"You know, I'm starting to get a little tired of all this 'go find the sacred toenail clippings of my people's first ruler that's lost in heavily reaper infested space and I'll give you a couple of dudes for the Crucible' bullshit."
Jade leaned out around her cover and sent another burst of fire into the seething mass of reaper forces further down the tunnel. Javik grunted in response, sliding around her to send a wave of biotic power to detonate against Liara's singularity. They moved forward, leap frogging each other and providing cover. An abomination emerged from a bolthole in the floor and dodged around the broken and bullet-riddled boulders that littered the tunnel. Liara shot it as it reached Jade's position.
"Ugh, is it really necessary for these things to explode?"
"Be grateful that is all they do." Javik picked a piece of flesh off Jade's pauldron. "In my cycle, converted vorgons exploded and their blood was caustic."
"Right, thanks for that Javik." She swapped out thermal clips and looked at the asari. "How close are we to these ring things?"
She only half heard the answer. She'd opened the files on the drive again. This time, buried in the maze of folders and meaningless strings of numbers that served as file names, she'd found information on her daughter's meteoric rise. Ana had grown into a powerful and charismatic woman. In her late teens and early twenties, she'd made a name for herself spearheading several grassroots campaigns aimed at making the inner workings of the American government more transparent and understandable to the average citizen. They met with moderate success. Then, when she was thirty and working for the Secretary of State she'd been instrumental in brokering a de-escalation of hostilities that had been building for seventy years. It was believed her assignment as the first ambassador to Iran in nearly a century was her first true step on a path to the Oval Office.
When Ana's assassination was claimed by an Iranian terrorist organization with ties to members of that government, everything fell apart, and the peace died spectacularly in its infancy. The resulting war lasted nearly two decades and spread to engulf most of the Middle East, leaving the region devastated. The U.S. had profited hugely in the aftermath.
A knot of husks and cannibals milled ahead of them, blocking the tunnel, and Jade growled in frustration.
"I am sick of this planet," she said slipping to the front of the fire team and fired, nearly continuously, as she advanced on the mob at a jog. Many of her shots went wide.
"Jade!" Liara's voice was lost in the general din of moans, grunts and growls. "What are you doing?"
"Sick of this war." Jade's Mattock beeped at her. Somehow she'd used up all of her thermal clips. She slung the useless weapon on her back and tripped the button that brought an omni-blade into her fist. "And sick to death of reapers!"
The cries of her teammates were din in her ears as the rhythm of close-quarters combat beat in her ears. Her curses and threats blended together in her throat and emerged as an incoherent cry of rage and despair. The inhuman faces of the enemies surrounding her took on a new and familiar form and, as she laid waste to the reaper forces moaning and flailing and clawing at her, her lips peeled back in a rictus grin as each crumpled and distorted under her fists.
As suddenly as it began, the wave ended and Jade stood in the center of the carnage, covered in gore, shoulders slumped and heaving. After a moment, she turned and met the eyes of her companions. Liara's were wide with shock, but Javik's were narrowed in suspicion and rage. Again his right hand clenched and he ran his thumb over his forefinger.
"That was foolish, human." His voice was ground glass in an arctic winter.
"Whatever, the way to the central cavern should be clear now." Jade returned his baleful glare with a curled lip and raised eyebrow. "We ready to move?"
"Yes," Liara cut in quickly before the human and prothean could come to blows. "But this time, let's stay together."
Jade gritted her teeth and nodded grimly, following the asari into a cavern that should have taken her breath away. But Jade didn't see the beauty of the delicate, carved columns and spires scattered among statuary and stalagmites that inhabited the football field-sized room. She stuck timed mines to several of the largest of the columns supporting the roof as they passed, a safeguard for their exit.
"We've got ten minutes before these babies blow, T'Soni," she called struggling to focus on the mission. "So we'd better make this fast."
"That's plenty of time. I can see the altar now."
"Great, let's get this maguffin and get the hell out of here."
/There are two other entrances to this room. I cannot tell where the lead but they look very well used. The reapers are very active here./
Jade clicked her comm and headed to one of the other tunnels, too distracted to reply. Just before she'd headed to the mission prebrief she'd finally found out who had suggested and approved the hit on her daughter.
Damnit Brian, I trusted you! You were her godfather for fuck's sake! How could you do that to my baby? Blind with fresh rage, Jade adjusted the timer on the next mine and slapped it to another column. You're lucky you're dead and dust you son of a bitch otherwise there'd be no hole in the galaxy deep enough to hide you.
A bone chilling shriek shredded Jade's thoughts and she felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as the echoes bounced around the cavern distorting and multiplying. It was impossible for her to discern the sound's origin.
"T'Soni, we've got multiple bogies incoming. Tell me you've got those goddamn rings and we can bug out." Jade went for her Mattock then remembered she was out of clips for it.
/I just need one more minute./
Jade swore as she caught sight of a blue glow down her tunnel and unhooked her widow. She sighted in on one of the moving shadows and prayed she hit something in the tunnel's Stygian gloom.
"You've got thirty seconds before these fine ladies are close enough to tickle you from the inside, Doc."
/There are brutes closing from this direction as well./ Jade could hear the whine of Javik's weapon as he fired, desperately guarding his own tunnel.
/I've got it! Let's go!/
"That's music to my ears, Doc!" Jade hooked her rifle to her back and pelted toward the cavern entrance. A banshee flashed into being in front of her, screaming like knives on a chalkboard. Jade jinked and rolled, narrowly missing the creature's outstretched hand.
She spotted T'Soni several yards ahead as Javik fell in beside Jade. The asari was bowling husks away, using her biotics freely to clear a path to the entrance tunnel. The crump-whump of high explosives momentarily drowned out the moans and roars and screeches of the reapers behind them.
Jade let out a pungent curse. "That was NOT ten min-"
The pressure wave lifted her off her feet and triggered the other mines seeded throughout the cavern. Her body was tossed like a rag doll as Jade's world turned to a hellish landscape of fire and falling rock. She felt her legs break on impact with a wall. Then her world faded to black as her body wrapped around a corner and cracked her head hard enough to pop the seals on her helmet.