A/N: Just broke 100 followers. Keep them coming, people. Also just to pre-empt the inevitable questions, proton weaponry, proton shields and hyper-relativity motors are unusable in atmosphere, so all ground teams and atmospheric vehicles use eezo tech.
###
The drop bay of the 'Chariot of Armiger' was in a state of controlled chaos. Soldiers ran back and forth carrying weapons and supplies, orders were hollered across the wide hangar and the landing shuttles and air support gunships were swarmed with technicians like a kicked insect hive. The technicians on the Chariot had a motto: If your lander blows up, it won't have been due to equipment failure. Granted, the motto was not catchy, neither was it reassuring, but it was accurate.
Desolas Arterius watched the activity with a small twitch of pride in his mandibles. These were his men, drilled until they were forged into one of the most successful legions in the Hierarchy. He glanced behind him to his brother, Saren. Saren was on the fast track to the Blackwatch, or even the Spectres. His squad were always the ones charging into impossible odds and walking out with their heads held high.
"Are you ready for this?"
"Of course. Are you?"
Desolas pondered the question.
"Of course. Shall we?"
Saren led the way down to the hangar bay, Desolas following. As they passed through the hangar he took a moment to admire the sleek efficiency with which his men loaded up the landers, preparing for deployment.
"General?"
"Yes, Sergeant?"
"We're ready to deploy. Your command lander is this way, in the second wave of deployment."
"Thank you, Sergeant ..."
"Carissa Vakarian, sir. Combat medic, seventh cohort, first century, fourth maniple."
He nodded at the female.
"Thank you, Sergeant Vakarian. As you were."
Saren greedily watched the female scamper off to her lander.
"She's bonded. Eyes front, soldier."
Chuckling, Desolas hopped up into his own lander, Saren's squad accompanying him.
###
Ayi Muale slithered into her skintight nanoweave armour, feeling the smooth black fibres contracting and shifting to conform perfectly to the contours of her body, then checked her hair, put in a single braid coiled into a bun at the base of her skull. In Atavira society great emphasis was put on how an individual was permitted to style their hair - in her case, the coiled braid of a warrior. She then pulled up the nanoweave's hood, tugging the shroud over her face. The sensors in the material detected she had pulled over the hood and shifted the material accordingly, wrapping suffocatingly tight around her head. She then took the lightweight carbon fibre plates and held them up to her armour, the nanoweave gripping onto them and shifting them into place. Her armour plates were pure white against the black nanoweave, encasing her fragile form in solid bulletproof protection. She was a commando of the nation of Emaris, the white armour representing her purity of soul. Ayi personally thought the symbolism was unnecessary and pretentious, but the armour looked good on her, so who was she to complain? Finally she put on the helmet, the nanoweave releasing its hold on her face to cling to the carbon fibre encasing her head.
She reached over and grabbed her weapons, a Hahne-Kedar Radiance hybrid battle rifle with underslung grenade launcher, an American designed Mateba Majestic heavy revolver and a Kurzon nanoblade axe. Slotting them into position on her armour, she checked over her internal systems one more time before heading out of the biodome and assembling with her unit. They briefly knelt as the priestess in charge of their unit came out, her armour decorated with the Circle of Eternity emblazoned in black on the chest and shoulders and a gold Circle talisman in one of the pouches at her belt, which she briefly touched to the foreheads of all the commandoes, mumbling a prayer for the coming battle before slipping the talisman back in her pocket.
"Okay, let's go."
The commandoes scrambled into their stealth transport, Ayi snatching a last look at the biodome she called home before the sensor shroud closed over the vehicle.
###
The six Hierarchy troopships hanging over Shanxi opened their enormous ventral hangar bay doors, landers large enough to accomodate two full maniples of twenty falling out and lighting off their thrusters, easing themselves into the atmosphere and angling downwards toward the planet. They fell like steel rain, bolts of judgement from a vengeful deity.
In true Human fashion, the defenders of Shanxi responded to the fury of a god with two upraised fingers.
The invasion force in all its might descended unmolested for all of eighty seconds. Then the formation started to fall apart, the left flank of the lander fleet warping and twisting out of alignment. Admiral Vargas reached for his comm console to lay into the pilots and get them back on track, then he saw the plumes of smoke and fire. Almost thirty landers were falling out of the sky, engines torn apart by streams of slugs from invisible assailants. Even as he watched, the other flank were suddenly hit by a volley of missiles arcing up out of nowhere, another sixteen transports smashed and plummeting.
The Admiral was proud and arrogant but he was not stupid. He knew when the enemy had the advantage, just as he knew needlessly sacrificing lives was folly.
"Recall the landers, then give me full scans. I want to know what's hitting our troops."
The landers arced back upwards, making a break for the safety of the troopships.
"Admiral! Incoming!"
He looked at his screen in dumb surprise. Six installations on the surface had just launched swarms of surface to orbit missiles, blunt armour piercing warheads striking upward as they surged toward the Turian ships in orbit. Admiral Vargas cursed the spirit of ill fortune. With his ships committed to recovering his landers the troopships and their escorts were sitting ducks for the missiles, and he couldn't properly use a GARDIAN screen to shoot down the missiles without risking hitting his landers.
Thinking quickly, he snapped out some orders to his fleet.
"Frigates, intercept those missiles. Reinforce kinetic barriers and brace for impact."
His frigates descended into the atmosphere, GARDIAN lasers flicking out to intercept the missiles. The projectiles continued on regardless. The Admiral cursed the species sitting on the planet below. Who the hell puts armour on their missiles? Finally GARDIAN fire punched through the engine block of one of the missiles, the weapon losing power and beginning to fall out of the sky. Three more, then another four, then five more, but out of the eighteen initially launched five made it to their targets. Two troopships erupted with blossoms of nuclear fire, the three stage hybrid fission/fusion warheads riding their armour piercing tips deep into the bellies of the ships then detonating and tearing their targets apart. Seconds later another missile detonated against his flagship's kinetic barriers, knocking them down to forty per cent in a single hit, then the Shield of the Hierarchy was bracketed by the last two, her kinetic barriers gone and major structural damage throughout her fuselage. He could see her wing buckle under the explosion but miraculously she survived.
"I want those launch sites destroyed."
26,000 men. Two thirds of a legion, gone. As the Defender of Palaven aligned her main gun towards the surface of the planet, the coming obliteration of the missile silos was little comfort.
###
Adam Shepard slung a bandolier of heavy shells around his chest, feeling them rattle briefly against his grey and blue armour before locking into place. He was a lieutenant in the US Grenadiers, the elite unit dedicated to fighting in the toughest, heaviest firestorms and emerging victorious. His armour had some of the strongest personal kinetic barriers available and thick slabs of plating and the weapon he was carrying on his back was a Mateba Mjolnir mass accelerator cannon, each shot possessing destructive power equal to the main gun of a light tank. Backed up by two Mateba Majestic heavy revolvers, he was ready to take on anyone who threatened his colony.
He glanced up as a stealth-shrouded APC pulled up outside his barracks, disgorging a squad of white armoured Emaris commandoes. He eagerly scanned the group, recognising the name tag on the right shoulder in flowing Pautu script of his best friend Ayi. She raised a three-fingered hand in greeting, making him smile beneath his helmet as she walked over to him.
"Hey you."
"Hey yourself. Ready for this?"
"Nope. You?"
"Me neither."
She sighed and rested her forehead on his shoulder briefly, her Death Mask helmet clunking against his shoulder pad. Both of them were too young to have seen much action beside the odd assault on a pirate base or a Seu'Seun loyalist enclave, but they had grown up watching news vids of the bloody, savage battles between allied armies and the bug invaders on the black and green Raachok homeworld of Tirfan. They both knew too much to believe the jingoistic propaganda of the Atavira nations or the bloodless recruiting vids of the US Marines.
"This is going to get bad, isn't it."
"Yes it is."
The two of them bent their heads over a small photo of Adam's wife, Hannah, and baby girl Lizzie. With no children of her own Ayi was like a second mother to Lizzie, helping out the two struggling parents trying to raise a daughter while both on active service.
"How is she?"
"She's doing okay. We finally got rid of that cough. She's with Hannah on the Yorktown at the moment."
"Good. Far away from all this mess then."
Ayi looked out over the fortifications to the towering mushroom clouds on the horizon, all that remained of the six surface to orbit missile silos.
"You know if it's too hard for them to land troops they'll just bomb us round the Circle from orbit."
"I know. I'm certain General Williams knows that too."
"Better hope he does. I have no intention of being moved on by a kinetic bombardment."
"That's the spirit."
###
The Turian air superiority craft swept through the empty air for the sixth time. Full spectrum scans, emission nets and aerial seek and destroy patterns - Admiral Vargas had lost a full third of his invasion force without even getting boots on the ground and he wasn't going to take any chances before his next attempt to land his troops.
"Admiral, skies are clear. Unless the aliens have technology that makes their fighters literally invisible there's nothing there."
He was silent for a moment.
"Commence deployment of troops. I want our fighters and frigates to escort the landers this time."
"Yes sir."
###
Spetsnaz Lieutenant Radim Alenko lay on the roof of the Shanxi Soviet Worker's House, his heavy sniper rifle deployed and his stealth shroud pulled over his head. Beside him, his close friend Yiiyal-Hcachavu shuffled his own stealth shroud around his bulky body, grumbling. Unlike the Humans and Atavira, the Raachok were extremely adaptable in all walks of life, using their neural nets to create a semi hive mind in any kind of gathering. On the battlefield they were capable of shifting combat doctrine almost instantaneously in order to react to enemy tactics and retain the initiative. That in no way meant Yiiyal enjoyed stealth tactics.
"I hate this thing."
Radim chuckled and nudged his Raachok ally.
"I thought you people were supposed to be adaptable."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it. Hostile landing craft are en route."
"What happened to the stealth fighters?"
"They had to hide from a search pattern. There's a Union Battlestar on the way, along with a whole bunch of Human ships. We just have to hold out six more days."
"Oh, is that all?"
###
The Turian landers disgorged the last wave of troops, a veritable tent city springing up at their beachhead encampment. The entire ground force was now on the ground, awaiting the order to roll forward and smash aside the defenders of this pitiful world. The final landers pulled away, a steady stream of them heading back to dock with their respective troopships.
The USAF and Red Army stealth fighters chose that moment to strike. Little more than shimmers in the air, they struck from both ends of the column, torrents of mass accelerator slugs and clouds of armour piercing missiles striking out and smashing the landers into so much burning wreckage falling from the sky, trajectories carefully calculated to ensure they didn't land on any populated areas. Only six landers made it back to the troopships, one so badly damaged the technicians were entirely unable to explain how it made it.
Within six minutes of ferocious, one sided aerial slaughter the remnants of two legions were trapped on Shanxi.
###
Seukar Lipp'May Danofach was an unhappy Seu'Seun. He had sneaked his merchandise onto Shanxi hoping to make a quick credit selling them to local gangs and criminal syndicates. Instead he was now forced to release them in order to cover his retreat. He'd need a sample of Turian flesh to sensitise the merchandise, which should be easy enough to obtain, and then he'd let them run rampant through the alien landing zone while he fled in his stealth-shrouded racer.
He wrapped his entire body in a stealth shroud, settling the shell-tight material around himself and checking to ensure it was active before flying out of his racer, wings buzzing angrily. He decelerated and dropped to the ground, lying in wait for his target. The Seu'Seun were brutally effective warriors but their main advantage in a fight was their willingness to stoop to tactics so underhanded and barbaric no other organic would even consider them. The Chryssachae were just one of these tactics.
###
"MEDIC!"
Carissa Vakarian sprinted through the rapidly growing encampment, Phaeston assault rifle in one hand and medikit in the other as she rushed to the source of the panicked scream.
"MEDIC!"
Her breathing pounded in her ears as she skidded round the corner before coming to a sudden, shocked halt.
Saren Arterius, the living legend of the Twelfth Legion, lay on the ground unconscious in a puddle of his own blood, his left arm missing from the elbow down. She knelt down beside him, peeling away the makeshift bandage applied by his squadmates and hurriedly replacing it with a proper pressure patch, following it up with an electrolyte solution injected into his neck to mitigate the bloodloss.
"Spirits, what the fuck happened?"
A sergeant answered her after a moment, the ashen tinge of his throat belying the steady calm of his voice.
"A local predator, I think. Damn thing popped out of nowhere, bit his arm off then vanished."
"Dammit! Alright, you and you haul his sorry ass to the med tent."
The two soldiers just stared in mute shock.
"Now!"
Her voice cut through their stupor like a whip crack, shocking them into action. They picked up the half-dead warrior, carrying him through the camp to the medical tent as Carissa hovered over him, doing her best to keep him alive. They had barely set him down when the next emergency struck.
Apparently whatever had taken Saren's arm had decided Turians were tasty. And had brought some friends to the all you can eat buffet that was the invasion force's main camp.
A solid wall of black chitin armoured creatures swarmed towards the camp, the stuttering of assault rifle fire and the boom of grenades barely making headway against the oncoming horde. The monstrosities ran on two legs, holding their bodies horizontal with grotesque, many eyed heads out in front and long, barbed tails trailing behind. Held up to their chests were four limbs, each one tipped with a seventy centimetre, wickedly curved organic blade. The most terrifying feature were their jaws. Instead of a lower jaw they had five double hinged mandibles, each one with serrated edges, and three long, needle like chitinous spikes that occasionally poked out of their mouths like a gross parody of a tongue. It quickly became apparent to the desperately firing sentries that these creatures were heavily implanted with cybernetic technology - the back of their elongated heads were a mess of wires and metal plates and shimmering blue orbs were implanted into their long necks at regular intervals.
The creatures swarmed into the camp, tearing into the Turian patrols with ferocious hisses, slashing limbs with their bladed arms, mangling torsos with their jaw mandibles or just plunging their needle tongues into their victims who seemed to be paralysed by a quick acting toxin. Spitting a litany of curses to make the spirits cower in shame, Carissa kept one hand on her rifle as the screams of the wounded precluded the rapid filling of her medical tent.
###
Trajeet watched the creatures tearing into the Turian encampment in mounting horror. Watching the chaos of the Chryssachae attack, it took every ounce of his willpower not to help the invaders out. Hostile or not, nobody deserved to suffer through one of those.
The Chryssachae were a Seu'Seun bioweapon. Reverse engineered from Seu'Ikka's apex predator, the Chry'Eueue, the Chryssachae were heavily implanted with cybernetics and dropped in staggering numbers as shock troops and psychological warfare on any world the Seu'Seun planned to invade. Each member of the pack was given a tiny morsel of flesh from the target species. They would then hunt and destroy any member of that species until they were wiped out, the target species were wiped out or the Seu'Seun technicians remotely overrode their hunt command and set them to standby. Owning a Chryssachae was an instant death sentence in all Human and Atavira nations, as well as the Union. The abominations themselves were to be destroyed on sight. Seeing them swarming through the Turian camp was one of the most disturbing things Trajeet had seen.
"Comm link to Generals Corsev and Williams."
Moments later the three way comm link was established.
"Generals. Union Flyer Trajeet-Hcacn, reporting significant Chryssachae activity at the Turian beachhead."
Trajeet was treated to a crash course in English and Russian profanity.
###
Admiral Vargas was highly surprised when the hologram of the Human General Williams appeared on his bridge.
"Admiral Kaius Vargas, is it?"
The soldiers on the bridge started, training their weapons on the hologram.
"How are you talking to me?"
The strange fleshy creature shifted its shoulders around and spread its hands.
"My AI uploaded a translation program to my neural net and hacked your comm system. But that's beside the point. You need to call down an orbital strike on your beachhead camp now."
The sheer ludicrosity of the alien's demands caught Vargas completely by surprise.
"Now why the hell would I do that?"
The general's face shifted to something approximating the Asari expression of great distress.
"You have Chryssachae running rampant through your camp. You need to sterilise it immediately."
"This is ridiculous ..."
"We don't have the numbers or the equipment to stand against a Chryssachae attack! Much as I hate to admit it, your fleet is the only thing that can prevent the extinction of every sentient being on this planet. Please."
Admiral Vargas honestly had no idea what to make of the demands and pleas of this ridiculous alien. His attention was drawn by a sudden welter of distress calls from the beachhead. He looked very closely at the vid feeds. Then he looked back at the hologram.
"General Williams. What exactly are those things attacking my men?"
###
"Attention all aerial assets. This is General Corsev. Your fire priorities are now being altered. Engage all Chryssachae with maximum prejudice. Turian forces are temporarily downgraded from active to potential threat. Corsev out."
###
Boe was very surprised when two very grim looking Turians burst into her cell. She recognised one of them as her 'friend', Mikos. She was very, very surprised when Mikos spoke in faltering English.
"Boe? Help. Attack Turian and Shar Atavira same. Help?"
She cut him off before he could embarrass himself further, a cold ball of dread settling in her gut.
"Don't bother, I speak fluent Turian. What's going on?"
To his credit, Mikos seemed amused rather than angry. His expression quickly regained its grim cast, however.
"I suspected as much. So tell me Boe. What do you know about Chryssachae?"
The cold ball of dread erupted into a blazing supernova of abject, primal terror.
###
Desolas Arterius was the closest to panic he had ever been. His men were being slaughtered by the stuff of nightmares. He was desperately trying to pull them back to a defensible position, cursing the spirits of ill fortune that the landers had been all but obliterated. His men were trapped and being overwhelmed by these monsters. They were all going to die.
His comm channel crackled to life.
"Attention Turians. This is Union Flyer Trajeet-Hcacn of the Fourth Gunship flock. Stand by for danger close air strike."
Moments later four black and green vaguely insectoid looking aircraft appeared above the encampment, mass accelerators opening up on the swarms of savage predators. They finally broke under the fury of the alien assault, fleeing into the forest in a welter of panicked chittering.
"Attention Turians. Prepare for air drop of Chryssachae venom antidote."
Desolas allowed himself to feel a spark of hope once more.
A/N: Well, I have to say I am honestly just as surprised as you by the ending to this chapter, which has effectively invalidated my entire plan for the continuation of this fic. But this is where the plot bunnies bounced to and who am I to disagree with plot bunnies?