Murphy's law

Their next mission was something slightly more significant than chastising some mercenaries. Batarian pirates had been operating in the Skyllian Verge, targeting humans specifically, with their rogue government's blessing. The Alliance had traced a group of them to the small moon of Torfan, but given the fact that they were hiding underground beneath a heavily populated urban area, an orbital bombardment was out of the question if the Alliance ever wanted a spot on the Council. So, naturally, the marines were being sent in to purge the Batarians from the ground. The 95th already had a reputation for performing well in urban environments, and was tasked with breaking up the command structure of the privateers and breaking them open for the rest of the human forces.

Shepard's transfer to Major Kyle's platoon didn't go through, regrettably, but he was removed from his old squad and placed under Lieutenant McCarthy, a Scottish berserker who somehow had a remarkably good record for keeping his people alive. Shepard was more or less content at that. He was, however, displeased with how far behind Cerberus the Alliance seemed to be; most of them had never even heard of thermal clip technology, let alone been provided with weapons using them. So, instead, you were expected to fire infrequently and hope for the best. Just wonderful.

The shuttles moved in towards the drop point, and Shepard compulsively checked his Punisher sniper rifle, and Karpov heavy pistol, as well as the edge on his black lightweight carbon composite stiletto knife. All were in full working order; he holstered the pistol and sheathed the knife, but cradled the rifle as his platoon came in to land. McCarthy's team was intended to be dropped in an open area about half a kilometre from the entrance to the subterranean tunnels, and quietly make its way through the urban area towards where the vast majority of communications transmissions were coming from. Once there, they were to eliminate any and all command personnel and equipment, before deploying a timed explosive to rip a hole in the Batarian trench lines immediately above. The other infiltration team, under the command of Major Kyle, were assaulting what was believed to be the engineering and maintenance hub for the privateer forces, before making their way to the trenches and clearing them with the aid of McCarthy.

The plan seemed plausible enough, but Shepard's cynical mind kept one thought above all others; the adage that no plan, however brilliant, ever quite survives contact with the enemy. The squad was dropped off from the shuttle, and the squad moved immediately into the cover of the nearest block of apartments, which were almost invariably linked about halfway up by a covered bridge. Shepard was scanning the area for signs of ambush; the Batarians knew that the Alliance had to attack them from the ground, and they knew the Alliance's tactics; send in a team behind enemy lines to bugger things up for them, then slaughter the bastards.

So where the fuck was the enemy? Granted, the idea was to hit them where they were weak, preferably without letting them know the enemy was coming, but Intel had said that stealth was heavily advised as the enemy maintained a significant presence in the area. And there was no sign of them.

Shepard went to McCarthy with his concerns.

"Sir, we're almost certainly walking into an ambush."

"I know, Corporal, but we still have an objective to complete. In my experience, the only way to beat an ambush is to go in hard and fast and react quickly to their presence so they lose the advantage."

Shepard was not reassured. As the group's stealther, he took point, watching the area carefully for any signs of the enemy, and finding none. He chose a route that would provide a good vantage point over the rest of the terrain, moving via the apartment blocks and the walkways that connected them towards the entrance to the bunker network. The fact that 'a densely populated urban area' was not only empty of the enemy, but people of any kind, was making some of the other squad members as uneasy as he was. Jenkins and O'Reilly, a spacer child and an Irish thief respectively, were watching Angel Eyes intently, mimicking his moves exactly and using the cover he did.

Thaddaeus found it downright irritating. He didn't want any childish adulation; he wanted to be left alone to get things done properly and stay alive.

That quickly became more complicated. As they approached the third bridge across to a new building, and the penultimate one before they reached the objective, Thaddaeus hesitated. Something wasn't right; not just the general atmosphere, his nerves had been screaming at him about that for about ten minutes now, but something about this specific bridge was different. The differences between this one and the previous ones seemed unimportant, though. There was slightly more in the way of general clutter in the form of storage crates than on the previous bridges, but something else...

"What's the hold-up, Corporal?" McCarthy's Scottish accent boomed out from behind him. Shepard wanted to throttle him. He quickly signalled without turning around for the group to stop and shut up, and tried to concentrate. There was an anomaly here, but what?

The pattern was different. The clutter of the previous bridges had been chaotic, and so each bridge had been quite different in terms of where the cover was. The clutter here looked similar to that of the previous bridge, it looked... contrived. Shepard looked again, looking for a pattern within the layout that could give a reason...

There was a group of crates near every connection to the suspension cables and scaffold that kept the bridge structurally sound. A few other crates were scattered around to make thing look random, but the entire setup was artificial. He turned.

"Back up," he said, ever so softly. Then, he heard the slightest sound behind him. An electronic beep.