A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who has made The Space Race my most successful story so far, and in particular an enormous thank you to my swiftly developing core of regular reviewers. I've decided that in order to thank my feedback squad I'm going to name a character after each one of you. Keep an eye on character names!
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Two very bizarre looking creatures walked into Carissa Vakarian's med tent. She almost went for her rifle before realising the two of them were under armed guard. Each one was almost nine feet tall, with strange triangular heads and thin, forward curving torsos, slightly curved spikes along their spines and stubby but definite tails, lean arms and legs terminating in five fingered hands. If it wasn't for their green and black coloration they could be mistaken at a distance for incredibly emaciated Krogan.
"Who the hell are you?"
The creatures turned to look at her, blinking. Eventually one of them replied.
"Here to help. Medic Meyeteel-Hchnach at your service, and my daughter Efeeri."
The slightly smaller alien bobbled its head at Carissa. She held up one hand, ensuring the other remained firmly on her rifle.
"Before I let you touch my patients I need a guarantee that you won't harm them in any way."
To her surprise the enormous alien chortled at that.
"I like you, Medic Vakarian. I give you my word as a healer."
She blinked rapidly and pulled her mandibles tight into her face.
"Why?"
The first hint of displeasure seeps into the alien's voice.
"Your little incursion can be written off by my people at least as the blunderings of a child that knows no better. After all, only about ten Raachok have lost their lives as a result of it. The Chryssachae had free rein over our homeworld for almost twelve years before we wiped the last one out. I would not wish that pain on anyone." He paused and looked downwards, making a strange snuffling noise. "I used to have three daughters."
Carissa couldn't help but suddenly think of her own son Garrus and daughter Solana safely home with their aunt on Palaven. The pain of a parent with a lost child transcended the boundaries of species.
"I'm sorry ..."
She was distracted by the holographic figure of another alien, this time one of the humans, appearing over a wounded soldier.
"Alert. Vitals dropping into red zone."
With an explosive bark, what she assumed to be a curse, the two alien medics rushed over to the soldier.
"Thanks Sammi. Diagnostics?"
"Puncture wound to the neck indicates action of paralytic agent."
The two aliens tossed syringes between them, eventually selecting one and shoving it into her hand.
"Main artery in the neck, now."
She mutely complied, pushing the needle into the leathery skin at the side of the soldier's neck. His rapid, shallow panting slowed to a more relaxed pace, the hologram of the human announcing in a flat, emotionless voice that the patient's stats were back in normal parameters. Carissa gestured at the hologram.
"What is that thing?"
The larger Raachok glanced at it.
"Who, Sammi? Medical VI, helps monitor and triage patients."
The hologram winked out, only to appear across the room.
"Alert! Severe internal bleeding!"
No rest for the wicked.
###
To say Admiral Vargas was unhappy would be like saying the Defender of Palaven was a pretty big spaceship. He had been completely and utterly wrong-footed by the events of the past two hours. He had gone from watching the aliens desperately prepare to fend off his army to watching the aliens help them defend against an attack by an out of control bioweapon. At first he had been skeptical, but he had started to come around when the aliens had revealed the location of their invisible gunships hovering over the beachhead camp in order to prevent his men from getting overwhelmed. The trend had only continued when they airlifted medics and antidote in to cure his men of the paralytic poison carried by the creatures. And now one of the enemy commanders in chief was offering to come aboard his flagship, alone and unarmed, to aid in co-ordinating their forces against these 'Chryssachae'. If this was a ruse, it was an absurdly poorly designed one.
The alien shuttle hovered twenty kilometres off his port bow as one of his very few landers rode over with a team of soldiers to search the ship top to bottom for any sign of weapon. Almost twenty minutes passed before the ship was declared clear and allowed to dock.
He made his way down to the shuttle dock himself to meet the aliens. When he got there he was very surprised to see two completely different species.
"Who the hell are you?"
The Human in the dark red uniform blinked, presumably surprised by his bluntness, before replying.
"General Mikhail Corsev, Red Army. This is Jonjaim-Bholien, the closest we have to a Chryssachae expert."
The enormous Raachok nodded at Vargas, regarding him with a single acid green eye set in his drab olive fur. The alien was wearing a heavy suit of matte black armour with a couple of large and conspicuously vacant mountings on the shoulder and forearms, making Vargas suspect the suit's integrated weaponry had been hastily removed.
Vargas nodded at the two aliens. Usually he would be the first to advocate their subjugation but right now the legion and a half trapped on the planet below demanded he play diplomat for now.
"Admiral, with your permission we would like to send our ground forces to support your soldiers at their camp."
"Why? We're an invading army."
The red-clad general chuckled and shook his head.
"You're clearly not desperately committed to destroying us, and you're willing to listen to reason. That puts you two up on the Chryssachae."
"One more thing before we continue. Your friend Williams mentioned AI."
"Hmm?" Corsev quickly remembered Mel's warning. "Oh, we actually prefer the term SI, or Simulated Intelligence. Don't worry, they're not self aware. Now where were we?"
###
Ayi was distinctly glad of her helmet. She had a feeling that if the Turians could make eye contact she'd collapse under the weight of the stares. Next to her, her battle-sister Beyogi Muale nervously stroked the haft of her axe.
"Peace, Beyo. We're supposed to be friends, remember?"
The older commando shook her head and chuckled wryly.
"I'll relax when I'm dead. I trust them about as far as I could throw a fully armoured Seu'Seun."
"How far is that?"
"I don't know. Last time I tried I near got my pretty head torn off."
The banter helped ease some of the tension from Ayi's frame, although she could feel alien eyes burning into the back of her head.
The warrior priestess leading their unit marched right up to the Turian general.
"General Arterius?"
He seemed mildly startled she spoke perfect Turian, but nodded.
"Muale unit, Shanxi Pest Control department. We heard you have a Chryssachae infestation."
Her wry humour drew coughing barks from several of the assembled Turians. Ayi fervently hoped it was laughter.
"Very well. If you would follow me to the perimeter. The creatures are holding off for now but we're fairly sure they're going to attack again."
The priestess chuckled darkly.
"They're Chryssachae. Of course they're going to attack again. And when they do we'll bump them round the circle so fast they won't stop skidding until the universe implodes."
Ayi wished she shared the priestess's confidence.
###
Carissa leaned against the table, exhausted and coated in Turian blood. It had taken three hours for her and her medical team, assisted by the two Raachok, to finally finish patching up the wounded from the last wave. The two aliens were practically machines. When they had finished they hadn't stopped to congratulate themselves or slump in exhaustion. They had merely asked directions to the nearest place they could find a dead Chryssachae, for what purpose she could only imagine.
Her Omnitool started beeping and a tired smile separated her mandibles as she saw who it was. She accepted the call.
"Cadmus."
"Carissa! Spirits, what happened, you're covered in blood!"
She groaned.
"Not mine. Just been sticking people back together. How are you?"
He idly fiddled with the end of his mandible.
"I'm fine in my big spaceship. You're the one down on the ground with those ... those things. What are they?"
"Apparently a rampant bioweapon. They were created by a species hostile to the ones on this planet. We've got an awful lot of aliens down here in the camp and they all speak flawless Turian."
"How are you holding up?"
She stifled a gulp.
"I ... I'm tired and scared and I wish we were far away on Palaven with Garrus and Solana. But I have a duty to heal my fellow soldiers. So here I am."
Her husband looked dejected.
"I'm sorry. I wish there was something I could do."
"Just seeing you is enough. Thank you, Cadmus."
"I love you, Carissa."
"As I you. Goodnight."
She cut the comm line and slumped against the gurney with a sigh.
###
Captain Kronen-Hsechen of the Raachok Battlestar 'Wildcard-Hesman' grinned in savage delight as the 1850 metre Battlestar slipped entirely unnoticed through the most advanced sensor grid in the Union. The ship was shaped vaguely like an enormous dragonfly crossed with a scorpion, a thick body with a pair of thin wings projecting out from the sides tipped by a spherical bridge, the wings containing the sublight engines and HR motors, and then a long tail with two more HR motors on the end. The main striking power of the ship were the two enormous weapon batteries slung on arms out and beneath the main body like the claws of the scorpion, each one loaded to the brim with short range antimatter missiles. This was the Raachok Union's equivalent of the Odessa dreadnought or Shepard supercarrier, that thing that conventional fleet doctrine held was impossible, an ambush predator in space. The stealth shroud alone cost almost three trillion standardised credits, making the Wildcard one of a kind for sure, but as a proof of concept she was brutally effective. And she was en route to Shanxi with the rest of the battlegroup.
Kronen chuckled at the sudden explosion of surprised curses over the comm as the Wildcard reappeared behind the sensor station that was supposed to be looking for her, spewing death from her missile batteries. The dummy munitions bounced off the sensor station's hull with a series of dull clunks transmitted to his brain via the neural net link between him and the staff of the sensor station.
"Dead again. There's no way your sensor net will be able to pick is up unless we let you."
The sensor tech muttered a string of invective before logging the result in his computer system. Wildcard - 12 0 - Sensors. These aliens were in for a nasty surprise indeed.
A/N: Yes Wildcard, you got a giant invisible spaceship. Feel free to squee in delight.
###
Beyogi threw her hand out, gathering raw energy from the aether around her arm before sweeping it into a complex sigil that hung in the air, blazing out in pure white light. She focused her entire being on the sigil, letting it expand to fill her mind before lashing her hands out, the pure energy breaking from its pattern to surge through her body and arc from her fingers in the characteristic fizzing flash of chained lightening. The bolts of ionized air sliced through the advancing mass of black chitin, splitting shells and severing limbs as the Chryssachae horde scrambled over themselves to escape her attack. She let the energy go after about ten seconds and sixteen Chryssachae, to see several Turians looking at her with an expression of dumb amazement.
"What?"
She punctuated her question by pumping a grenade into the horde, redirecting the dumbstruck aliens's attention back to their targets.
"What was that, some kind of biotic?"
"I have no idea. I'm just glad we're not fighting it."
She tuned out the whispered conversation as she continued to send rounds at the horde. The Chryssachae were finally breaking, the survivors of the wave fleeing in disarray. Beyogi let herself slump to the ground, panting fiercely. Sigils were incredibly hard work.
###
Vargas, Corsev and Jonjaim were bent over a data table, watching the ebb and flow of the Chryssachae around the beachhead encampment. They had been for the past three days. Searching. So far the big Raachok hadn't said a word, instead keeping his eyes focused on the projection, and Corsev had only briefly explained that they were looking for a pattern. Vargas had to admit he was starting to see one emerge. Every time a wave broke the survivors followed a looping path round the encampment, reinforcements seemingly popping out of nowhere to swell their numbers and keep the pressure on the beleaguered defenders. He examined the reinforcements closer. They were popping out of the ground seemingly, the directions they were heading random, but based on the frequency ...
"Here."
All three men put their fingers on the same spot at the same time.
"Alright. There's the nest."
Vargas glanced up at Corsev.
"Nest?"
"Source of reinforcements. We need to neutralise it."
"Orbital bombardment?"
For the first time Jonjaim spoke up. His voice had an oddly synthesised tone to it, sounding almost artificial.
"No. At least not immediately."
"Why not?"
He swept one hand round in a gesture that encompasses the entire Chryssachae horde.
"We need to wound the Queen but not kill her. The entire horde will fall back to the nest to protect the Queen. Then we drop a big rock on her head."
Vargas nodded slowly.
"Good, good. I like it. So how do we get men into the nest to wound the thing?"
"Hmm. We'll need full stealth shrouds. They're damn difficult to make though so we're limited in our ground team numbers."
"How many?"
Corsev pondered the question.
"Ten."
###
Saren groggily opened his eyes, rubbing his forehead with a groan as he hauled himself up. Wait a second ... He was pretty sure his arm had fallen off. He grabbed at the offending limb, finding smooth hard metal in the place of springy plating.
"Captain Arterius! Glad to see you up."
He turned his head to the source of the voice.
"Sergeant Vakarian wasn't it? What have I missed? And where did this replacement arm come from?"
She scratched nervously at her mandibles.
"Spirits, where to start? We were attacked by a rampant bioweapon deployed by a species hostile to the natives of this world. We ended up fighting with the defenders against these creatures. As for your arm, that's an, um," she checked her Omnitool, "Emaris emergency battlefield prosthesis. Meyeteel and Efeeri modified it for you."
He wiggled the three fingers. The shape of the arm and hand was subtly different from what he was used to. At least it had the right number of fingers.
###
"This is Admiral Vargas. I am here with General Corsev of the Red Army. We have identified the Chryssachae nest and require ten volunteers for a strike team. I won't lie - this will likely be a suicide mission, but if it is successful it will be the death blow against these abominations. Vargas out."
###
The ten volunteers sat in the lander soaring up to the Defender of Palaven, each one sizing up the others. Wondering which of them were going to survive.
Saren Arterius, living legend of the 12th Legion, now minus one limb and wanting revenge.
Carissa Vakarian, one of the most skilled combat medics in the Legion, only following her calling to protect her fellow soldiers.
Keltik Reparran, veteran of hundreds of Hierarchy stealth operations, volunteering because of his sense of duty.
Aisard Borronis, leader of the Cabal unit attached to the 12th, in it for nothing more than the thrill of the fight.
Adam Shepard, poster boy for the US Grenadiers, determined to stop the Chryssachae from running rampant over his planet.
Radim Alenko, reputed as ruthless and uncompromising even among the Spetsnaz, lending his stealth expertise to the mission.
Yiiyal-Hcachavu, Raachok Night Warrior, following his best friend Radim straight into the jaws of hell.
Jonjaim-Bholien, expert in the art of killing Chryssachae, going along to ensure every last one died violently.
Ayi Muale, Emaris commando, volunteering to ensure her god-daughter didn't lose a parent today.
Beyogi Muale, veteran of the Tirfan Incursion, taking any opportunity to exercise her burning hatred of the Chryssachae.
The ten warriors in the shuttle looked at each other with some measure of nervousness, each one wary that some of the others in the shuttle four days ago were determined to kill them. And now they were thrown together in an alliance of necessity. Ready to kill or be killed not for the Hierarchy, or for their nation, but for every living being on Shanxi.
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A/N: 100 favs! Woot! Just to reassure some of you guys, the unexpected plot bunnies in no way ended this fic. And just to clear something up - just because the Chryssachae are sensitised to Turians doesn't mean they won't attack anyone else if they're hungry. They are animals after all. Thanks to subsider34 for pointing that out.