I do not own anything. Mass Effect belongs to EA/Bioware.
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Shit.
The attack on Mindoir was happening.
I was alerted to this by the booms one would associate with the sound barrier being broken... followed by the ones associated with explosions.
This was bad. I've spent the last four months doing everything in my power to prepare. I had tried to convince my parents to move somewhere else... but they thought I was being silly.
Damn it.
I was just going home from hanging out with Jesse Kumi and his little sister Talitha. I started running to our home, I prayed everything was ok.
And I willfully ignored the little voice in the back of my head telling me nothing would be ok.
I ran, I ran as hard and fast as my body would allow.
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Why?
When I saw the half collapsed building I had called a home, despair filled my heart.
When I entered and began to feverently search for my parents the desperation only became stronger.
When I saw their broken bodies, half buried under rubble, I panicked and tried to get them out, but the rubble was too much... I couldn't. I don't know how long I spent there, crying and staring at their lifeless eyes, their faces a mask of agony, no doubt from the sensation of being crushed under their very own roof.
It could have been minutes or hours for all I know.
What I do know is that eventually the despair and crippling sadness was replaced with rage, I hated the fucking pirates who destroyed my home and killed my family. I managed to make my way to the back yard, I got a shovel which I used to get their bodies free. Barely keeping the mental collapse at bay I buried my parents, I wouldn't allow their bodies to be desecrated by scavengers.
A red haze filled my vision and I found myself grabbing an old combat knife from my home, or what was left of it at least.
I went on to the town.
With no clear objective in mind.
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"Shut up you damn human brat!" It was deep voice, guttural, non-human.
I was in the towns outskirts, I hid behind the corner, hugging the wall. I saw it, it was a Batarian, of that I was sure, the human like shape, light blue skin and four disgusting eyes made that apparent. He was armed with an assault rifle and had a pistol holstered on his hip, he was wearing what seemed to be light body armor, but no helmet.
And he was dragging a six year old girl by the hair.
A six year old girl I was familiar with.
It was Talitha, and her tear stricken face and painful wails struck a chord with me, in the way that rage filled me, overwhelmed me.
The four-eyed freak was too busy trying to make her wails stop, he had a loose grip on his rifle, and he was distracted.
I snuck up behind him, whether by skills I didn't know I had, or just pure dumb luck I got within reaching distance of him.
And I brought the knife down on his throat, I could practically feel his shock, he dropped his rifle and his grip on Talitha became nonexistent, I could hear his choked gurgle, and I managed to capitalize on that shock and bring him to the ground. I brought the knife up, and down onto his face. Again.
And again.
And again.
By the end of it his face looked like someone had been far too eager to cut up a ripe watermelon.
Talithas wails reminded me of her presence.
I dropped the knife a hugged her, she began crying, but I knew that she was happy to see me, well as happy as a child could be in this nightmare anyways.
"I-It's ok Tali." I used my nickname for her, I knew she didn't like it. Always puffing up her cheeks and pouting at me. "Everything will be alright." I tried to convince myself as much as her.
That's when I saw it.
Or to be more precise that's when I saw him.
Jesse.
A half dozen bullet holes in his chest, eyes wide and soulless, a pained expression on his face.
He had died. Most likely killed by the Batarian who currently lied dead at my feet, he died trying to protect his sister.
I let Tali cry for a while, but we had to move.
I closed her brothers eyes, and felt nothing but pain at the fact I couldn't do anything more for his body, we didn't have the time.
I would keep Tali safe. I hoped that would be enough.
I grabbed the dead pirates rifle and pistol. I told Tali to follow me and we went off.
To find somewhere that had even the bare semblance of safety.
The sheriffs office was the only thing that came to mind.
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We ended up sticking to alleyways, hugging walls, corners and rubble. We had a few close calls, where we were almost spotted by the raiders, but we managed to make it to the police station. It looked bad.
But then again everything looked bad now.
It was covered in bullet holes, parts of it looked moments from collapsing. We approached cautiously. And then someone called to us.
"Hey kids. Over here." It was but a whisper, but the voice was human. And that did more to calm my nerves than anything else.
It was sheriff. Higgs.
We entered the building and saw a few others. The deputy, half a dozen hooligans in the holding cells, a couple of other adults and a dozen kids.
"How the hell did you survive kid?" It was a good question.
"And is that a pirate rifle?" Admittedly an even better one.
"I managed to get the drop on one." The fact that I had managed to get that sentence out without choking on the words was, in of itself, impressive when one took my mental state into consideration.
"How are things looking?" I needed to know when the Alliance would show up.
I needed to know when this nightmare would end.
"The Alliance should have a patrol stop by in a couple of hours. We're lucky that the fucking pirates showed up when they did all things considered." Sadly he was right. The Alliance was spread thin, so patrols tended to be sparse on the frontier.
"S-So we just need to wait them out right?" One of the guys in the cells spoke out.
"To put it simply, yes. But even then the Alliance likely won't attack right away."
"Why not?" One of the adults asked, I recognized him as a teacher in the local middle school. That at least explains the kids, he probably managed to get them out safe.
"The four-eyed bastards are putting shock-collars on people. And putting them between themselves and the most likely areas of attack. The Alliance can't launch an attack, because the bastards can just overload the collars and kill the civies. If that wasn't bad enough, they are being used like living shields, they can't go all out."
I recognized this man as a guard on the town hall. Probably escaped from there when the pirates hit. He had actual weapons, a SMG and pistol.
Everyone seemingly lost hope at those words.
So did I.
We couldn't just sit here and pray we survived.
We needed to do some-
"What if we help."
Everyone seemingly turned to me.
"What?" Asked the deputy.
"What if we go and try to help the Alliance." I began, and continued before they could cut me off. "You said that the shock-collars were what's gonna screw with the back up. So if we kill the pirate leaders then they can't use them. And I highly doubt they would trust some random mercs with their codes."
"You've got a point kid." Began the sheriff. "But there's a handful of us and a shitload of them."
"There is some more of us who know how to use guns, or at least I assume know how to use guns." I said, looking at the guys in the cell.
The sheriff looked like he was going to protest, but he was cut of by the guard.
"How many of you boys know how to use guns?"
Most of them either answered with 'dads hunting rifle' or 'pistol'... but it was something.
"Let's say I agree to this crazy shit." Began the sheriff. "How the fuck do I know I can trust you shits?" He spoke to the me- no, kids in the cells.
"They may be assholes, but they sure as fuck don't like the fact that their families are being enslaved by some quad-eyed shitstains."
I recognized most of them as random bullies and 'cool guys' from the local high school. I knew, however, that they did have families and no doubt cared for them.
"Alright. Fine. Let's do this. Even though it's literaly fucking retarded." The sheriff barely gritted out.
As the wannabe gangsters were let out of the holding cell, I handed their leader the pistol I had 'liberated' from the pirate.
We received a crash course on how to handle our guns, the rest coming from the buildings small armory, and how to move between cover in a firefight.
Talitha didn't want to let me go, but after a lot of effort i convinced her to stay with some of the kids from the school she knew. I did, however, promise her I would be back.
I hated making promises I knew I couldn't keep.
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Of course it had to be the sewers.
Literaly the most disgusting place on a colony.
We trudged our way through, trying not to puke.
"W-Why, are we thinking they won't see this coming?" One of the guys managed to get out, before starting to heave.
"Because, contrary to what movies will tell you" started the guard, "no one really expects you to attack them from the sewers. Worked just fine on Shanxi."
"You a First Contact War vet?" The deputy asked the question on all our minds.
"Yup. Was a marine, kept fighting until General Williams ordered the cease fire. Anyways likely won't survive this shit."
"We still have the element of surprise. The fuckers likely won't be expecting an attack from the inside." The sheriff pointed out.
"True, but if we don't use that element of surprise, we're gonna die before getting anything done. Anyways, I've got some old codes from back in the day, I can give em' a basic encryption so we don't get found out instantly, we can use em' to contact Alliance troops once we hit the fucks' leadership."
Wasn't like we had a better plan.
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We finally left the sewers and started sneaking to the grounded freighter in the middle of town. We of course also noticed what seems to be Alliance shuttles buzzing around the perimeter, but unwilling to engage.
We kept moving, dodging sparse patrols, varying between two and three batarians.
We also passed by what looked to a weapons dump of some sorts. The sheriff and ex-marine decided to go inside.
The rest of sat in the alleys, silently having heart attacks, as the minutes ticked by we were getting progressively more worried. What seemed like an eternity later they came out, carrying some extra assault rifles and... were those grenades?
I felt our chances of survival steadily increase.
They showed us how to use the damn things, but decided to keep them with sheriff, deputy and ex-marine... I can't really blame them for that decision.
They also informed us that they had set some of the pirates own explosives to detonate on their mark.
We kept moving till we were at the freighters entrance. There didn't seem to be any guards and the entrance lead directly into a cargo hold.
There were only a handful of pirates inside.
Even more confirmation that they weren't expecting an attack from the inside.
We couldn't hear what was being said, but two batarians came to the cargo hold from further inside the ship.
And the two guards referred to one as 'boss'.
The vet nodded to us and tilted his head at the cargo hold.
We nodded back.
Both the sheriff and ex-marine readied their Omni-tools. One to send the data package to the Alliance, the other to send the signal triggering the explosives in their weapons dump.
They send them.
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A drunk pirate stumbled into the weapons shack they called an 'armory'. He knocked a few important looking boxes down.
...and then fell down onto the ground himself.
While trying to get up out his own self-created puddle he noticed some blinking lights. Were he more coherent he would've freaked out as their det-charges were active. As he was, he merely added to his puddle before his untimely (dependent on who you ask) demise.
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Lieutenant Ernesto Zabaleta was pissed.
Extremely so. He was one of the marines of the newly commissioned carrier SSV Einstein.
They were just supposed to be on a simple shakedown run. Meant to put the big girl through her paces, while simultaneously waving the flag. Giving a big fat middle finger to any pirates stupid enough to try and raid Alliance space.
Imagine his surprise at the fact that someone was raiding an Alliance colony right under their noses.
Imagine his rage at their inability to do anything, since the fuckers were using the captured colonists as living shields.
Imagine his shock when he received a lightly encrypted data package, with codes from the freaking First Contact War of all things, being send to the forces in the area.
He opened the package after the VIs and techs confirmed it was legit.
As he read through the package he had only one reaction to give.
"What the fuck?"
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The explosion signaled us.
We rushed into the cargo hold, and made it to cover before the shocked pirates could respond.
As they started to shoot at us, the deputy, sheriff and vet responded by throwing grenades their way. Some managed get out of they way of the explosives, but they only succeeded in prolonging their life a few seconds. The explosion knocked out their kinetic barriers, leaving them easy targets for massed fire. The others merely died from the explosion itself.
Our short lived celebration was cut off by the doors to the deeper sections of the ship opening, and disgorging a few pirates, including one who was armed to the teeth, and covered in glowing orange tech armor.
Fuck.
"Kill these human scum!" He yelled out and started to shoot at us with a shotgun.
That was only after he messed around with his Omni-tool, however. The agonized, human, screams tipped us off that he was the real leader... and that he had just activated the shock-collars.
Fuck!
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I was freaking out as there were only two of us left. Everyone else was dead.
There were only two them left as well... however they were much better off than us. Sadly the leader amongst the living.
The vet managed to get the last pirate guards barriers down, enough for me to gun him down with a shout of 'kurwa'.
However as we took cover, I noticed that my only living ally was hit. Bad.
Like half a dozen shots to the torso bad.
I was freaking out.
"Kid." He started weakly, barely eligible over the gunfire. "These are my codes. Call in the Alliance." He said transferring them from his tool to mine.
Shit.
"Cmon work." I prayed/muttered to myself.
"You crazy fucks!" A jovial voice met me. "You actually caught the bastards with their pants down. Where are you?"
"W-Were stuck in the fuckin-SHT!" I jumped as a shot pinged off my cover, a bit too close for comfort. "In the ship, there's the fucking boss shooting at us, only we're left, everyone else is dead!"
Probably sensing the fact that I was panicking, the guy on the other side decided to be more helpful.
"Okay. Where is he? I'll see if I can snipe im'."
"In the ship! You can't miss the fucker, he's lit up like a fucking fire!"
I heard something hit the ground next to me, my horrified gaze confirmed it was a grenade.
I jumped, tried to get away. I guess I sort of succeeded, while the blast sent me flying, I was alive if disoriented. I tried to get up but the agony that was my right leg collapsed under my own weight. A panicked look confirmed it was a piece of shrapnel.
The corpse of my, formerly, last living ally was bad. He looked more like confetti than an actual human being at this point.
The Batarian was looming above me, saying something I couldn't hear over the ringing of my ears. As he raised his shotgun to finish me off, I could see his head explode and his body fall back, the gun falling from his limp hands.
And then sweet darkness.
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"How's the kid, doc?" Lt. Ernesto asked one the many doctors aboard the Einstein. One Chakwas.
"He's hurt but alive, he'll recover."
That was good to hear.
"Interestingly he seems to have been exposed to element zero. Secondary exposure not primary. But there are nodes formed in his nervous system. I checked colony records and apparently a freighter passing by a couple of years ago had faulty FTL couplings." A fairly common fuck up amongst inexperienced maintenance crews.
"So what your saying is that he's a biotic?"
"What I'm saying is that he has the chance to be a biotic, with the right implants and training."
"Nice of hear. He's got balls at least, all of those crazy bastards did."
"Absolutely true. But still, I'm- I'm sorry we couldn't do more."
The Lt. sighted, he knew what this was about.
"Don't blame yourself doc. A lot of those people were dead before we could get them to you. Heart attacks caused by the pain from those slave collars."
She nodded, but I knew she didn't agree, not fully at least.
I sent one last look at the kid, before heading off to talk to the captain.