The battle of Elysium

The year is 2176, Alliance Marine Second Lieutenant Calista Shepard is has completed her N6 courses, and is posted to Elysium, hoping to recieve her N7 designation. She is sunbathing on the roof of Imperial Hotel in her bikini, when the Alliance Emergency Broadcast System announced:

ALERT BATARIAN FORCES HAVE LANDED ON ELYSIUM.

ALL ALLIANCE MILITARY MEMBERS REPORT TO ARMORIES FOR EQUIPMENT ISSUE.

Shepard jumped up from her chair, ran down three flights of stairs to her room on the 17th floor. She quickly keyed in the 7-digit code on her personal armor locker, stripping off her bikini, she pulled on the undersuit of her custom Hahne Kedar Hardsuit, Shepard then leapt out of the window in her room, adjusting the mass effect field generators on her hardsuit she lowered her weight, and latched onto a passing VI controlled sky car, with magnetic receivers on her gloves and boots. Quickly accessing her Omni-tool, she hacked the controls of the sky car, and blacked the windows. Using the sky car as skateboard, she flew to the battlefield.

General Torvek glanced skyward as he heard an approaching sky car "Fire! Shoot that thing down; do not let that thing pass!" He shouted towards a squad of Batarian Royal Guards. He immediately turned, boarded his personalized M-080 IFV, leaving the area.

Rolek, and Fedar, two Batarian Royal Guards, stepped towards the crashed sky car, poking at the blackened glass with their assault rifles. The glass fractured, but did not break. They heard a grenade detonate, and immediately thought that the stupid human didn't know how to sabotage the sky car properly. That thought was their last when all of a sudden they heard the crackling of electricity and subsequent explosion.

Shepard heard the rounds hitting the bottom of the sky car, twisting around, she forced open the upper engine cover, attached a proton grenade with a 15 second fuse to the mass effect core. 20 feet above the ground, Shepard flipped off the back of the sky car, cloaking in mid-air, and landing on the roof of nearby building. Watching the sky cars' trajectory through her enhanced visor, she saw that it landed a few feet away from the Batarian squad. Shepard watched this with great interest, slowly watching the timer on her HUD count down to zero. At zero, the grenade overloaded the mass effect field. With the bypass function disabled, the core went super-critical and vaporized everything withi radius.

General Torvek watched in horror as the group of men he, moments ago had been conversing with, just get vaporized by a mass effect field detonation. He told his driver to step on it and get as far away from that soldier as possible.

Pulling her suppressed M-86 Python precision rifle off her mag-sling, Shepard scanned the horizon for targets of interest, seeing nothing; she fiddled with her Omni-tool, searching for the encrypted frequencies of alliance communications. She picked up a channel of an alliance squad that was pinned down by a batarian emplaced LMG.

"This is Gunnery Chief Sykes of Alliance Forces, we require immediate assistance. We are pinned down by machine gun fire, and have minor injures. Please someone answer me," the gunny pleaded.

"Gunny Sykes? I'am 2LT Shepard of Alliance Special Forces, I received your request. What is your postion?" stated the Lieutenant.

Chief Sykes forwarded his coordinates to the LT.

"Okay I'm about 10 minutes out," replied Shepard. She turned around and noticed a large antenna just a couple of feet from her location, she collapsed her rifle and proceeded to climb to the top of the tower. She then went prone and pulled out her rifle, using the ranging scope, coupled with the GPS feed on her hud she pinpointed the location of private sykes and his fellow marines. "Sykes! Hunker down there will be multiple hyper-velocity rounds passing by you, in a couple of seconds," yelled the LT.

Shepard stabilized her breathing and marked her targets. She adjusted the ammo type to devastator rounds (phasic jacketed tungsten round with an internal warp field- a combination of disruptor, warp, and armor piercing ) with the crosshairs settled on the machine gunner shepard inhaled and fired six rounds before the temperature sensor went off.

"Keep firing, we have a liquid cooled machine gun, those stupid alliance marines won't stand a chance," blurted Keyras, the Batarian centurion.

"What about the soldier that killed Rolek and Fedar with a skycar, they were only a couple of blocks from us. If that soldier managed to take out two highly trained royal guards, then you don't stand a chance, but me on the other..."

"Huh? I cant here you anymore," the gunner said before turning and seeing Keyras' head missing.

"Holy sh..." was all the other five could say before the hyper velocity rifle rounds killed the Batarians from over 2000 meters away.

Shepard swapped out heatsinks, and collapsed the rifle. The expended heat sink went into a cryo-pouch on her belt for chilling. "Sykes its clear now, why arn't you guys moving towards your objective?" asked Shepard.

"Our CO got taken out by the gunner, and he never told us what the objective was. We've been trying to contact HQ, but comms seem to be down, we can't get a clear signal" Replyed the gunny.

"Keep trying, but stay together, I'll be on your position in about fifteen minutes," Shepard responded.

Shepard packed up her rifle, and leapt off the tower, several seconds later, she pulled her chute, and then cloaked. She drifted topwards the Alliance position, before retracting the chute.

Shepard deactivated her tactical cloak and appeared within the squad of marines, freaking them out.

"Ok, uh, I know you're like the whole elite Spec Ops badass, but don't sneak up on a group of heavily armed marines.

"Would you consider me as authority enough to command this mission?" asked Shepard.

"Yes Ma'am." Replied the marines

"Ok, who are we?" asked Shepard.

"Ma'am what do you mean?" asked the marines.

"I said, WHO are we?" asked Shepard.

"WE ARE MARINES, MA'AM!" shouted the entire squad.

"Ok, what are we going to do?" asked Shepard.

"WE ARE GOING TO KICK THOSE FUCKING BATARIAN BASTARDS OFF OUR PLANET! Ma'am!" shouted the squad at the top of their lungs.

And with that Shepard and her squad heading off toward the rest of the fight.

Shortly after they set off, Shepard's shields took a hit; she activated her cloak, told her squad to get to cover, while she located the sniper.

She pulled her M-86 off her mag-sling, peering through the scope; she slowly stroked the trigger, sending a suppressed 1mm hyper-velocity round straight through the Batarians visor. "Sniper down." Stated Shepard as she collapsed her M-86, and pulled a pair M-17 Vengeance SMG's. "Move out!" hollered Shepard. Rounding the corner, a guided inferno missile hit Shepard squarely in the chest knocking out her shields, and scorching her armor plates. She activated her tech armor, and took cover behind a wall.

Peering around the corner Shepard saw the rocket trooper, waiting for a target of opportunity. She quickly dispatched him with a burst of SMG fire. Rounding another corner, she saw a pair of Batarian troopers patrolling a building. Shepard placed a closed fist into the air, halting her squad, when she replaced her SMG's, and drew a pair of throwing knives. Taking aim, Shepard threw both of them towards the Batarian troopers. They grunted and hit the ground with a thud. One of the soldiers asked "Shepard how did your knives penetrate their shields and armor?" She replied, "They have mono-molecular blades, and they move through the air too slowly for the kinetic barriers to react."

They rounded a corner, and noticed it was a dead end, blocked by debris, there was however a locked door to the left. Shepard activated her omni-tool and quickly hacked the door, and inserting a small time-delay virus into the mainframe. Shepard quickly grabbed her throwing knives before the door opened. As the door slid open time seemed to slow down, Shepard engaged two targets with her throwing knives, and the remaining four targets, with her dual Vengeance's. By the time the rest of her squad entered all six targets in the immediate vicinity were down.

"Chief Sykes, secure this district, I'm going to work my way across the roofs."

Operations Chief Anders took a small squad up the stairs in the back of the room, and shortly after they disappeared gunfire erupted, Shepard hoofed it up the stairs to find three dead batarian troopers, and a live Batarian Shock Trooper holding a knife to an unknown humans' throat. Shepard palmed one of her knives behind her back. Chief Anders managed to draw the Batarians attention, and Shepard threw her knife it caught the batarian in the hand, pinning it against the chair that the human was sitting in it. She then rushed the batarian, while she slid out her Tanto from its sheath, and maneuvered it up to his neck. He started shaking from the threat. Then he got bold, and said, "You don't have the stones to do anything." Shepard lowered the knife down to his groin. He immediately said "Torvek! talk to General Torvek, he has all of the information. He is located in an armory on the far side of town." Shepard then took her Tanto, and stabbed the Batarian shock trooper through the top of his helmet. "Move out!" Shepard said as she dove out of the window allowing her kinetic exoskeleton to absorb the impact. Breaching a wall with some high explosives, they rushed through the rubble, engaging yet another squad of batarian troopers. "Jesus, there are a lot of Batarians on this planet." Shepard commented, as she pulled up her tactical map. "Okay guys, there is an Alliance Armory about 3 clicks ahead. They had just under a kilometer to travel, but it was through a brush field. Shepard halted them, knowing that just rushing would end up with the squad being cut to shreds form the em-placed batarians. when Shepard halted them.

"Everyone equip devastor rounds on their weapons," Stated the LT.

"Devastator rounds? What are those are those," asked the gunny, who thought he knew everything about mass-accelarator tech, including ammo type, and weapon mods.

"Its a custom program I wrote combining disruptor rounds for shields, warp rounds for biotic barriers, and a tungsten base ammo for armor piercing. Gunnery Sergeant Sykes, set up a Widow for long range fire support. Atkinson, Rogers, Adams, suppressing fire. Charles heavy fire support. Everyone, Move Out!"

General Torvek peered through a pair of binoculars and watched as this single elite soldier was mowing down, row upon row of batarian mercenary, pirate, and slaver.

"IFV's move in, and take them out. Shortly after those words left his mouth, the first one ate three missiles, and exploded. "DAMMIT! MOVE IN, AND TAKE THEM OUT, THERE IS NO WAY THAT SIX HUMANS CAN STOP US!"

"Fuck Yeah!" exclaimed Charles as the first IFV exploded.

"Good job Corporal, keep it up!" replied Shepard.

Shepard had lost it. At some level, she knew that and did not care. She leapt the trench, running ahead of her squad, M17's tracking left and right and automatically engaging targets of opportunity, round after round cracking straight through a screaming mouth behind fierce-slitted eyes, rounds crackling past her, ducking and weaving as some part of her mind anticipated the shots. Shepard was in the 'black'. Time slowed for her to such an extent that she could see the bullets flying from the Batarians rifles, seeming to glide through the air towards her. She could see her own and knew that before they hit that they were on target. She felt as if she was moving through molasses and yet the Batarians, screaming towards her, were moving even slower. In fact even her onboard medical suite was alerting her of a potentially fatal amount of adrenaline in her bloodstream.

"Shepard!" Adams bellowed, turning the LMG, still on full auto, to the side so that his stupid Lieutenant would not run into his arc. "God dammit! Where the fuck do you think you're going?" He targeted a group of Batarians to the side of the Lieutenant who was pushing into a wedge of dead bodies, firing rounds so fast that there was no silence between shots, just one contiuos boom, but one batarian after another was flying back with a cluster of holes, right through their heads. Shepard had reached the batarian line but the fighters in front of her were having a hard time even lifting their weapons with dead bodies falling all around and on them. Nevertheless, the Lieutenant was not slowing down, and moving forward by fire and maneuver obviously wasn't going to let him catch up.

"Damn her!" Sykes shouted. "What's the point of training if she's going to forget it?" Adams still had his finger clamped on the trigger, holding the typhoon at his hip and sweeping it slowly back and forth like a fireman hosing down a fire

"God dammit," Sykes shouted. "Slow the fuck down!"

Somewhere there was an ending to the Batarians. If Shepard had a thought in her head, it was that she was going to carve her way to that ending and then turn around and carve her way back.

"Oh fuck me," Adams said, running forward. Shepard was on her back with about a thousand screaming Batarians still around her. Adams had just fired up the whole area, as a round from Charles dropped off to his right, blowing pieces of them all over the battlefield. However, they didn't seem to care about the fallen Lieutenant. Shepard's berserker charge had shaken them, the continuously firing typhoon had them wavering, the rounds from Charles were terrifying them, and the anti-materiel rifle fire from Sykes was decapitating them. They were running back towards the armory. And her makeshift squad, their Lieutenant apparently dead on the field, weren't about to let one of them survive.

Shepard shook her head and rolled onto her side with a groan. There was no moment of "where am I"? She knew exactly where she was, still in that damned field. The last few moments were pretty much a blur, but she knew right where she was, even if she couldn't remember how she had gotten there. And there was still firing going on around her; the battle wasn't over. No, she thought to herself, it is pretty much done. She looked at her SMG's, the barrels were a ghostly cherry, she tried to collapse them, and they wouldn't, her SMG's were melted open. The SMG's, no her SMG's, had never overheated during the entire battle, they just kept going, as if some unnatural force was willing them to continue firing. The combination of the firepower of her squad and Shepard had not just broken the Batarians; it had slaughtered them. If there weren't three thousand dead on this battlefield she would be very surprised. She tried to push herself up and realized that her right hand really hurt. Really, really hurt. Holding it up she saw a hole through her hand, and it looked like a couple of fingers and the thumb were dislocated. So much for using that hand for a while. Hell, she hurt all over; pains started erupting across her whole body. Then the chest decided to report. Pain, big pain. That was bad. She looked down at the divots in her body armor. They were smoking. There was a large piece of shrapnel lodged in her chest, just below her right breast, it appeared to be a stabilizing fin from a shoulder launched rocket, like the one Charles had slung across his back.

"Hey guys," Shepard said across comms, "I'm a little injured, and need medical attention," her voice wavered, before dropping off completely.

Adams, collapsed his LMG, and ran towards Shepard, who was sitting mostly upright, her leg bent backwards over itself, a piece of shrapnel imbedded in her chest, and multiple high caliber holes right through her armor. He quickly called to Charles, who promptly ran over to help him carry the broken lieutenant on a stretcher to a waiting Valkyrie.

Admiral Guerrin stood by one of the Valkyries. "You…you did this? All of this?" the admiral said stretching his arms wide across the battlefield. "Well almost Sir!" replied Shepard with a smile. "I linked up with a squad of alliance marines."

"2LT Shepard I will personally see that you recieve your '7' , as soon as you are healed go to Arcturus station."

"Yes Sir!" replied Shepard with a grin, as she couldn't exactly salute being strapped to a stretcher.

~end of chapter 2~