Good Luck Doesn't Last

The Scotsman and the two men flanking him could only have been vaporised; such was the sheer intensity of the explosion that erupted from the bunker system. A further marine from the team of twelve was buried under the rubble, and the rest knocked flat by the shockwave and the shrapnel. As one of the furthest from the entrance, Shepard recovered first, groggily picking up his sniper before clambering to his feet and shaking off the daze that afflicted him.

The batarians themselves seemed astonished by the blast that had erupted out of the network that contained their headquarters, and so had been just as paralysed into inaction as the marines. However, as some of them noticed surviving humans, their hostile impulses became apparent once more, and the sniper was singed by shots with regular and increasing frequency as the enemy approached and he endeavoured to get his comrades back on their feet.

The other seven men were largely unscathed, with superficial cuts, bruises and burns, but most of all, they were simply shocked and disorientated by the explosion, and, most of all, by the sudden and total reversion of their good luck. Jenkins summed up their attitude, bewailing

"But we were doing so fucking well..."

"And now four men are dead, Private, and unless you want to join them you're going to stop whinging." Shepard rounded on him harshly."Good luck never lasts, it's just random coincidence that leaves events in your favour, and there are always more ways for something to go wrong than right. Get over it and get on with it and you might leave here with your skin more or less intact."

"He's right." The Service Chief said wearily. Shepard had never paid too much attention to him, having assessed him as reasonable second officer material, but not burdened with the gift of being able to handle overall command. "We need to continue and complete our objective. We've still got enough men to fight our way to the next entrance over, and from there we can-"

"Die in the exact same bloody way as McCarthy and his damned berserkers. What is it with you Alliance pissants and not being able to bloody think?" Thaddaeus interrupted acidy. The NCO gaped at him. He gritted his teeth, and explained, attempting to be patient, "It'll be rigged in the exact same way as the rest of the entrances. Do you really think that these people are only capable of mounting a conventional defence? Their commanders put them out here; probably some of their worst men, to cull some of us if they could, lull us into a false sense of bravado and blow us all to kingdom come as soon as we entered the base."

His superior's face reddened at Shepard's condescending, superior tone. "I am in command here, Corporal, not you."

Shepard responded by raising his sniper rifle and resting it on the collar of the man's armour. The Service Chief paled; terrified of the cold bastard who was so unmoved by the annihilation of a third of their squad, and shocked by his threatening action.

"And therein, methinks, lieth theproblem." Shepard said quietly. "You are not qualified to lead us through this mission safely. I am. If this upsets you, and you feel unable to obey my orders," he glanced at the rest of the group "I will be forced to either kill you or leave you for the batarians." He turned back to the NCO. "Capiche?"

The man swallowed visibly, then nodded, shying away from the muzzle of the gun at his throat. "Yes, sir."

"Further vindication for me." Shepard muttered. "For a soldier, you've got precious little in the balls department, Service Chief." He raised his voice to address his troops over the gunfire that was only increasing in volume. "Chaps, I need your remaining explosives, besides the one we're using to blow up the command centre. Hand them over, then give me some suppressing fire. We're going in this entrance, and we're going to blow it open."

The marines quickly complied, seeing the sense in his suggested course of action, as it would be absurd and unnecessary for the batarians to lay multiple traps in an entrance when the first would seal it off. Shepard climbed up the rubble, past the point where the explosion had clearly gone off, and placed the charges so that a directional blast could occur that would blow the debris clear of the bunker network without bringing any more down. He would have ordered the squad's demo specialist to do it, but he was one of McCarthy's berserkers; out of the picture now. It was only through damned luck that they even had the fucking bomb; as it was more tech than anything else it was being carried by the squad's engineer.

He had the men pull back to his position, and watched with no small amount of satisfaction as the batarians rushed forwards again, practically baying for the kill. They were precisely on the receiving and of the directional blast and the resultant rubble that was cleared away from the entrance; an unpleasant experience that many of them didn't survive.

The explosion left a gaping wound in the structure, a wound that Shepard's marines now entered, with him in the lead, pistol and stiletto at the ready. They managed to make considerable progress through the eerie subterranean network unhindered, and largely unpursued by the batarian forces to their rear; as the Bastard had surmised, the batarians had discounted an assault on this front entirely. However, as they began to reach areas that had lighting that hadn't been knocked out by the two explosions, they also began to reach the batarian counter-attack, which involved quite frankly suicidal use of heavy weapons and explosives.

Something didn't feel right about these people to Shepard. They're slavers, freelancers, at most privateers, and they therefore have an interest in self preservation above everything else; they're in it for the profits. They shouldn't be throwing themselves at us like this...

Shepard managed to limit damage by deploying two men flanking him with assault rifles that were under orders to shoot at anything moving and only stop shooting once he told them to, meaning the four eyed apparent fanatics couldn't get close enough to get in a decent shot or blow themselves up and take any marines with them. However, the formation was beginning to feel the pressure of the opposition as more of them advanced behind them, driving them forwards with increasing speed, forcing them into the suicide elements in front with less and less time to bring them down.

Shepard was having to bring down one of every three opponents that appeared personally, now; his squad just wasn't fast enough, and their weapons were overheating. Lethal snap-headshots were the only viable option, and as an assassin, he was the only one with the skills to do it; and if this went on for much longer, even he wouldn't be able to cope anymore, he realised, and that gave him the furious, brutal strength to act all the more quickly, until, somehow, they managed to reach the command centre.

Shepard, knowing full well that it could well be another snare, but also realising that they had no time to check, nodded to one of his men, who parodied the Scotsman's earlier ill-fated action, shooting off the hinges, before breaking the door in, bursting through-

Getting off a strangled curse before being cut off by an angry fusillade of bullets that whistled out into the corridor to smash into the wall. Shepard roared a curse, snatched a grenade launcher from a batarian corpse, fired a round blindly through the door, before ducking through after it, not even waiting for the explosion, and squeezing off another explosive round at the startled pack of batarians at the centre, blowing four of them away and sending the others reeling, before he looked down and saw the shredded and bloody corpse of the marine that could easily have been him if he'd been less careful.

It was Jenkins. Shepard snatched up the assault rifle from his already cold hands, set it to fully automatic, and sprayed death at those bloody fanatics; they could never be reasoned with, never talked to, they were an evolutionary dead end in a world where you had to change to survive, and he was doing everyone and more importantly himself a favour by slaughtering them like the mindless dogs they were-

They were all dead. The gun was overheating in Shepard's hands; he flung it from him before it could burn him, and turned to look at his squad. The Service Chief and O'Reilly stood behind him; the other four men were holding the batarians in the corridor. The two men in the room were looking at him as if he were going to snap at any moment; little did they know he'd never really been in one piece.

"Prep. the charges." He ordered coolly, controlling his voice, keeping it polite, urbane, but with that hint of gravity and menace. It served as a startling counterpoint to his frenzied actions of but a moment ago, and only seemed to disturb his men further. Shepard didn't care as long as they followed his commands.

They did.