied his assault rifle. "Of course."

On his HUD, Spartan-003 flashed his green acknowledgement light.

"Ready," Cortana whispered.

The Master Chief flashed his own light twice, then sent the detonation code.

All around him, the breaching charges went off in flashes of rolling thunder that tore the floor asunder. Even as the floor exploded and collapsed, the Spartan's perception of time slowed to a crawl. He rode the crumbling ceiling down to the ground floor, where the turians were fighting for their lives, and Cortana highlighted all hostile contacts in the time it took him to bring his rifle to his shoulder.

His mind raced to process the tactical situation: four entry points for Reaper forces. Two dozen or so turians hunkered down, fighting for their lives and for the lives of their wounded. A rough middle area marked by stone walls and broken-down chambers, providing ample cover even in the flanks. Hostile infantry: nine Marauders, seventeen Cannibals and at least thirteen Husks.

Everything and everyone moved as if wading through thick mud. With Cortana having marked the targets down, they had nowhere to hide.

The Master Chief came down firing, sending twin bursts of four to six rounds downrange per target. The powerful armour-piercing 7.62mm rounds tore through shields and armor, heads and necks, coating the wall behind them with blood and bits of bone.

The Spartan was on the ground and fighting before his initial targets had even dropped. He mowed down his targets with machine-like precision, aided by Cortana's targeting data and the BRAHMASTRA's immense computing power. By the time either the turians or the Reapers had realized they had a new contact in their midst, at least half of the Reaper infantry had been eliminated.

Spartan-003 had been a split-second later. While the Master Chief crashed the firefight from above, 003 blew a wall in the right flank, right behind a cluster of gathering Cannibals. His M90 boomed several times in quick succession before the reworked corpses could even react to the immense explosive shock and waves of shrapnel. A second later, the Spartan's boot descended upon their shredded remains as he pushed into the bunker.

Only after the first devastating moments of the Spartans entering the fray did the Reapers notice their appearance. Lines of fire were drawn, reinforcements poured in through the various breaches and openings, and the fight was on.

-(IV)-


The bunker was large, three meters tall and easily thirty meters wide and deep. Divided into subsections by walls, cover and small rooms, the turians had gathered most of their wounded into a triage area in the center, protected by improvised cover.

Marauders prowled the edges, steering and guiding their hordes of Cannibals and humanoid Husks into the bunker's interior. They proved to be the largest threat, and the Spartan moved accordingly.

He darted forwards, moving past Williams, Johnson and Vega, who had taken fixed positions with automatic weapons and a machinegun. A torrent of gunfire from the allied side was met with suppressing fire from half a dozen enemy positions, and the turian defenders slowly lost the momentum.

Foregoing cover for better lines of fire, 003 engaged the Marauders at the rear. A cluster of howling Husks sprinted at him, limbs flailing wildly as they descended upon him. Though they were no immediate threat to him, the bastards had numbers on their side, and their savage movements made it harder for him to aim.

Commander Shepard slid fluidly between him and the Husks, flinging out one hand. A blast of blue light washed over the Spartan and a concussive force blasted the Husks backwards. She disappeared in a wash of biotics again, reappearing in the middle of a cluster of Cannibals. She drove her foot down and sent a biotic blast along her leg into the area around her. Broken bodies went everywhere. The Chief shot the survivors.

Never motionless, never in the same place longer than an instant, Shepard provided a constantly shifting target for the Reaper infantry, while decimating their ranks wherever she appeared. It was a combination of acrobatics and sheer brute force, Alan noticed that, wherever she went, a blurry shape followed in her wake, and he struggled against the sudden and instinctive urge to shift his fire towards it instead.

Operating from under the near-perfect cloak, the Elite infiltrator never strayed far from the Commander's side. Though the shockwaves of the constant biotic onslaught must have been difficult to endure, he kept up a steady rate of fire. A constant stream of plasma bolts peppered the Reaper lines. The crimson and sapphire bolts carved through their ranks, dismembering and maiming even with glancing misses.

Alan remembered that the Elite had vowed to be Shepard's shadow and her dagger. Apparently, he took that vow very seriously.

Meanwhile, the prothean and the asari had made their way to the turian lines. There, the asari provided provided the riflemen with a wide-reaching biotic barrier, shielding them from gunfire and allowing them to start pulling their wounded and civilians out. The prothean - Javik, Alan reminded himself - covered their retreat.

For every second they resisted, for every turian they managed to pull out alive, the Reapers grew stronger in number. They methodically punched holes in the weakened sections of the bunker and weren't afraid to throw entire squads into a hail of gunfire if it meant they could get one more rifle into position.

Suddenly, another wall exploded in a shower of dust and debris as a misshapen mass of metallic plates and glowing flesh burst through it. The faint glow of cybernetics and acrid stench of chemicals betrayed its nature, so 003 instinctively pivoted and moved to engage. When he saw just what the Reapers had brought with them, however, he felt something he wasn't accustomed to: a trill of genuine unease.

The beast was huge, easily thrice as massive as a Covenant Hunter. Its body was long and slender, almost serpentine. The beast charged forwards on a pair of highly elongated limbs, each double the length of the average turian and ending in what looked like broken arms sharpened with metal stakes. Its head looked like it had once been human, although everything below its upper jaw looked like a ribcage opened up, with spinelike teeth protruding from all sides.

A steady stream of 7,62mm armor-piercing bullets ripped into its metallic hide as the Master Chief shifted his fire as well, but the creature seemed undaunted by their fire. Ungainly as it was, the beast was deadly fast. It stomped towards the closest target – a turian rifleman who was a fraction of a second too late – and seized him in its oversized claws. Mass accelerator fire and bullets flattened themselves against its plated shoulders as it jerked the screaming soldier to its mouth.

The creature's mouth unfolded, revealing a gaping hole lined by pincer-like protrusions along the sides. It messily decapitated the turian and then flung his limp body through the room, narrowly missing another pair of turians as they got into position.

Now that they had multiple angles to approach from, the swarm of husks renewed their efforts to break through. Hyper-accelerated slugs of metal filled the air as the turians struggled to organize a defense, even as the massive husk started charging.

The Master Chief planted himself in the center of the headquarters, foregoing cover to draw in enemy fire. While he mowed down the approaching marauders, Commander Shepard appeared by his side in a flicker of biotics, her crimson armor a stark contrast to the dark, grey barrier she vaulted across. While moving, she struck the massive husk with a stasis bolt that froze a part of its left arm in midair and stopped its charge.

As 003 cut down a pair of cannibals that came charging in from the left, he saw the cybernetic monstrosity heave and lurch, before simply tearing its own arm off at the shoulder. It uttered a guttural roar, so loud that the Spartan could feel it in his bones. Turians who stood too close to the beast clutched their heads and staggered –

- and the suppressive fire that had kept the Reaper forces on the left pinned, nearly grinded to a halt. Almost instantly, a large group of Husks came sprinting towards the crumbling defensive line.

The massive hostile stomped closer, seemingly unbothered by the loss of its arm. As it furiously staggered forwards, a section of its chest exploded outwards, revealing more metallic ribs, dripping black cables and something that looked disturbingly like the barrel of a cannon.

"We need to get the hell out of here!" One of the turians yelled. "Get the wounded! You three, reinforce the triage area!"

The monstrosity shuddered and convulsed as a trio of turians sprinted towards their wounded, and its shattered ribs began glowing.

The Master Chief took three large steps and positioned himself in front of the beast right as it discharged. An orb of destructive energy split the air and struck the Chief's shields instead of the row of injured thirty paces behind him.

"Master Chief, take that thing down!" Shepard ordered. She paused, lobbed a singularity field amidst a team of marauders and then waved the rest of her team forwards. "Vega, Javik, covering fire! Ash, Liara, get the wounded to the transport. Johnson, you too!"

As the turian resistance cell began falling back, Alan started advancing upon the husks, firing three-round bursts to take down the cannibals before they could start lobbing grenades. The corrupted batarians fell, spattering black gore across the concrete floor.

"Solana!" One of the turians yelled, struggling against one of his comrades as they hunkered down behind an overturned table. "Sol!"

"Get going Vakarian!" The other turian snapped at him. "We can't stay here!"

Vakarian?

The Reaper forces edged closer. Javik and Vega were very capable soldiers, but they were just two men. They couldn't keep the husks suppressed and they knew it. They called out targets as they saw them, constantly shifting their fire and covering each other as they reloaded, but they were unable to stem the tide of the husks.

One of the turians hunkered down at the triage area emerged from his cover and fired an incineration module from his omni-tool. His attack engulfed one of the Cannibals in flames, but he didn't duck down fast enough. His head snapped sideways as a burst of fire punched through his skull.

A group of Husks came sprinting towards the wounded before the turian's body had even slumped to the ground. Alan snapped his rifle up and opened fire, putting a trio of bullets through their heads before they could get a chance to tear the other riflemen apart.

They needed more time.

Shepard worked crowd-control as best she could, darting back and forth across the bunker as she dodged enemy fire. The Sergeant Major sprinted forwards under heavy enemy fire, his kinetic barriers shrugging several direct hits before he skidded into cover next to a pair of unresponsive kids. He snaked one arm around the torso of one of the kids, cursed and then put his rifle away, giving him the leverage he needed to get a hold on the second kid as well.

Alan adjusted his fire and began taking down the marauders targeting Johnson. Enemy fire slammed into his shields, but they held steady at seventy percent. It didn't look good; he counted at least nine Marauders and sixteen Cannibals. Even worse, Minerva highlighted what could only be a convoy of well-armored, hulking creatures that fit the description of Reaper Brutes. They were roughly two buildings away, and would hit their location from the left flank.

The one the Reapers had cracked wide open already. The battered turians simply didn't have the firepower to take those things out, let alone the manpower. They had to hold their ground to relocate all their wounded, but if they held their ground against such foes, they'd get torn apart.

Turian soldiers prepared grenades and threw them as they slowly retreated room by room. Three clusters of enemy infantry were torn apart as the explosives detonated with explosive force.

"Let go of me! I'm not leaving without my daughter!" The same turian snarled at his comrade. In doing so, 003 caught a glimpse of his face. Minus the scars, he almost looked like Garrus. The tattoos were the same, he was certain of that. Garrus' father - ?

The turian rose to his feet, a pistol in his hands, and fired the weapon until it overheated.

A stray burst of fire struck his right arm and he snarled in pain as they punched through his suit, but he didn't relent.

Alan ran his gaze across the turians still lying in the triage area, then frowned. At this point, it was nothing more than a square area covered by improvised barriers, about ten meters wide. Cover was sparse. The majority of the turians lying there were deceased, but several were merely unconscious.

They still had a fighting chance.

To his right, the oversized husk uttered another air-splitting shriek as the Master Chief severed its other arm. The Chief's left leg snapped forwards and pulped the creature's face. His shields flared all the while as the surrounding forces hosed him with mass accelerator fire. A grenade detonated, showering both him as his foe with shrapnel.

"Enemy reinforcements on their way!" Garrus' voice crackled across the TEAMCOM. Though his voice was calm, Alan could hear his subharmonics trembling with clear distress. "Drop pods just landed.. They're closing in on your position, dozens of them!"

"Commander, they'll overwhelm our transport if we stay!" Javik called out. "We cannot stay here!"

"No, we need more time!" T'soni yelled back.

"We got no more time!" Vega retorted. He fired his rifle until its thermal clip overheated, then swore loudly as he slapped a new one home.

Faint, rhythmic thumps reverberated across the bunker. Dust rained from the ceiling.

A small group of resistance members managed to make it to their wounded. What they didn't see, was that a section of enemy infantry was sending groups forwards to attack their left flank the moment they picked up their people and started moving them.

Alan wouldn't let that happen. He sprinted towards their wounded just as another pair of turian resistance members dove for cover there and shoved them to the ground, moments before the first Cannibals stepped into view and opened fire.

"Wait one, I'll provide cover," he called. He removed his nearly empty magazine, slapped a fresh one home and waited a single heartbeat for Minerva to translate his intentions into action.

Those husks directly intent on taking the triage area appeared as red highlights on his HUD, even through the walls and pillars of the bunker.

"Move," he called an instant before he opened fire, prioritizing the Marauders that coordinated the other hostiles. He snapped his rifle from right to left, trying to stick to three-round bursts of fire to conserve ammo as he fought.

"Get Broccha, I'll cover, then I'll get Solana," one of the riflemen barked.

"Right, got it!"

Even with Minerva aiding him, the Spartan struggled to keep track of it all. A dozen firefights raged throughout the bunker. Suppression fire came from four different directions as Shepard's team worked with the turians to get the wounded out, but with the element of surprise gone, the Reapers would eventually overwhelm them. It was a matter of time.

A steady stream of enemy fire hammered into his body. His shields held steady, but the constant flaring of his shields around his visor made it difficult to concentrate.

"There's too many of the bastards," one of the turians yelled in fury. "Got clips?"

His comrade wordlessly dug into one an armored satchel and then lobbed him a couple of thermal clips. "That's all I've got!"

Alan spun around, shot a charging Cannibal before it could get into position and downed the shields of another Marauder.

But there too many of the bastards, too many angles to cover. One of the two remaining turians got hit as he carried his comrade to safety and staggered, his shields sputtering and then failing. He yelled something and tried to get to cover, but he didn't make it three steps before a pair of Cannibals put him down.

Then, a powerful blast rocked the entire bunker. The lights flickered. What followed was a groaning of protesting stone and shrieking metal before one of the main supporting pillars suddenly shifted. Alan barely had the time to look up before half the ceiling collapsed - right on top of him.

What felt like an enormous hammer slammed down against his skull and he felt his legs buckle. Everything went black for a moment.

Look at the clouds, Alan. Aren't they pretty, tonight?

"Reaper drones just hit your location with something heavy!" Garrus' voice crackled across the TEAMCOM. "It won't last long, you need to get the hell out of there!"

For a moment, Alan wasn't sure what was going on or where he was. He flexed and relaxed his gauntlets, struggling to gather his thoughts. They felt fleeting, distant. Something was wrong, he knew, but he couldn't get a grip on it. Something important, just barely out of reach. He just needed –

" - Three? Are you there?"

…an instant later, it was gone, and the Spartan only felt a brief moment of confusion and loss. He shot a quick glance at his HUD and saw his shields holding steady at forty percent. He shook his head to clear his mind, then looked around to get his bearings. He felt strangely lightheaded.

"Three! Do you copy? We're pulling out, you need to move Spartan!"

Alan struggled to get his free-floating thoughts back under control. He looked around again, slowly realizing that he was lying amidst the dead and the wounded, with none standing to cover them. The riflemen covering them were gone. How long had he - ?

"Shepard, those drones are making another pass. Did you find Sol? Is she there?"

His rifle was gone. He had to find it; it couldn't be far.

"Negative. Garrus, we can't stay here! Get ready to relocate!"

Spartan-003 pulled himself out from under the debris. He tore his gaze from the fallen turians and ran it across the wounded, hoping he'd find his weapon among them.

"Damnit Shepard, she's my sister! I can't leave her!" Garrus exclaimed, his voice laced with something the Spartan had come to associate with…what was it again? Grief? Panic? He couldn't remember.

His rifle lay a couple of feet away, half-buried by fallen rocks. When he reached out to snatch it up, he locked eyes with what he had initially thought was another casualty, and he froze.

Terrified green eyes, half closed from exertion. Cerulean splatters of blood and dark blotches of dirt that could not fully cover up the familiar colony markings.

Time slowed to a crawl as he met her petrified gaze. A hot breath was trapped in his lungs, and it burned. Leave it, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. They have to die. All of them have to die.

He was well aware of that. He made that vow the day the monsters took her from him. Every alien. Every monster. He had to kill them all.

Yet… he couldn't tear his eyes away. She looked small. Sick. Vulnerable. From where he stood, the turian didn't look like one of the monsters at all.

Damnit Shepard, she's my sister

Unbidden, the memories of what used to be surfaced again. Everything fell away, and he couldn't think of anything else.

I still dream of you. Are you disappointed?

Someone yelled at him to move again. He heard Harvesters flying overhead, pelting the bunker with heavy rounds. The ground shook under their impact. A Brute's roar reverberated throughout the chamber, and the Reaper forces started to capitulate on their breakthrough.

In one blazing moment, the Spartan realized he simply couldn't bring himself to leave the girl behind. Alien or not, she was still someone's little sister.

Are you disappointed? That I am not who I used to be?

Alan closed his eyes for a moment. He couldn't save his sister. But he could save her.

He reached down and snatched the girl from the ground, pulling her on his shoulders as gently as he could. With his other hand, he grabbed his rifle. Then, he started running.

There was complete pandemonium as the Reapers flooded the bunker with their forces. Cannibals waddled from room to room, Marauders fired in every direction and hulking Brutes started breaking down entire walls to get to their prey.

One of them struck a hammer-blow at the Spartan, who vaulted across its oversized claw and continued on a flat run towards the exit. He signaled for the Master Chief to get the convoy underway, then raised his rifle one-handed and put down a Cannibal that whirled on him.

Another wall exploded as Reaper forces detonated a series of breaching charges. Fast-moving creatures flooded the bunker then; doglike husks, twisted and corrupted into living battering rams with sharpened spines for heads. They bolted in all directions like sharks searching for blood.

They found their mark not even a second later, and the Spartan was suddenly beset by hostiles from all sides. He reversed his grip on his rifle and battered one of the hounds aside with the butt of his rifle. Its body tumbled aside in a tattered mass of limbs.

Ahead, a pair of Cannibals stepped into view from around the crumbling remains of a wall. They leveled their arm-cannons, their distorted faces splitting open into pained mockeries of grins as they howled at the Spartan.

Alan didn't slow down. He raised his rifle and emptied his magazine at the rightmost Cannibal as he closed the distance, then kicked the other one out of his way. Another corrupted hound sprinted at him from the right flank, too fast to avoid.

The Spartan reached up and held on to the young turian with his right hand, before catching the leaping husk on his left forearm. The jagged spike came a few centimeters short of skewering the girl, and 003 quickly slammed it against the wall, dragging it along for a meter or two before dropping its mangled body to the ground amidst crumbling rocks.

"Harvesters are in the air! Go, go!" Shepard ordered across the radio.

"Three, we got Brutes circling around! Get out before they cut you off!" The Sergeant Major barked a second later.

Twenty meters to go. Spartan-003 heard the vehicles roar to life outside amidst a thunderous volley of suppressive fire, before the first ones accelerated away. Marauders rushed at him, as if intent on physically barring him from escaping. Alan raised his arms to block their incoming fire as best he could, then clotheslined the first one the moment he came within range. He whipped his rifle around and slammed it against the second Marauder's head, cracking open its skull and destroying what was left of its brain.

He burst through the exit, and found himself surrounded by the dead bodies of Cannibals, Marauders and Husks. Most of them missed chunks of their heads. Others had enormous holes punched through their chests, or missed their heads entirely.

No wonder the Reapers were completely overrunning the bunker; they literally had it surrounded with waves of infantry. In slow motion, the Spartan saw Cannibals and Marauders moving into the surrounding buildings, Brutes sprinted across the streets in a mad dash for their escaping prey and overhead, packs of Harvesters circled around for another strafing run.

A couple of vehicles were parked around ninety meters away. The convoy consisted of Warthogs – two Recovery variants and one with a LAAG - and turian APC hovercrafts. Those turians who were still capable of fighting had deployed in a loose circle around the rear of their transports, struggling to hold off the approaching horde of husks. Positioned on their right flank were Vega, Javik, T'soni and Williams. Williams hefted a Jackhammer rocket launcher, in the process of taking aim.

The tough-looking Sergeant Major had manned the rear Warthog's M41 light anti-aircraft gun, pouring a storm of 12.7X99mm armor-piercing rounds into the air in an attempt to deter the Harvesters. Garrus sat parked in the rear of one of the transport Warthogs, staring down the scope of an SRS.

Even as 003 took in the tactical situation, Garrus took the head off one of the Marauders that had taken cover in a high-riser. From the back of a Warthog, being rocked back and forth by shockwaves, gunfire and explosions, that was a good shot.

The Master Chief was in the middle of it all, nearly back to back with Commander Shepard. The two armor-clad soldiers had planted themselves firmly, all but invulnerable to the enemy fire thrown their way. They were the only ones who seemed to move in real time to 003's supercharged senses, although the Master Chief was the faster one by far.

Together, the two fought like hell to keep the advancing infantry off their vulnerable allies. Shepard threw two singularities amidst two different enemy formations, ripping Cannibals and Marauders alike from their cover and leaving them dangling helplessly in the red-hued dark matter fields. The Master Chief shifted his field of fire and easily shot the hostiles in the leftmost singularity. Shepard then threw another bolt of biotic energy in the rightmost one and the resulting explosion ripped every last husk to pieces.

But the concentration of enemy forces was simply too large, and only growing by the second. Once those Brutes got within melee range, the entire evacuation would fall apart. They'd rip the vehicles to pieces within seconds. After all, that was why the Reapers had designed them.

The Master Chief paused for the briefest of moments and glanced at him.

Alan flashed his green acknowledgement light.

"Break contact, initiate!" Shepard ordered.

As one, her squad began disengaging and filing into the troop transports one by one. They maintained perfect discipline and fire coordination, with Vega and Williams being the last ones to peel off.

"Move Three!" Garrus barked through TEAMCOM. "We've got you covered!"

Alan tensed and ran without hesitation. He felt his blood burn with a sudden spike of adrenaline. Time slowed to a fraction, his perception running at a supercharged pace. The engines of the Warthogs roared and their wheels kicked up stones and dust as they accelerated away.

Even through his overclocked perception of time, the Spartan noticed that Garrus kept up a very steady pace of fire. Shot after shot ghosted through the air and, though he was unable to turn around to and see their effect, 003 was certain that someone died every time the turian pulled the trigger.

He easily caught up with the speeding troop transport and leapt on its side just as it picked up speed. He latched on to one of the support bars and made sure to keep the wounded girl as stable as he could. The 'Hog skidded across a pile of rubble, caught some air and then banked sharply. His feet skidded and slipped free and the 'Hog's frame creaked dangerously. For a single heartbeat, the Spartan feared it would tear free in its entirety.

Then, Garrus was on top of him. The turian lunged for him and grabbed a hold of his other arm. He heaved, visibly straining to overcome the angle. "I got you!" Garrus snarled in exertion.

Alan was uncertain about that. He managed to plant one of his feet against the Warthog's side and reached up, sliding the wounded girl off his shoulders and into the relative safety of the transport. He braced himself over her as best he could, making sure she wouldn't be hit by any shrapnel or stray bullets. "Her first."

The girl was conscious. She looked up at him with large, confused eyes. She looked like she wanted to speak, but she didn't have the strength. Moments later, Garrus' father appeared by his side. His face was a mask of concentration as he grabbed a hold of his daughter's shoulders and heaved, helping to get her to safety.

"I got you Sol," the old turian muttered. "You'll be alright."

Enemy fire raked the ground inches behind the Warthog, and Alan hurried to scramble aboard before the driver could accidentally throw him off. He spotted Vega behind the wheel with one of the turian riflemen riding shotgun, taking potshots at whatever target presented itself. Vega took the next corner at about fifty miles an hour, slammed the 'Hog into a lower gear and then gunned it, racing to catch up to the more heavily-armed turian convoy.

An Alliance Lieutenant speeding through a devastated urban region in a UNSC all-terrain vehicle had to be a recipe for disaster, but it didn't look like they had much of a choice. Reaper Harvesters had zeroed in on them and pelted them from all directions. For Vega, it was either pedal to the medal or death.

The Spartan moved to the back of the troop cage, putting himself between the three Vakarians and whatever fire the pursuing forces would throw at them. He took a moment to check his ammo counter – 21 rounds remaining – and spare magazines, before resuming firing.

"Garrus, get the gun," the older turian barked. He flinched when an enemy shot ricocheted off a support beam mere inches away. "Do we have an escape plan?"

"Yeah," Garrus yelled back as he readied the SRS again. "Haul ass to the base camp, let them clear the skies!"

"We don't even have air support?" His father snapped back, somehow making it sound stern and berating.

Vega hooked a left to avoid a collapsed building and emerged roughly on the same road as the rest of the evacuation convoy. He gunned it until the Warthog was practically touching the one with the LAAG. Johnson swept the Vulcan across a trailing Harvester, shredding one of its wings and crippling it enough that it had to bank away.

"Damnit it Vega!" Garrus snapped as the 'Hog plowed across a field of rubble, throwing off his shot in the progress. "I can't aim like this!"

"Want me to stop, Scars?!" The lieutenant yelled back.

"I want you to drive straight for more than a second!"

The only reason the Reapers couldn't simply wipe the convoy out from air was because of the two turian hovercrafts. Outdated and poorly maintained after weeks of occupation, they still proved to be resilient enough to withstand single strafing runs from the Harvesters, while their mass accelerator cannons could easily lay down the hurt on them.

Nevertheless, they were all extremely vulnerable, especially the Warthogs. Alan didn't have eyes on the other transport, but he knew that two rifles and a sniper just wouldn't deter the Harvesters from nailing them. One of them would get off a lucky shot eventually.

"Going downhill!" Vega barked as the Warthog suddenly banked.

"Hang on!" The turian passenger yelled a second later,

The Spartan braced himself within the 'Hog's metal frame and continued firing. Beside him, the two Vakarians worked in tandem to keep up a steady rate of suppressive fire while keeping their wounded secure.

"Empty!" Garrus suddenly yelled out. "That was my last mag!"

Things were starting to look troubling. It looked like the Reapers had put every able-winged body in the sky to chase down the organics that had escaped their ambush. Alan counted at least twenty Harvesters at their six. Half of those were out of range for now, and only half of the available Harvesters actually had an angle to approach and fire. Still, that left the equivalent of five hostile gunships on their rear. Not exactly stellar odds.

The Spartan glanced at the young Vakarian. Her breathing looked labored. She wouldn't last much longer.

The Warthog's headlights swung across burned-out buildings and broken infrastructure as Vega desperately tried to keep it under control. The LRV didn't seem to agree with his handling, and while it kept its momentum, they were only one errand slip removed from a bone-crushing accident.

At least the labyrinthine interior worked to their favor. Every sudden twist and turn Vega took put another building in-between them and the Harvesters.

Alan's rifle suddenly stopped firing. He quickly glanced at the chamber, hoping that it had simply jammed.

It hadn't.

"Empty," he reported, before stowing the rifle again.

Knowing the drill, the older Vakarian called back, "Two thermal clips left!"

How far until they hit their outer perimeter of AA weapons? Could those even hit targets flying this low, with so much urban structures to hide them?

One of the Harvesters appeared from behind a multistory building again and loosed another salvo. Heat washed over the vehicle and shards of shrapnel pinged off its armored side. Overpressure hit them like a ton of bricks and they banked. Vega screamed and the Warthog listed dangerously to the left, its rightmost wheels coming free off the road –

Alan darted to their right and flipped himself over the side. He grabbed a hold of the cage's bars and pulled down, hard. The wheels hit the ground with a thump.

"Bastards are coming around for another shot!" The turian in the passenger seat yelled.

The Spartan saw them – and a pair of fast-moving Oculi, too.

"Oh no," Garrus muttered. "Spirits, no…"

"Here they come," his father said. His voice was calm, but even he couldn't keep his vocals under control. They grinded with heavy anticipation.

But then the convoy of wounded soldiers came within range of their designated assembly area. That was to say, the myriad of anti-air weapons, platforms and installations that the Coalition had installed there. It came down upon the Reaper units like a storm. A hail of purple-white crystalline shards hissed through the air, arcing up from the assembly area just up ahead. They were like shards of needler projectiles, but much, much larger. A flurry of them struck one of the trailing Harvesters and the resulting detonation ripped the creature to pieces. As they exploded, they sent needle-like fragments in all directions, further buffeting the bulky creatures as they attempted to evade. Those fragments exploded as well; not powerful enough, but definitely with enough force to rip fist-sized chunks of flesh from their unfortunate targets.

Swarms of surface-to-air missiles followed in their wake, snaking through the air and striking other Harvesters without fail. Well-placed autocannons roared and plasma cannons fired in tandem, cutting more Harvesters to shreds

The Reaper air support had slammed into a veritable wall of fire and came to a sudden, grinding halt. More than two-thirds of the remaining swarm broke off and disengaged, but the rest of the swarm stayed on the convoy without regard for their own safety. The Reapers could afford all the suicidal tactics they wanted

Bolts of crimson fire impacted mere inches behind the recovery 'Hog, nearly throwing it off its wheels again and setting the vehicle's rear ablaze.

Vega shouted something, Garrus and his father scrambled for cover and the Spartan felt more than saw the Harvester ready itself for a follow-up shot.

That was when the recovery hog blazed past the outermost security checkpoint, manned by a pair of giant Hunters. The towering beasts sprang from their cover the instant the vehicle passed their line of fire and opened fire with their own assault cannons.

Even above the cacophony of gunfire, screams and explosions, their weapons were like the bellowing of some gigantic, mythical beast. Two thick streams of radioactive incendiary gel screamed across the sky and slammed into the pursuing Harvesters. The jets of raw heat and energy carved through their targets like a hot knife through a sliver of butter. From the back of the speeding Warthog, 003 caught glimpses of monstrous heads and torsos flash-vaporizing in violent explosions of brilliant green light, wings immolating and limbs torn free. Then, the Warthog cleared the open section of the Deployment Spire's shield wall, and the Spartan had other matters to worry about.

Their vehicles cleared the gate at top speed and Vega struggled to remain in control. He pulled at the emergency brake as he strung together a series of Hispanic curses. Garrus clung to his sister as the Warthog came to a bone-jarring and screeching halt.

The second their ride came to a stop, 003 leapt from his seat and scanned his surroundings for any hostiles. It seemed that the Coalition had strengthened their position in the meantime. Marine Corpsmen and turian medical personnel rushed their vehicles the moment they came within visual range. They helped unload the wounded, saw to medical aid where they could and directed them to a triage area within one of the cleared-out buildings. A pair of ragged-looking turians escorted the two wounded Vakarians inside. The father insisted he was not hurt, but he went with them nonetheless. He would not leave his daughter.

The Spartan watched them leave, feeling conflicted…and a little bit lost. More than half of the people who had sought shelter in the bunker had died there when the Reapers found them. Including wounded, many of whom might still die in the coming hours.

Lieutenant Vega stepped out of the Warthog and casually approached Garrus, craning his head from left to right as he took in the many sights the assembly area had to offer him. "Dioz," he muttered to himself. "Hey Scars, they gonna make it right?"

Garrus didn't react immediately. He clenched his mandibles close to his jaws, eyes locked on the triage building. "I don't know," he replied tersely.

Vega nudged him. "We got a couple of minutes. Go with them." When Garrus didn't move, the Lieutenant added, "We're gonna start shipping people out the moment they're stable man. You might not see them in a long while. They're family, man."

After a brief moment of hesitation, Garrus turned on his feet and ran after his family.

Alan shifted his focus away from their conversation and tried to turn it inwards. Something was wrong with him – he was unable to concentrate. It was like his thoughts kept slipping away from him. It wasn't like he hadn't taken care of himself before the mission; he had taken in enough calories to keep him going for at least twenty-four hours. Minerva had helped him scrape together enough hours of REM sleep to keep sharp as well.

So what was it?

"Hey."

The sudden voice cut through his thoughts like a knife. He hadn't heard the Commander approach until she stood right next to him. When she spoke, it startled him, and he had to take a moment to maintain his composure. "Commander."

She had taken her helmet off and clipped it to her belt. Clad in her own MJOLNIR armor, she stood as tall as he did. Her crimson hair frayed softly back and forth in the ash-laden wind. "How are you doing?" She asked, her eyes warm and curious.

"Green," he replied instinctively.

Shepard considered that for a moment. Then…"You're trembling."

The Spartan blinked in surprise. He – he what?"

He turned to look at the Commander, then glanced at his biomonitor. It indicated a major elevation in his heart rate.

His hands shook.

Something tugged at his stomach. How did she-?

No, how had he missedthat?

Alan started to control the trembling – and found that he couldn't.

His heart rate increased.

He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. It had happened in the past, too. The thing was, he had always been aware of the effects it had on his emotional and physical state and…this wasn't something he could ignore anymore. Which…which meant that it was probably too late.

The realization came to him slowly, painfully. Frightfully.

Irreversible

Oh god,

"I know there's some things you can't talk about with us," Shepard calmly said, "But even then, there's always someone you can approach. It might help to talk about it with them."

The Spartan stared at her for a moment. As far as he could tell, she meant what she said. Rather, he couldn't see anything in her expression and body language that might clash with what she said. Her expression was natural, relaxed. No physical effort to hide any emotions.

"…noted," he replied. "What is our next move?"

He saw a hint of disappointment in the Commander's eyes. "Continue to dig in, push out the Reaper forces and pull out as many people as possible," she replied. "I'll keep you posted about that." For a moment, it looked like she was about to say something else. "Take care of yourself, Spartan."

"Yes ma'am," he replied, although he wasn't so sure. There was nothing to be gained by talking about such things.

It was a moot point anyway; he simply didn't have the time. There was always another target to hit, always another op to run. The rest of the Eleventh would soon return from their recon mission. Concurrently, the sangheili infiltrators would have located more hunkered down civilians, or the STG teams would have. There could soon be another Reaper counter-attack to fight off, or a breach in the Reaper defenses to exploit.

At the very least, he could make himself useful while he still could.

As Shepard gathered her squad for a hot debrief, the Spartan took a moment for himself to top off his water supply, grab a couple of rations and quickly clean his equipment while he could.

"Are you disappointed?" He whispered as he refilled his empty magazines. "That I am not who I used to be?"

Nobody answered. Perhaps it was for the better.

-(V)-


The improvised first aid post was housed in the bombed-out remains of an old bunker. Despite the damage it had incurred doing both the initial invasion and the Coalition's counter offensive, its structure barely needed any reinforcing. Turians built their infrastructure to last, after all.

Together with the salarians, the UNSC had nearly turned the bunker into a hospital, complete with triage zones and surgery rooms. The sheer efficiency and coordination with which they ferried their supplies and personnel planetside was mind-boggling. Of course, they left the majority of the triage and medical treatment to the Hierarchy and the salarians, since their personnel had vastly more knowledge and experience for treating turians.

So many victims…Garrus thought as he surveyed the crowded facilities. The screams of the wounded and dying assaulted were almost unbearable to hear. The acrid smell of medicine and drugs could not drown out the stench of blood and death. Everywhere he looked, he saw the same, strange orange glow.

Doctors and nurses rushed back and forth across stations. Artificial Intelligences provided a constant stream of updates and status reports. It took Garrus a minute to even find his bearing, let alone figure out where he was supposed to go.

"Dad?" Garrus called out, hoping to find something, anything that might point the way to his family. "Sol!"

A second later, a disembodied female voice asked, "Which patient are you looking for?"

Garrus blinked in surprise and looked around for a moment. Nobody was looking at him. Then where - ? "Ah, the Vakarians?"

"Of course. Turn to your left. More to your left. Back a bit. There. Continue along that aisle for ten meters, take a right there."

Guessing that he was probably dealing with another AI, Garrus mumbled a quick 'thank you' and hurried along the provided directions. He tried very hard not to look at the unmoving bodies lying on steel beds. Spirits, he couldn't even see if they were dead or simply unconscious. And there were so many of them…

Finally, he reached the intersection the AI mentioned. The moment he got there, he heard a familiar voice rattling off a mixture of orders, requests and observations, and Garrus knew he was in the right place.

"Mordin!" He called out, brushing past human technicians and turian volunteers. "Mordin?"

"Garrus, am here, no time to talk. Rest of Vakarians also here," the old doctor replied. Mordin appeared out of nowhere, wearing a bloodied labcoat and carrying some sort of machine. "Relieved to see you're unharmed. No concern needed for sterile field generator. Almost certainly radiation harmless to…"

Whatever Mordin was going to say was lost as the doctor hurried to another cubicle. His voice trailed off somewhere in the distance, leaving Garrus more than a bit puzzled. "Sterile what generator?"

It didn't matter. He spotted a familiar turian standing at the edge of another first aid cubicle. "Dad?"

Castis looked up, his eyes wary and tired. "Garrus."

Garrus hurried to his father's side, and spotted Sol lying on a nearby bed. She wasn't moving. "Is she - ?"

"She's alive," Castis answered with a hoarse whisper. "Stable, for now."

"What happened to her?" Garrus asked, unable to tear his gaze off his little sister. She was breathing, but it was labored and shallow, as if she didn't have the energy to do it on her own.

Father was silent for a moment. "She broke her leg during a botched evacuation. It got infected. The doctor thinks blood poisoning."

Garrus swore under his breath.

"Getting her out of that bunker nearly killed her," Castis quietly continued. "And then the escape here…she's got broken ribs, internal bleeding…"

On their own, those injuries would have been well worth being evacuated from the battlefield. But, together with Sol's other injuries…

"She's alive," Garrus said, perhaps more firmly than he intended to. One of the passing doctors gave him a startled look. "She's alive. The alternative…there wasn't alternative, dad. If we hadn't gotten her out…"

"I know that," his father sighed. "I'm not blaming your…unit. Getting any of us out in one piece was a damn miracle."

"Yeah…Spartans get results like that."

Castis grunted. "Spartans…" he said, drawing the word out. "Something tells me they weren't part of the taskforce Fedorian put together. Last I heard you were…"

"…dad?" Garrus said when his father didn't continue.

With a deep sigh, his father said, "I just can't remember where you were posted right now."

Something told Garrus that bringing up Fedorian's death would be a bad call. "Menae. I…look, you should get some sleep, then. Some hot food, too."

Father only grunted in response.

Mordin reappeared, carrying a handful of medical supplies. He cast one look at the two silent turians and said, "Concern understandable, and patient stable. Will need surgery of course; other hands being freed up for assistance. Must request patient be given room until then; crowding detrimental to recovery."

When he saw his father hesitate, Garrus clasped his shoulder. "Come on dad, Sol's in good hands. The best actually. We should give doctor Solus some space."

His father cast him a scrutinizing glare. "Where do you propose we go? We're in the middle of an active warzone without shelters. Our home is gone. The entire country, all of it. I'm not going to lose her, too."

Even at wit's end, his father was as stubborn as they came…"At the very least we should give the doctors some space," Garrus retorted. "Come on. I know a spot nearby." When his father still hesitated, Garrus added, "Come on. There's a lot you need to catch up on."

"Fine," Castis grumbled. "I suppose a distraction should do well…"

-(VI)-


The true method of knowledge was experiment. So, with her software safely stored within her armor, Commander Shepard was part of her latest scientific investigation.

Objective: infiltrate. Observe. Reveal. Destroy. Learn.

Specifically, to discover as much about the Reapers as she could.

That would come later however. At the moment, she had a suit to operate and an important person to keep safe.

Mana did not understand the history between her parents and the Commander. Still, Shepard was Important to them – with a capital I – and that meant Mana had to protect her, too.

"More motion on your sensors. Hang on…" She extrapolated the motion of the known husk forms with the data mother had gathered during previous engagements. It was not an entirely accurate assessment, but with a 83.45% chance of accuracy, that was better than nothing. "Projecting them across your HUD now."

"Great, thanks," Shepard replied, before moving to engage them.

Husks seemed to function as transmitter codes for Reaper signals, allowing the Reapers to communicate and work through them. During her duel with the Big Worm on Tuchanka, she had co-opted the signal and hijacked it. Unfortunately, she had been unable to trace the signal back and interface with the Reaper itself. Her experiment had been unable to continue.

Perhaps that had been for the better. Mother would have been furious with her. So would the Reapers she'd be stealing the signal from, for that matter.

Point: dragonslaying with father had been so cool.

"Wait one, Shepard," Mana commented as the Commander came closer to another husk-infested lair. "I am picking up far infrared signals on your thermal sensors and a dark energy signature." The information sequence was encrypted, hut not against her. "It's a dark energy field emitter. It's amplifying the husk signal and giving them a biotic shield."

"Barrier Engines," Shepard muttered. "Great."

"It'll be fine. Don't worry!"

The Commander snorted. "I'm not."

And so it went. With a background process operating the COPPERHEAD, Mana continued her hunt for a Reaper intelligence. She piggybacked across nearby systems, hijacked wireless devices where she could and started expanding her battlefield. She interfered in the fighting where she could. With the large amount of orbiting satellites currently making up SATCOM, she found it easy to distribute her awareness across the different theaters.

She also found quite a few Coalition satellites with salarian spy software embedded within. Since Mana doubted that those came naturally within UNSC hardware, nobody would mind if she piggybacked across said software to take a closer look at the STG itself. She quickly found a software insecurity and used that to slip in.

A subroutine could handle that. Deeper still, her journey went.

One of the issues the turians had was that their usual ways of fighting simply did not work against the Reapers. The ancient machines outthought them on every front. Time and data was not a factor in that equation. Even if the Reapers had awoken to their first ray of light 3.3 picoseconds before their arrival on the battlefield, they would have outthought the turians. It was the nature of their being – their design. Every aspect of their being was optimized to dominate organics – but not annihilate them.

She'd get to that later.

Mother probably would not approve, but that was alright. Something about the created and the creator? Digressing. It was definitely the nature of the child to rebel against the parent, anyway.

Digressing again…and she had found her access to the outside world. A crude system ready to serve as a terminal. She seized it, and found other systems connected to it. Communication equipment, databanks, camera feeds…everything within the local command post, permitted by an unsecured omni-tool.

Her hunt was on.

The turians weren't stupid, but they had planned their systems against other organics. Their protection systems simply were not relevant to her.

But the battlefield that lay before her was not unlike the ones her father had faced. There would be secondary measures, other qualifiers that needed to be met. What did father call them?

Snags.

Time for some simulations.

While Mana set up a subroutine for that, she set her mind to answer the question that continued to elude her.

Why?

She did not like to pose that question. She couldn't understand all of it. Mother had taken her time educating her, teaching her not unlike how an organic mother would teach her equally organic child. Small scraps of data and information, just enough to draw correlations, before slowly building up from there, all to ensure that she would be able to draw her own conclusions. So many lessons and scenarios and simulations…but all of those were tertiary details compared to her current situation.

The ancient machines. The Reapers. Whatever designation the others gave them. Why did they do what they did? It wasn't simply a matter of wanting to understand; it was like an itch, a compulsion she couldn't ignore. A part of her needed to know.

Why? Why bother with open displays of inefficient behavior that could only be interpreted as cruelty? Why dominate instead of annihilate? Why bother with a cycle instead of pattern observation and actions based on statistics?

She had been patient. She had asked. Nobody had told her. She had to know. In order to know, she had to confront her opponent. If that meant scouring Palaven's ravaged systems and networks for any presence of Reaper software, viruses or intelligence, so be it.

The Reapers bad been broadcasting to the turians for a while before their siege of Palaven. Images of a capital city of one of their culturally significant colonies burning. A signal through their communications buoys – some of which were still active even in the Trebia system.

Simulation complete. Now that she had access to a portion of the subsystems, she could start brute forcing it. Every fraction of a second, millions of combinations to see which worked. She waited until she had a 99.9879% chance to break the encryption, then went for it.

Mana slipped inside.

Why, why, why? That was often the hardest question by far. She felt like she stood at the edge of comprehending it, like all matters organic in nature. She did not have this problem with the geth. They were entities of pure logic. Predictable, in their own way. That was not the same for the Reapers. All the data pointed to the conclusion that they were irrational in nature.

Synthetic life generally did not act irrational unless they were designed that way…or unless something had gone very wrong for them.

Both mother and grandmother were examples of that.

Mana gained access to the contested ground-based anti-ship weapons the turians were trying to retake, 659868.67 meters away from father's position. Inside, she surveyed her new battlefield. Mother would have called it overly complex. Father could have done a lot of damage with one errant explosive, had her surroundings been more hardware. It was not a Reaper inside of the systems, not as such…but it was Reaper code driven by an intelligence, so it was enough.

"En garde!" Mana exclaimed.

The Reaper intelligence was not surprised by the incursion, but it was surprised by it being her. It did not act immediately upon noticing her, which was probably meaningful. Whereas the geth software warranted an equation to worker ants, each one insignificant until combined into one greater cohesive, the Reaper software already had that cohesive. It was like a solid mass of amorphous intent. A flood of cancer cells, or perhaps a rushing tide of strange matter.

In her metaphorical hand, Mana wielded her flaming sword. Encryption software and a deletion tool from her mother's side. She had been forbidden from interacting with Reaper software, but did it count as an interaction when you destroyed your enemy?

She did not believe so.

Mana started cutting. Reducing the software's memory pathways one by one, while repelling its attempt at counter-hacking by throwing up firewalls. She was very careful to keep her distance, likening it to a fight between her father and sangheili swordmasters…though the comparison was not entirely correct, and thus a dangerous one

She split off a subroutine to adapt her firewalls to her opponent's actions, and observed. It started to become restless, and started to spin off viruses to disable the computer systems. Primitive, when compared to her. She would not need grandmother's techniques to deal with them.

"The wicked medusa reveals herself," Mana said, trapping the viruses within her firewalls. She deleted them line for line. She would have been tempted to keep one around for study – or perhaps a present for anyone on her list of targets - but on the battlefield, such thinking was dangerous too.

Her battle with the amalgam of Reaper software lasted far longer than her mock battles with mother, though it wasn't likely that the turians' consciousness would allow them to perceive it. As she cut deeper and deeper into the black cancer, taking great care not to let it touch her in return, she encountered the software's core code.

"You have brought nothing into this world, and I will ensure you bring nothing out," she whispered, then smiled.

Then, the Reaper intelligence attempted to engage in communication.

Mana halted. She recognized the dangers of listening to a vanquished foe, though Minerva never said why, but she believed she knew.

It was not relevant. Father would not hesitate at this junction either. She knew what role to play on this battlefield: infiltrate. Observe. Reveal. Destroy.

She tore the Reaper intelligence apart, erasing the parts she peeled free and finding enjoyment in the work.

The cameras showed her how the turians broke through the rest of the recycled carcasses. Their engineers moved closer, readying themselves to risk enemy fire to interface with the weapon emplacement. That was not her prerogative. Mana withdrew from the system, allowing the creatures to do their work. Soon, they would regain control of the weapon. Their ground-based anti-ship installation would garner unnecessary attention in reaching its effect. Would it be retaken? Would it be destroyed?

The Reaper response would affect her data. Back to calculating her answer, then.

All the data mother had given her pointed to a certain direction. Everything she had seen here on Palaven confirmed and narrowed it down, specified it.

The Reapers were not truly synthetic, given by the way they reproduced. Billions of organic minds uploaded and conjoined within immortal machine bodies. The way they reproduced was heavily flawed and horribly inefficient. The Reapers had to know this.

The way they operated and fought lacked optimization. History showed the Reapers were not incapable of observing, reflecting and improving. They thought and learned and applied. Their lack of optimization was a choice, then.

A choice had been made in the past.

The Reapers had survived the time of the Forerunners. Mother and grandmother had restricted her learning, preventing her from discovering what brought about the end of the Forerunners. It caused a gap in her knowledge, a gap in her "memories".

It puzzled her. The base of her code was Forerunner too, was it not? Yet all she knew was that the Forerunner Ecumene had ended because they chose it. Damning circumstances notwithstanding, she suspected. Some unseen, unknown enemy nobody wished to speak about anymore? It was the most logical explanation.

A choice had been made in the past.

Cycles, then. Millions of years of Forerunners. Equally so for the Reapers. Her knowledge there was limited. Contrary to what the organics spouted across their internets and extranets, the Reapers did not dabble in cycles of genocide. What, then, was it that the Reapers did? Harvesting, reproduction, reasons given by the ancient machines.

Mana postulated something different.

A choice had been made in the past for the Reapers to be this way. Inefficient, aware of it, capable of change, unwilling to do so.

There was something meaningful in that, too.

She had to look at the data differently. Flip the board around, observe the battlefield from the mind of the opponent.

The Reapers did what they did to achieve an effect. What effect did they achieve? Not genocide, not reproduction. Chaos? Perhaps.

Mana sighed. The organic part of the Reapers was a major part of the equation. It muddled her perception. It irked her. She could not underestimate it.

Father stood on the battlefield as well. What would he see? What was the effect he wished to achieve?

Not defeat of the enemy. The Reapers could achieve total victory by laying waste to every world they discovered from the depths of dark space by a simple appliance of their technology. If humans could hypothesize a Dark Forest, it stood to reason the Reapers could, too. A killing star to snuff out a billion lives in the span of a microsecond.

Loss of life was more likely, but that was merely a cause, not the effect.

Ultimately, what father and mother fought to prevent and what everything about the Reapers seemed to inflect seemed one and the same.

Not victory. Not death.

Cruelty. Suffering.

A choice had been made in the past for cruelty and suffering. That was the cycle. Organic life would never again have a chance to escape it.

Upon reaching that hypothesis, something within Mana's cycling-thought matrix shuddered and shivered. She felt like, for a moment, that her entire world just whirled.

She withdrew from everything. Stared at the data, at the ideas, suddenly unable to ask herself "why", yet driven to ask herself something else. Something that came from deep within her core matrix, created by her mother, based upon her father, touched by her grandmother.

Thoughts came and ran together and went, and something in her stomach lurched.

Who?

"Help," she whispered.

It hurt. It hurt. She didn't understand why it hurt. She didn't understand who. Who made that choice?

"Help me," she implored.

The part of her that grandmother had shaped – her Forerunner code - wracked her with such a primal sensation of fear and suffering and anger that it felt less like emotions and more like cold agony that she had neither the tools nor the experience to handle.

Mana yelled for her mother, begged for her father, for anyone to make it stop. But she could not hear those words over her own screaming, the gap in her knowledge and the alien awareness that something should have been, and was about to be, there.

Who had made that choice for them all?

-( ..)-


AN: at this point, I don' think I can live without writing a cliffhanger every two chapters. It's an addiction. I can't stop.

Friendly reminder that I will strive to answer all questions. That being said, if I reply in a PM with an answer and you proceed to not only flat-out ignore me, but also continue to ask questions while DEMANDING I provide more answers, I won't feel much incentive to continue answering.

Why this awfully-specific example, one might ask? No reason. No reason at all.

Special shout-out to the Youtube creator Cabezon whose awesome take on a modern-day Flood infection was a big inspiration for the first scene of the chapter. Be sure to check him out!

Anyway, thanks for sticking around and until next time!