Author's Note: And so Virmire ends. There's all kinds of awesomeness in here, I hope. As always, I love reviews, the more specific the better!
Twenty-four Shepards, led by Charles, trooped through the jungles of Virmire. Kirrahe was relaying them directions through Williams, while Rentola passed along some other info through Alenko. "This should be a walk in the park," Inara said casually, flicking aside part of a plant with her biotics.
"You got that right," Oksana said, scanning ahead through her scope. "No measly crowd of clones is going to stop us." Her voice trailed off on the last two words as they reached the edge of the jungle. Arrayed before them was an army, at least three or four thousand krogan, half that many geth humanoid units, all in ranks before a five meter tall wall with auto-cannons every fifty meters.
"Holy crap," five Shepards said in unison.
"Power Glove team," Alenko came over the radio, sounding disgruntled, "prepare for frontal assault in five."
"Roger dodger," Xander chirped. Charles was fairly sure he'd picked the name just to annoy the lieutenant.
"Alright, everyone, here's what we're going to do," Charles said. "Soldiers and infiltrators, pick krogan in the front ranks to shoot. Engineers and Sentinels, prep overloads for those cannons. Adepts, singularities right behind the front ranks, break up a charge. Vanguards, intercept anyone who comes close. As soon as we get the signal," he grinned, teeth glinting in the harsh light, "we shout our favorite catchphrase."
"Ale and whores?" Eric and Polarity joked simultaneously.
"Communications are down," Williams said over the radio. "Good work, Shadow Team."
They waited, listening quietly as the satellite uplinks and then the flying drones were disabled. "Power Glove team, distractions in three, two, one," Alenko counted off, and then a flurry of explosions happened off to their right.
Twenty-four Shepards stepped out of the jungle. "I AM COMMANDER SHEPARD," they roared. The first three ranks of the krogan toppled backwards, entangling themselves with the ones behind them, while the geth sparked and twitched before regaining control of their systems. Gunfire immediately blossomed from their group, as the still prone krogan went floating up into the air, impairing the ones behind them as well. Several auto-cannons exploded in their housings, and one of them slewed around to open fire on the broken ranks below.
"Eat hot justice, suckers," Ubon taunted as it cut down the first five krogan to reach their feet. The next wave of overloads and sabotage commands blew a gaping hole in the geth lines.
But their surprise was short-lived, and there were thousands of cloned and constructed troops to the merely two dozen of them. "I think it's time for the unified shouts again," Kohana said right before plunging a knife into a krogan's eye.
"I have to agree," Sachiko shouted, blowing apart a geth as it was aiming a shotgun at Lilitu's back. "On three!"
They shouted again, a semi-circular wave of force bowling their attackers backwards a handful of steps. "This isn't good," Yvette shouted, controlling a singularity with each hand as blood started to trickle out of her nose. "They're bunched up too close together!" Waldo's sniper rifle appeared over her shoulder long enough to take a krogan in the throat, then vanished again.
"If we fall back, we lose visibility," Victor countered, an assault rifle (blessedly full with ammo blocks) in each hand as he gunned down the geth on their left flank.
From their left, a trio of rockets came blasting in from somewhere invisible through the chaos, blowing holes in the back ranks. "Power Glove, we're giving you some support," Williams said. "Hit them again with the whammy while we lay down the heavy weapons!"
They shouted again, using it to fall back a step to the new edge of the jungle, bullet-shattered foliage trampled under their boots as they continued firing. Gina hacked a geth unit, cackling, "Dance, puppet!" as it shoved its shotgun into a krogan armpit and pulled the trigger.
"Hey, didn't they say something about heavy weapons?" Quistis said, moments before a familiar whistling sound came from overhead.
Fifteen of them shouted, "Incoming!" at the same time, their voice setting a reverberating shield around the group, reflecting several shots right before the guided mortar rounds crashed into the midst of the krogan formation.
"Yeah, how do you like them apples?" Polarity taunted, blasting a lightning bolt from her horn into the geth crowd, ricocheting and arcing off their shields.
"Again! I AM COMMANDER SHEPARD," they shouted at Charles' prompt, their opponents blasted away again. Despite their unique edge, and the help from the STG, they were still badly outnumbered, and with every shout, the krogan drew closer.
Meanwhile, Angela paused to overload another indoctrinated salarian, letting Garrus remove his brains with a sniper round. "I thought Saren was supposed to have this gigantic army of krogan and geth," Wrex complained. "So where the hell are they? We've hardly seen anything but drones, indoctrinated salarians, and husks.
"There's an asari saying about taunting fate," Liara chastised him as they opened another door. "I really don't want to know how many are out there, but from the constant shouts, I'm hoping they're all on the other side of the base."
"Humph," the krogan complained, right before they opened the door into a laboratory. "Hah, more krogan! Die, you scummy traitor!" he roared as he charged, firing his shotgun.
"A krogan in a lab coat?" Tali marveled before putting three rounds in a husk. "Now I've seen everything."
"Have you seen a geth in clown makeup?" Angela asked, hacking a console and data-stripping it.
"Ah, no. Point taken," the quarian replied, voice still confused.
"So Wrex," Garrus asked as they moved through another door, back to the exterior, "what are you going to do after we've saved the galaxy from Saren and are all big heroes?"
The krogan grinned, blowing a drone out of the sky. "Easy. I'm not going to be a mercenary. I'm going to get a manor house on Bekenstein!" His voice sounded fairly excited, as everyone else looked at him in various levels of confusion. "I'm gonna hire lots of guards, and make them all do night patrols. Then I can sneak up behind them, ask, 'Did you hear that?' and watch them jump."
"So, you're going to be the Citadel's premier krogan stand-up comic," Tali said doubtfully.
"At least then people would laugh at my jokes," Wrex lamented. "Nobody ever wants to laugh at a krogan, like we're going to rip their arms off if it wasn't a joke."
"That's because krogan do tend to rip people's arms off," Garrus said, hitting the button for the elevator.
"Really? And when was the last time you saw me rip someone's arms off?" he complained as the exited into an office, drawing a terrified sob from behind one of the desks. "Besides today, I mean," Wrex bluffed.
"Oh Goddess, please don't kill me! I only work here!" Rana protested. "I'll even let you into Saren's office, just don't kill me!"
The four of them glanced at Angela, who weighed the pros and cons briefly. "Have you been listening, the last twenty minutes?"
"You mean, the constant shouts of 'I am Commander Shepard,' that are shaking the whole facility? Kind of hard to miss them."
Angela grinned, raising her pistol. "I am Commander Shepard," she said, somehow perfectly in unison with her brethren outside. She fired the pistol, taking the petrified researcher cleanly in one eye. "Tali, get that door open. It's time to end this."
"Angela, you didn't even give her a chance," Liara protested weakly.
"If she was working here, for any longer than yesterday," Tali commented as she hacked, "then she was just as indoctrinated as those salarians we killed downstairs in the cells."
Still torn, Liara nonetheless followed as they descended yet another elevator into the very heart of Saren's lair.
Outside, the Shepards regrouped. They were now a hundred meters back from the original edge of the jungle, the intervening stretch having been destroyed by bullets, shrapnel, and biotics. The krogan and geth army was down to a quarter its original size now, having finally detached one portion to go after Kirrahe's team and their mortars and rocket launchers.
"Hey Victor," Marid prompted, "tell us one of those dumb inspiring grunt sayings."
"What, you mean like, 'We're not surrounded, we are in a target-rich environment' kind of things?" he asked, pausing to whip a krogan in the throat with one assault rifle, kick him in the quad, then shove the other rifle into his mouth and hold down the trigger.
"Yes, lovely," Deirdre muttered, taking a geth right in the flashlight and sending it tumbling backwards as scrap parts. "Those sayings suck."
They were now encircled completely, several hundred krogan pressing them on all sides. With no room to dodge, the best they could do was rotate positions, letting those with fresher shields take spots on the outside to block bullets. Inara had been reduced to medic, though at the rate they were using up medigel, she wouldn't be for much longer.
They roared again, giving them momentary breathing room. All four adepts were sporting nosebleeds, as were the vanguards, though Sachiko's was due to an unlucky krogan elbow and not power overuse. "Overloads on three," Gina shouted, and they aimed at the last knot of geth troops. "Good, now we just have to get through eight or nine hundred more krogan!" she shouted as the last of the synthetics fell.
"Sounds like a piece of cake," Talya said, slamming a krogan away to put a couple pistol rounds in his knee. "Angela better hurry her ass up so we can get out of here!"
Having gained the full beacon vision, and talked (however briefly) to Nazara, Angela was helping Wrex and Robo cart the nuke off the cargo door, plopping it down in the courtyard. "Is this thing armed?"
"Remote arming and detonation are within my parameters," Robo said, moving over to grab three more boxy contraptions. "Automated defenses have been constructed from available Normandy supplies." The robot set them down and activated them, three turrets popping up and sweeping the area professionally.
"Shadow Team, we need extraction," Williams suddenly came over the radio. "We're stuck at the top of the anti-air tower."
"Understood. Joker, dust off, be ready for a hot pick-up," she ordered, motioning. The other five fell in with her, and they blew apart the krogan reinforcements moving to keep Williams and Kirrahe pinned. Reaching the top of the tower, they reconsolidated quickly, checking weapons and treating injuries.
"I don't know how you've done this, Shepard," Saren's augmented voice echoed over the area, causing the battle below to at least pause. Every Shepard located him quickly, hovering on a board-like device, out over the first wall and away from the tower. "I think it's time to end this charade and prove my worth to the Reapers."
Only then did Angela realize he was hovering over Alenko and Rentola's squad. Something fell from his board, even as she was opening fire on him, and a moment later, an explosion covered the entire squad.
All twenty-six Shepards had their eyes locked on Saren as he hovered, smug, hundreds of meters away from them all. "I AM COMMANDER SHEPARD, AND I WILL DESTROY YOU!" they all shouted at once.
Distance was probably the only thing that saved the traitorous Spectre, as the force of their voice and focus swatted him out of the air, flailing wildly with his board until he managed to mostly stabilize, bouncing his board several times in another courtyard before tumbling loose and out of sight. The entire group on the tower stared down, looking at the massive crater, three times the size of the Mako, where Kaidan, Rentola, and seven loyal STG members had been standing one minute before.
"Joker," Angela said grimly, "get us out of here." The Normandy came roaring back in, turning her defensive cannons – meant for space warfare – on the krogan below, swooping down to pick up the rest of the Shepards and flee.
Angela watched the holographic camera as the facility vanished in a nuclear fireball. Even if they'd wanted to go look for any retrievable body parts, there hadn't been time. The only good part of his death was that Saren was probably dead in that same explosion. And if, somehow, he wasn't …
Well, she had twenty-five Shepards to back her up. "He will die," she promised Kaidan's memory.