Well, well, well, what do-ya know? I managed to cram out a new chapter so soon?
Well, Virmire just seems to be what I've been building up for all along, with the interactions, the love, hate and fear, the revealations and the things kept hidden. The bonds forged with the people of the Normandy... so far, this has been one hell of a trip, and I see no reason we should end it here.
So, let .us see what happens when you launch five-thousand pissed-off marines at countless geth platforms. I for one am glad I'm not there. Which brings me to a point I was making the last time. From now on, Thomas will most likely be narrated in 3rd person. It's simply easier and more detailing that way, plus it allows for us to see just what happens when he cannot. Roku will still make his "boils-my-piss" appearances though, so don't worry about missing out on one of his "Hey Thomas, I was watching when you banged Ashley. Have fun with the emotional trauma from thát one"...Yeah, he can really be a bitch.
Now, let's keep up our Virmire-Marathon by focusing solely on this seething planet of misery and broken fates.
The Geth who punched a God
Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing,
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
Come with the buckler, the lance, and the bow.
Trumpets are sounding,
War-steeds are bounding,
Stand to your arms, then, and march in good order;
England shall many a day
Tell of the bloody fray,
When the Sixth Raiders came over the Border.
- Sir Walter Scott (slightly edited)
Virmire, Hoc System
Point Rain
16:09
If one was to recount the events of those first hours of the invasion of Virmire, it would most likely have been centered on the apparent madness of sending so many soldier against an army that was, in essence, a mass of electrical and mechanical joints capable of firing a gun and taking cover.
The Geth, as humanlike as they were in shape aside from the heads, were like no enemy the men and women of the 6th Raiders had ever faced. Batarians, Turians and Krogan they could handle, even Human insurrectionists were just another day at the office for the veterans of Shanxi and Aegis III. The Geth though, they were new, different, and most importantly, completely alien in behavior.
The heavy, mechanical grinding of treads was the first warning that one of the heavy tanks of the Alliance, the Apocalypse was trudging through the shallow waters of the beach while each and every gun mounted on its form, which amounted to five different positions of machineguns filling the air with bursts of lead and tungsten, as well as the two twin-mounted 120mm smooth barreled main guns firing at whatever was too big for small-arms to handle. Or, just firing at the seemingly never-ending masses of geth streaming at them from holes in the ground and cliff sides, marching with singular purposes like the army ants of Earth.
One such shot, carving a five-robot deep hole into the front of these ranks, exploded in the sand and flung the nearby geth into the air, most of them missing parts and limps. Any normal, sentient army would have started trying to avoid being shot to pieces by the monstrous tanks bearing down on them. Trying to avoid being blown up or carved to bits by the streams of hyper-accelerated slugs emerging from the crews manning machineguns on the tanks. And of course, there was another weapon, only recently added to the armaments of the Apocalypses, adding all-the-more truth to their names.
A brilliant, bright, green beam of energy emerged from between the barrels of the 120mm guns of the tank, slicing its way through the geth in short but deadly bursts. A modification of the gunship-mounted version, the vehicle-mounted RPB, short for Repeated Particle Beam, was less effective than the RPT, which could carve up dozens of hostile infantry in mere moments. The RPB, due to lack of space for a more efficient engine to run it, operated in three-second burst, where after it needed to recharge for ten extra seconds. Seconds that, if in a pinch, would be deciding the life or death of the crew.
Any sane organic would have turned tail and fled from this kind of mechanical monster, a seemingly impenetrable giant of steel and titanium, fitted with enough firepower to devastate a small city in less than a day.
But the geth were anything but 'sane organics'.
Instead of ducking, avoiding and running, they kept on jogging at a brisk pace towards the tanks that formed the front of the invasion. The geth were cut down in the dozens for each meter they advanced, the hundreds for each ten meters. And yet they continued towards their targets, filling the air with bolts of plasma as they did.
With precision only given to the mechanical servants of the Reapers, the geth fired as they ran, centering whatever firepower they had on the weaker parts of the tanks. The treads, the fuel-tanks, the cameras, the sensors, all were targeted by the plasma flying through the air fast enough that all one would see was a streak of light.
Shields, no matter how advanced they came from the Alliance, had little chance of protecting the wearer properly from this kind of assault, and either tried, and shorted out from the heat in the process, or failed to even register the incoming projectiles. As a result, the tanks targeted were quickly riddled with molten holes, each no bigger than a golf ball, but with the potential of going straight through the armor of most vehicles. It was only the thickness of the armor that saved the crews of the Apocalypses, which once more gave testimony to the fact that while shields could be ignored, armor could not.
"You know, I'm really starting to think this is going to end up with me dead." Garrus Vakarian shouted, ducking into cover behind a chest-high rock as a volley of azure plasma was sent his way, each hitting the air where his head had just been with remarkable precision, the next centered on the rock where he took cover.
"Show some courage Vakarian. We cannot show the humans that they are the better soldiers. You don't see Williams or Alenko scurry for cover or declaring their own deaths." Nihlus Kryik reprimanded, sending a geth, too close for comfort, staggering back with the first blast from his shotgun, the tore it in half with the second and third hail of tungsten flechettes.
"Well that's obvious! Kaidan is a biotic, he can just make himself a barrier, and Ashley can just make sure Thomas stays in front of her... although I doubt she has the patience for it. Besides, I've lost track of Kaidan." The younger of the two Turians growled, watching as a geth suddenly de-cloaked behind a marine. Without even thinking, he raised he Mantis to his eye, lining up a shot and fired. The tungsten-slug, no bigger than a human fingernail, was sent slamming through the arm of the geth, tearing it off while alerting the marine to its presence. The man swung around, momentarily startled by the appearance and invalidation of the geth before he kicked it to the ground and poured fire into its head. Needless to say, it did not get back up.
"That's one less top worry about." Nihlus remarked, looking around before he vaulted over their cover, forcing the annoyed Garrus to follow up or get left behind in definitely hostile lands. Next to them, the heavy bodies of the human Apocalypse-tanks were grinding by, throwing up a cloud of sand and water behind them as they went, guns blazing, against the geth hordes.
"How come you never use anything but that spirits-be-damned shotgun? It's not really that effective out here." Garrus remarked, glancing at Nihlus as the Spectre went into cover behind the burned wreckage of one such tank, a large hole carved through the middle-section of the craft. The perpetrator was quite obvious too, as the still-smoking "corpse" of a geth armature lay in waste only a hundred meters away. Joining the Spectre behind the tank, Garrus cursed his sense of smell as the stench of cooked human flesh emanated from the tank.
"Because I am a Spectre, Vakarian. I don't have to follow the normal rules of combat." He said. Almost as if to prove his point, Nihlus pulled a handle on the side of his shotgun, causing its barrel to extend and tighten, the shot at a geth roughly a dozen meters away. Too far for a shotgun, but what was fired from the barrel of the Spectre's weapon was anything but the spread-hail of a regular shotgun. Instead, it came out as a streak of light, impacting on the geth with a small, but deadly explosion that sent the geth flying two ways at once. Body going one way, legs the other. Reloading his shotgun-turned-rifle, Nihlus leaned back into cover before offering the former C-Sec a rare smirk.
Garrus just stared, then shook his head with a look of confusion and resignation on it.
"O-kaaaayyyy... where can I get one of those?"
"Sorry Vakarian, Spectre-equipment, Spectres only. Besides..." He said, sending a new geth flying apart with a well-placed round of whatever he was firing; "Didn't you just call it 'inefficient'?" If there ever was a tone of humor to the Spectre's voice, now was it.
"I detest you, you know that right?" Garrus muttered, grinning slightly before he himself leaned out, took aim and fired. A second later, the flashlight of a rocket-bearing geth was blown apart, leaving a satisfied Garrus to lean behind cover again, unperturbed by the hail of plasma digging into his cover as a response to his shot.
"I like to think I can survive being detested." Nihlus shot back with a Turian smirk on his face. While they talked, none of them noticed the flicker in the air behind them. It was only due to Garrus looking behind him as he waited for his Mantis to cool down, that he saw the geth Hunter appear out of thin air.
"Spi-" He shouted, but was cut off by the geth sending the stock of its shotgun into his visor, being too close to use the shotgun it carried. Lucky too, else Garrus would be dead without a single drop of blood being spilled. Plasma tended to do that to organics.
Nihlus though, was faster. Unlike Garrus who was knocked down, he managed to roll out of the way before a swarm of plasma spheres impacted on his person. He followed it up with pulling the handle back again, while rolling, and sent a blast of close-quarters pellets flying at the geth.
The purple aura appearing over the geth caused him to gawk, just a moment, before firing again. The shots were absorbed again, and the geth returned fire with extreme prejudice, seemingly undisturbed by the fact that it broke elemental laws of biotics, namely the fact that inorganic objects, such as mechs, and geth in extension, couldn't be biotics. To be a biotic, one needed to be exposed to Element Zero in vitro, as in "while in the womb". Geth, being synthetics, did not spend time in a womb. They also lacked the neural net needed for thoughts to become real by sending them into the element zero coursing through their bloodstreams.
Nihlus moved out of the way again, nimbly dodging what was, for all intends and purposes, simply a mech trying to kill him. If he ended up killed by a single geth, then he believed he wasn't worthy of being a Spectre. It would just be disgraceful. And since Nihlus enjoyed the perks that came with being a Spectre, he did him damnable best not to get dead by plasma. Instead, as he skidded around the machine, he went closer and closer, until he had to duck from a swipe of the mechanical hand. He might be better and more intelligent in all regards than a geth, but he knew perfectly well that a single well-placed punch from one of those things would be enough to break his bones, armor or no.
Jumping back up again, he was now close enough to the geth that he could force the shotgun in, past the biotic barrier, and up to the "chin" of the geth. With one pull of a trigger, he separated the head from the rest of the body. However, there was no geth-head falling to the ground. The blast delivered from Nihlus's shotgun tore it to shrapnel, causing it to fall t the ground as little pieces of metal.
Giving the remaining body a kick to be certain, Nihlus then went to where Garrus was struggling to get back on his legs, a small crack in his visor showing just how hard he had been hit, considering that the visors were the same strength as the transparent materials used in bulletproof see-through walls. Of course, graphene could only take so much strain before cracking.
"You okay Vakarian?" He said, heaving the other Turian the final part to his feet before looking around, noting that most of the armed invasion, the gunships and tanks included, had moved past them and was advancing towards the base, leaving a loose trail of human and geth bodies.
"Hmm... rrrrhhh... yeah, yeah I'm fine...What just hit me?" He muttered, looking from Nihlus to the geth; "Ah, that explains it.."
"Actually no, it only raises more questions." Nihlus stated as he bend down next to the geth, prodding at the strange tubes and parts separating it from what he knew regular geth could do and looked like.
"Not sure I follow."
"This was a biotic geth. It could project a biotic barrier around itself, part of the reason my shots didn't cause it any damage." Nihlus said with a voice that was remarkably calm for one who had just shot and killed a geth in close quarters.
Even if Garrus was wearing a helmet, Nihlus could see he had a dumbfounded look to his face. It was just part of the whole expression.
"I think it knocked my ears-canals a bit too hard... did you say...biotic?"
"Indeed." Nihlus said, activating his Omnitool before going over the "body" with it. He took pictures, scans and other tests that Garrus had no idea how to identify. So, he simply let the Spectre do what he apparently did best, which was confusing the crap out of his fellows.
"Well, all in a day's work when you're on the Normandy." Garrus chuckled, having rediscovered his sense of humor somewhere in the process of being flabbergasted by the concept of a biotic machine.
"Good. A positive attitude would do you wonders right now. Well, I'll file this away and add it to my report." The older Turian said, standing from the dead geth; "Now, let's get on with this crap, I need to look Saren in the eyes before I tear them from his skull."
The growl in Nihlus's voice caught Garrus a bit off-guard. Not because he wasn't already on guard for anything from rabid Pyjaks to fire breathing Krogans, but because he had never seen Nihlus loose his calm or become visibly pissed off.
Not wanting that wrath directed at him, he simply nodded, picked up his rifle and followed the Spectre as they went after the main forces.
Only a few hundred meters from there, Corporal Teresa Aquila, Tequila to friends, was picking herself up from the water. To say she was experiencing a headache was an understatement. Her skull was pulsating with pain, something to be expected after having been introduced to the rock behind her, courtesy of a biotic robot. Rummaging through the pockets in her armor, she found one of the things she so cherished had been found in her new galaxy as well as in her old.
A painkilling stim.
Forcing her eyes shut for the moment it took her to jam the needle through the skin of her neck, she tossed away the spent syringe. For the moment, environmental pollution was the least of her problems.
Feeling as her skin started prickling from the neck and upwards, making her slightly light-headed for the moment it took to banish the migraine, she opened her eyes and took a fresh look around, if through a cracked visor with no power. Kaidan was, as if it was a surprise, still on the ground. Figures, that biotics couldn't stand up to a single punch to the face while she had taken at least four and was still walking around. Maybe it just showed her what the men of this place were worth, or maybe it was because Kaidan had suffered from the migraine already before the mission.
Tapping her helmet, she sighed, expecting the same result she got, which was none at all. Her helmet, despite all its technical functions and advanced technology, had been reduced to what she had used to wear in the marines, only without the camera on the helmet. Still, it was better than no helmet at all, so she put it back on. Next up was Alenko, still on the ground, as if that would have changed in the few seconds she had looked away.
Kneeling down next to him, Tequila rummaged through the pockets in his armor, producing the same kind of syringe she herself had used. Pulling off his helmet, she injected the painkillers into his neck before slapping him across the face. The former should take care of any eventual headaches and pains he ought to have, while the latter would wake him up. Both seemed to work, so she went about checking up on herself.
There might be a concussion, from the dwindling headache and the blood coming from her nose and forehead in thin stripes, but the stim ought to at least keep it at bay until she could find someone actually trained to take care of soldiers in the field. As for the rest of her, the constant sharp pain from her chest told her that she had at least one rib that had cracked and was now poking her tissue, causing her no small amount of annoyance, if not outright excruciating pain. She pulled in a deep breath, instantly regretting so from the pain it caused her. A smaller, more shallow breath caused her less pain while it allowed her to breathe somewhat normally.
That left her with enough clarity to consider just what had just happened. It was not as much a complaint as it was her being worried beyond normal sanity that she had torn a geth to pieces with her bare hands. By all accounts, even punching the geth should have broken her hand in the same way as Scorch had broken both of his. Not to mention the fact that she shouldn't have been capable of doing any actual harm to the construct by tearing at its arms. After all, she had tried once, and that didn't have any effect at all.
So, to put it in more understandable terms that she could process with what parts of her mind that actually accepted what had transpired...
"What the shit just happened?" She muttered, looking down at her hands.
She opened and closed her fingers, trying to make them roll or do something that could explain her lack of dying. Maybe the suit had something in-built to prevent those situations, but after a quick check, she was pretty much sure there was no hidden tech or in-built guns or knives. Kaidan, being in the process of getting his eyes focused on his own, wasn't much help in that regard.
"Okay girl, think this through." She muttered, glad that her helmet still sealed like it should and allowed air in without electricity. Else that would have been one weird death, choked by her own helmet;
"So... you're trapped by a geth. Okay, so far it makes sense. It beats the crap out of you, and you almost pass out. So far it makes sense... it's then revealed to be a bio... biotic? Yeah, that's what it's called... okay...that's where I get off the thought-train. I punch its face in, and I should have broken every bone in my hand from it. I tear off its arm, which I should not be able to do. I'm still alive because I tore a machine apart with my bare hands... it's not because I'm dead, is it?" She muttered the last part, feeling at her body. She even pulled a gauntlet off and checked her own pulse, just to be sure.
"Nope, still alive... then what?" She pondered, looking around as the battle moved on. She couldn't see Fisher anymore, so he had probably moved with the battle. That just left her and Alenko, who was now starting to get to his feet, if slowly.
"Damn... my head feels like I took a brick to it..." The Canadian groaned, rubbing at his forehead, then noticing that his helmet was floating in the shallow waters next to him. Kneeling down with clear signs of the headache returning from the action, he pulled it from the water where it was bopping like... something that bopped on water. Neither Tequila or Kaidan had the care to come up with any sort of metaphor as it was.
"Not surprising, considering you were kicked in the head by a geth." Tequila said, turning her eyes from her hands to him.
"I'm... it was cloaked, wasn't it?" He muttered, looking at the dead geth floating in the water around them. It was only now Tequila noticed that there were more than the biotic one. Apparently there had been two more, although she only remembered killing one of them. Must be because of the headache, she reasoned.
"Yeah. I killed them while you took a nap Lieutenant. How you feeling?"
"Would it sound too cliché to say 'like the morning after shore leave'?" He said, his tone having the oddest mix between humor and annoyance.
"Not really, considering my old CO loved yelling 'get to the choppa'. Anyway, one of those geth had some nasty new gear." She said, the faintest smile on her lips as she remembered Van Zandt. Old hardass didn't deserve what killed him. She didn't say so, instead just pointed at the geth the farthest away from them, still glowing a soft purple from some of its parts.
"Huh... what's that?" Kaidan said, poking at the deceased robot with the tip of his boot. The result, probably a safety measure in place to prevent salvaging of the platform, was that the "corpse" started humming. Kaidan, reacting remarkably fast for someone with potential head-trauma, jumped from the spot, putting as much distance as he could between the geth and him. And not a moment too soon, as the head of the geth sent a blue-purple wave down the body. When it reached one of the purple-marked containers exposed by a small explosion, the humming became a whine. A second after that, the platform exploded, violently so.
The shockwave was enough to reintroduce Tequila to her old friend, mister Rock, and Kaidan toppling over and through the air as he was only a few meters away from it. Biotic or no, jumping when in water was something of a persistent impossibility to do well.
"Fuck! Alenko, whatever you do, do not do that again...sir!" She bit the last part out, finding the fact that he was friendly with everyone on the ship, part of the reason why she had some trouble taking orders from him.
"Noted corporal..." He muttered as he dragged himself from the water. He gave a glance to the remains of the platform, a foot and part of a pedal from the head, then shook his head; "Since the geth is pretty much dead and destroyed... what was the new stuff it had?"
"Don't know how to put it, but it looked pretty much the same as biotics. Hell, it even tossed those fucking balls of space-magic at me." He grumbled, nudging her side where the pain of the rib was the worst. Even if she couldn't see his face, she could see how Kaidan's expression changed from confused to outright terrified.
"Biotic Geth?! Corporal, are you sure? I mean, really sure?" He demanded more than asked. Instead of answering, Tequila just pointed to the rock where the more vicious version of the space-magic had carved a round hole in the stone. Kaidan took a step back, looking like he might fall.
"Hooo-ly shit... we've gotta call this one in. Shepard, if not Petrovsky, needs to know. Crap, how... how can there be... you're sure it was- I mean, synthetics can't be biotics, it's... unprecedented...impossible." He stuttered. Tequila, not fully understanding why a robot couldn't be a biotic, just sighed, then growled;
"Alenko, you're preaching to a Pope here. I'm from another fucking universe, Fisher is from the past, the commandoes are from another universe too, we're using armor brought in from sci-fi movie, fighting giant space-squids. Take your "impossible" and shove it up someone who's normal's butthole." She barked, sounding almost like it was her in charge, not him. Kaidan, ever the patient one, looked like he took a breather, then sighed;
"Dammit...and here I was hoping for just one mission where reality didn't flip us off. Figures, really. We are on the Normandy, crazy things tend to... but this is..." He stopped when he noticed Tequila glaring at him through her transparent visor; "Right, calling it in."
Tequila scoffed at that, the picked up her, thankfully, waterproof rifle as well as her handgun. Deciding that whatever had happened with her hands, the mission to save the galaxy was slightly more important than spontaneous super-strength, or whatever it had been.
Not so far from there, only about five hundred meters in front of Garrus and Nihlus, were Wrex, Williams, Jane Shepard, John'Shepard and Fisher were engaged in what could best be described as unconventional warfare fought in a conventional manner.
"Blaaharaahhahah! Keep coming you metal bastards!"
If one had the ability of hearing anything aside from the constant sound of plasma being fired towards people and tanks shooting back, people screaming as they died, geth exploding from one-too-many shots hit, tanks grinding up the ground and gunships screaming past, the person might have been able to hear the warcry of the old Krogan. Wrex, as it was him and no one else, was bellowing a warcry and laughter for a very specific reason.
Where he had been on the bad side of the fight on Valhalla when they had been attacked by the mutated Harvester, here he was in one of his better moods because of two simple facts. One, he had a weapon no Krogan had ever wielded, but should have due to its killing power, and two, he had seemingly endless targets and practically all the ammo he could ever want.
In short, Wrex was a pretty content Krogan right now.
As the geth kept on advancing like a silent metallic horde of death, their only sounds being those of the plasma flying from their guns, Wrex answered them by joining the firepower of his minigun to those of the Alliance Marines, pouring vigilant fire from the ranks of brave men and women, if they would describe themselves as that gender. The exchange of deadly ammunition was to some a sight of horror, to others a sight of fascination. To Wrex though, it was a reminder of the old days, the days where his people had been civilized enough to do battle with standing armies instead of a few Tomkas slugging rounds as the occasional enemy clan's camps. In its way, it was a glorious sight, something that required a strong economy to back up.
On the other it was more grim, as it had ended with nuclear fire on a global scale the last time the armies of Tuchanka had battles it out like this.
The burning sensation of plasma making it through his armor was enough to make him growl with annoyance before turning his attention back to the geth alone. Of course, being a Krogan his wounds would be healed within the hour, if not the day, so a single round here or there did no much damage. It really was more of an annoyance, one he repaid in full by letting the stream of hyper-accelerated tungsten fly from the three rotating barrels of his gun, hammering the front of every geth he could get within range of. Even if they were the larger Juggernauts, the almost impenetrable enemies who stood two meters tall, his gun didn't see the difference. The only matter was how long he needed to pound his enemy into the dust before the runtimes fled the defunct platform. Not that he knew about thát part though, he was just shooting them.
Ah, but to be in such battles once more. Fighting monsters, killing them with big guns.
"Wrex! Focus fire on your left!" He was, impolitely so, pulled from his reminiscing by the Captain, the red-haired warrior woman who didn't give a shit about what kind of enemy she was facing. In a way, Wrex could see a Krogan in her, if in spirit only.
Jane, for her part, was in a mood that didn't leave room for consideration of Krogan spirits. She was torn, in a way. On one side, this was her chance to settle everything she had messed up, all those lives she had failed on this very planet. If she could pull this one off, get everyone back in one piece, then maybe Ashley, the other Ashley's ghost would stop haunting her. While the figment of her guilt in the form of the burnt chief had made a few appearances since the first meeting in Flux, Jane had only sensed Magnus in the edge of her eyes, just as the shadow leaning against a doorway, disappearing whenever she looked at it. Losing soldiers was one thing, losing loved ones... she could still remember Mindoir.
Not that it mattered now. Now, all that mattered was for her to kick Saren's ass and get her men and women back home in one piece. Even if that meant she would have to trudge through the innards of the tank-bred Krogans she knew had to be around somewhere. Saren had too big a stake in those shock-troopers to leave them out of his plan, even if this Saren was another version of the one she had fought. But then, the question was, rather obviously; Where were those Krogans?
A part of her mind, remembering just how brutal those freaks had been, was thankful that they weren't here, not yet at least. The other part, while she hammered a biotically purple fist through the head of a geth, was carrying a nagging sensation that something was wrong. Of course, it could simply be because she had been working with Kirrahe and his team when she had been there the last time. If that really was all that mattered, she thought as she blue-shifted into a mass of geth troopers, sending them flying in warped shrapnel, maybe it was just her mind being paranoid.
"Shepard!" Her comms switching on caused her to scowl and dive behind a rock as the geth opened fire on her in retaliation. Of course, being a biotic warrior as she was, standing back in the line with the rest was not her part of a battle. She preferred to blow up the bad guys as fast as possible, preferably by biotically appearing in their faces and smashing them all flat.
"What?! I'm in the middle of getting shot at here. Who is this?"
"Lieutenant Alenko. Shit... Captain, we have a problem." The voice of the third-in-charge on the ship, after her and John, sounded more befuddled than scared. And since the Kaidan Jane remembered was a troubled know-it-all, him being befuddled was never a good sign.
"What is it?" She muttered, looking over the cover of the rock just in time to see a geth firing at her from a meter away. Encasing herself in her barriers, she vaulted over the cover, pulled in the geth and removed three fourths of its body with a warp delivered in fist-form. Seeing as the rest were farther away, she ducked back down behind the rock
"You know the rule that synthetics can's be biotics?" Kaidan asked. Jane just rolled her eyes. Even if she had never paid much attention to the laws of physics and biology, even she knew that established science out-ruled biotic synthetics, seeing as the entire idea of biotics was focused on the Element Zero in the body being forced to action by thought and... some other stuff.
Maybe she should have paid attention.
"Yeah?" She said anyway.
"Well... that's kinda moot now. The geth have biotics. Not sure how, but it threw both warps and punches at us from a pretty good distance. Almost got the better of the corporal." Kaidan said, the sound of his huffing breath making it clear that he was running, and the splashes that he was in the water somewhere. Jane assumed he had to be talking about Tequila, seeing as, looking some dozen meters to her right, Fisher was, probably glowing green behind his helmet, in the process of yanking his ridiculously big sword from the body of an equally ridiculously big geth, currently sprawled on the ground with the sword buried in what amounted to its chest. Resisting the temptation to give a low whistle at that, Jane turned her attention back to Kaidan, and more importantly, what he had just said.
"Come...again?"
"The geth have biotics. Biotic geth, Captain. Not sure how they do it, but they did it. They pack a punch, better warn the others." He said, then the transmission was ended and Jane left to stew in annoyance. Great, so now the geth had to take their own piss on physics as well? Of course, it was probably something Saren had done to them, or with them, but it was still annoying.
"Great, fantastic, spectacular...I suppose I should report this in." She muttered to no-one in particular, seeing as Wrex and Williams were busy with their slugging-matches, John was in the process of protecting a pair of marines as a medic tended to a leg that had been blown off. Tended to the marine, of course. That just left her, with the annoyed notion that she was going to have to explain a lot she had no clue as how to explain. Nevertheless, she tapped into her Omnitool and opened a connection with the Caucasus.
"SSV Caucasus here. Identify please." the voice of a woman came in.
"This is Co- Captain Jane Shepard of the SSV Normandy. Mission update for Admiral Petrovsky." She said, catching herself in the use of her old rank.
"Petrovsky here. Status?" The gruff male voice said, causing her to almost salute the Omnitool despite no images being sent.
"Sir, reporting that the geth are fielding biotic platforms capable of at least basic methods of biotic combat. Lieutenant Alenko and Corporal Aquila have encountered the new units. Please advice, over." She said, hoping that Petrovsky would take the hint and contact Alenko instead.
"I...see. This is not good news, but it confirms reports coming in from across the field. Advice, keep distance and utilize phased and disrupting projectiles if possible. Will advice further when more data is available. Currently Spectre Kryik is sending a package with what data he could find. I'll send you the useful parts when we're through it." The admiral said.
"Understood. Shepard, out." Jane answered, closing her eyes for the moment it took her to deactivate her Omnitool and take a deep breath. Okay, so Nihlus was on this as well? Good, the Spectre actually did have his uses at times. It was just sad that places like Noveria where she could have used his clearance to knock some heads together turned out to be infested with Hell-spawn from the big screen.
Overhead, gunships were making another turn, desperately dodging the flack being sent at them from positions constantly under aerial fire. While the lasers, or whatever they were, were good for pizza-slicing the geth in great numbers, the rockets seemed to do more damaged on big or stationary targets. Fitting really, because there were too many small targets for the rockets to make a difference there.
"Move up people!" A man in the regular armor of the soldiers, but with the red-and-white stripes of the N7 shouted, firing an assault rifle straight into the flashlight of a geth Prime from quite a good distance. Jane silently pegged his chances of living through the next ten seconds to somewhere between zero and minus five. Still, the orders were given by a marked N7, meaning that she, Captain or no, would have to follow them, even if she wasn't officially an N7 here. Reality sucked like that sometimes.
Her expectations were abruptly stopped though, as the soldier cast out his hand, sending a wave of gravimetric energy from the palm of his hand crashing towards the group of geth firing upon him. Instead of sending out the expected warp though, his attack encased the geth in a massive stasis-field, causing them all to, if not freeze, then move like they were swimming in glue.
A biotic N7 might just come in handy.
"Normandy team. Move up and focus on the left flank. Let the marines take the middle and right!" Jane bellowed, receiving confirmations in the form of the team moving up. Well, all except for those somewhere behind, and Fisher who still hadn't gotten his sword out of the massive geth. Jane, letting her barrier take the punishment for a moment, shook her head before catapulting herself forward, shotgun in her hands, into the mass of geth troopers.
The landing, for lack of better words, was as it usually was. Chaotic, violent and in defiance of the laws of physics as an object that really weighed around eighty kilos with armor on was accelerated to the speed of light. Sir Isaac Newton then took his revenge by slamming the book of physics back into play, causing around fifteen-hundred Newtons to slam into the ground, causing a shockwave not unlike that of a orbit-to-ground tactical round. The result was ten geth being slammed into either the cliff-side to Jane's left, or into each other everywhere around her. Getting up from her position, kneeling in the sand, Jane slammed down her fist, bearing the equivalent power of a heavy biotic throw.
This in turn, sent five new geth flying, following in the footsteps of their friends, as she saw it. Grinning in a fashion that was best left unseen by humans she would have to spend time with, Jane ducked and rolled under the renewed fire being poured at her before she reappeared in the geth's midst, pressing her shotgun under the "head" of the first geth she saw while slamming a fist wrapped in a sheet of purple energy through the torso of another, then slamming the latter into another geth.
She was about to repeat the action when she looked up again, only just registering the geth that now had a bead on her with a shotgun that was way too close to dodge.
"...shit." She muttered, wrapping herself up in as thick a barrier as she could manage in the seconds it would take the geth to pull the trigger. It probably wasn't the only one that now was aiming at her; "That's what you get for charging in Jane..."
That, however, was proven moot when a stream of metal tore into the geth in front of her, causing them to either blow up or turn their attention to face the attacker. Most of them hardly got to point their weapons at the old Krogan though, as the continued firing from his minigun tore them apart in moments, the sheer amount of ammunition overloading shields and breaking armor in seconds.
While still shooting, Wrex was slowly making his way over to her, keeping up a steady stream of fire in the meantime. If Jane could have seen his face through the helmet, which was shaped most of all like a bull with one horn in the forehead and another in the chin, she would have seen a dark grin etched in his features. A grin that only got bigger with each geth he took down.
"Ha ha! Oh I'm starting to feel alive again. There's just nothing compared to killing hordes of enemies with a big gun that never stops shooting." He bellowed.
And the universe, being the sadistic joker it usually enjoyed being, chose that moment for his gun to glow red in the barrels and start beeping. Wrex just shot it a glance before shrugging, putting down the vehicular weapon before he pulled the Claymore from his lower hump, sending a blast of pellets into the front of a Destroyer that had ventured a little too close.
"You were saying?" Jane smirked, panting for breath as her recent biotic output left her a little tired.
"Well, all good things come to an end." Wrex muttered, blasting down one of the strange, gecko-like geth that clung to the cliff-side. At the same time, there was a renewed rain of plasma as the geth started advancing, intent on retaking lost ground; "And we should probably get to cover about now."
Jane nodded, and both threw up a barrier to protect themselves while back stepping to the rock she had used as cover only a few moments earlier. Both kept up shooting, pouring both rifle and shotgun-blasts into the oncoming, plasma-spewing horde of metallic constructs. It didn't help that amongst the geth, multiple of the towering Armatures and Colossuses were visible, spewing out large spheres of plasma while marching towards the Alliance marines. To her left, Jane and Wrex saw a squad of marines taking cover behind the same sort of rocky walls she was.
The whine of a plasma ball alerted her that something was incoming, but it wasn't against her and Wrex. Instead, there were a few short screams from the other squad as the plasma closed in. The screams ended instantly, and Jane could only see a crater of glass where both rocks and marines had been before. As if to take personal vengeance, the heavy grinding of an Apocalypse revealed itself behind them, and Krogan and human both got out of the way, not wanting to be in the firing-line between two so powerful machines.
Apparently the Armatures in front agreed, and focused on the hulking tanks instead of the infantry they sent hurrying for cover. Where the four-legged machines had to charge up their shots however, the Apocalypse took that chance to spit in their faces and fire of the twin-barreled guns, sending a pair of 120mm Sabot-rounds directly into the front of the closest robotic monster. The issue with Sabot-rounds, as it had always been though, was that shields tended to be a problem. Especially those on geth walkers.
The instant blue flare at the front of the geth walker determined that was true, as the thing was still not only walking, but now unleashed a ball of blue plasma that whined towards the slightly smaller tank. The Apocalypse, despite its hulking size and weight, did an immediate back-throttle, spewing up sand and rock as the treads propelled it backwards. Just in time to escape the sphere that turned an area the size of the Mako into molten glass. The second Armature, now within range as well, charged up its weapon. The Apocalypse though, took advantage of its position with the first Armature and fired off its weapons again. The Armature's shields, geth or no, had yet to fully recover, and the two simultaneous rounds that slammed into it caused the shields to completely short out, as well as carve a chunk of metal from the geth's body.
"Great shot!" Jane jeered despite herself, the n looked to where Fisher, despite the situation as well as every law of sanity in the universe, was still struggling with getting his sword from the chest of the much bigger geth; "Fisher! Pull that sword out and get your ass over here!"
"The flying fuck do you think I'm trying? This piece of shit is fucking stuck! Namira's rotten asshole!" He cursed and swore over the comms, heaving and pulling at the sword. The problem as Jane saw it, aside from the fact that he was completely out in the open, was that he seemingly didn't notice that a Hunter had just materialized next to him.
"Thomas! Right side!" Jane was about to shout it, but Ashley beat her to it. Fitting, that the chief was the one keeping her eyes on the corporal. Jane remembered doing much the same with Sergeant Olafur on Therum. Another time, another person, another life.
"What?!" The corporal's voice came back. Jane gritted her teeth and hammered the comms; "Geth! To your-" She cut herself off as the Hunter glowed purple, slamming a ball of energy into the unaware corporal. Protected by a spirit or not, being hit by a warp was something else than deflecting a bullet. With the expected result, the young corporal was sent flying, his sword still embedded in the "dead" geth;"Fuuuuuck!"
Jane had almost expected the corporal to simply jump right up again, but instead he was hurled along the sand, tumbling and clattering as he went until he simply ended up on his back a dozen meters from the geth.
"THOMAS!" Williams screamed, jumping from her cover while spraying the closest geth with precise and deadly bursts. Jane watched as if in slow-motion, how the geth started targeting the running woman. Fuck no, not today. She wasn't going to lose people on this stinking planet.
"Squad! Covering fire on the Chief!" She shouted, leaning over her cover before firing her own Lancer straight into the body of the closest geth, a Destroyer no less. The Geth responded like one would expect, by aiming its oversized cannon at the source of the firing, namely Jane. Eyes widened in her head as the machine spewed forth rounds at her. She still had her hands on her rifle, projecting a barrier would take too long. Even the rock would not stand against a full attack from thát kind of weapon.
The rounds were absorbed by the purple field that appeared around her in a few meters radius. The geth didn't stop shooting though, instead just keeping up the stream of slugs until its weapon ran dry. As soon as that happened, the field was slammed outwards, crashing into the geth like a biotic tidal wave which continued, taking a couple other geth with it in a disintegrating field. Jane blinked a few times, trying to guess where Wrex had been to save her in the nick of time. She turned her head, noticing that the old Krogan was busy pouring metal into a geth he had just kicked down. So not him... then who?
"Kazuat, that was too close." The filtered voice of her name-sibling came in behind her, then next to her as John slid into cover behind the same rock. Lucky it was big enough to shelter an Elcor, otherwise that could have been a problem.
"That was you?" She asked, not sure if it came out thankful or disbelieving. She knew John was a biotic, only idiots with closed eyes would have forgot about that, but she hadn't thought him strong enough to project a field like thát. At best, she had expected he could hurl warps. Expanded biotic reaving-fields was something on a whole 'nother scale, as Kaidan so often put things.
"Yeah... was afraid I did it too late, but... you okay Jane?" He asked, bopping up for just enough time to smash a biotic sphere into a geth that was gunning for the chief. Jane followed his example, though with her rifle instead. For the moment she was a little spent on the biotic area.
"I... of course. Thanks for the save though." She said, glad that he turned out even better than she had thought. John just shook his head;
"You're my superior, even if it's messed up and confusing. So of course I saved your ass. Seems like I do a lot of that these days." He chuckled, picking a knife, a big one, from the bandoliers of sharp and pointy objects slung over his chest in an X. In a way, Jane had to admit it looked kinda badass. John then proceeded to encase the hand with the knife in a biotic field before hurling the knife away. What had at first seemed outdated weapons, was turned to overkill as the knife was projected by a biotic field, carving straight through one geth, before embedding itself in the "face" of a geth behind it.
"...Okay, that was just excessive." Jane muttered under her breath, sending a dozen shots off against what she recognized was a hunter materializing a few steps behind Williams. The woman in question picked up on the sound and turned on the spot. Ashley then proceeded to slam her rifle into what amounted to the geth's neck, dropping it to the ground before she poured fire into its flashlight until the rifle stopped shooting. Then she turned again and covered the last distance to where the young corporal had landed.
"Well, it saved Nihlus' ass on Eden Prime. I'm entitled to being excessive I think." John said, targeting a geth destroyer that was about to intercept Williams. Wrex, however, beat him to it, by blue-shifting his massive form straight into the geth, shotgun in hand. Wasn't needed though, as the impact alone had converted the geth to scrap. Eight hundred kilos of armor and muscle tended to do that to you; "Well, glad to see Wrex is having fun."
Jane just scoffed at John's remark, instead keeping her eyes on the Chief. Ashley had reached were Thomas was lying in the sand, a good portion of his armor dented inwards. Slapping her gun to her back in one motion, Ashley knelt down next to him, checking for anything she could treat on the spot;
"Thomas? Thomas, answer me Godammit! How many fingers do I have?" She barked, prying his helmet from his head. The visor was, thank God, still intact along with the helmet. At least that meant he hadn't suffered a concussion.
"...Ow" He muttered, causing her to breathe out in relief. Good, he was conscious. That was a good piece of news at least; "Five, I think. You haven't lost them, right?"
Ashley, for all her calm and professionalism, could have slapped him right then and there for joking at a time like this. She didn't even bother maintaining eyes on the battle, not that she had to though. The rest of the team was keeping her covered while she brought him back.
Around her, the geth had managed to stop the advance of the Alliance, forcing the tanks through a chokepoint filled with anti-infantry and vehicle weapons. Didn't stop the marines of the 6th raiders from attacking head-on though. The tanks had stopped moving, all those still intact that was. In spite of the massive size and armor of the Apocalypse, they weren't as immortal as the public was being told. Many had been wrecked and turned into boilers for their crews by well-aimed plasma-spheres from either the big Armatures or the even bigger Colossuses, and some again had been rendered immobile by one rocket too many hitting vital sections. Now those remaining tanks, and there were still many, were lined up in a loose formation about five-hundred meters from the chokepoint in the cliffs. If they wanted inland, that was the closest route, seeing as the tanks weren't water-capable and thus would sink if they tried driving around. So, when driving through wasn't an option, and the enemy was entrenched, they chose the best option they had.
They started shelling them.
Each tank opened fired in unison, hurling massive amounts of kinetic force and destruction at the chokepoint where the fire was being returned by the inorganic and thus fearless geth. One side fired off metallic shells and slugs where the other returned the favor in the form of plasma and rockets. Behind the tanks, the remaining Patac-jeeps were holding still, engines running and drivers ready, grinding their teeth. Each jeep, as it was too small to be called an IFV or an APC, was carrying around five men in addition to the driver and the gunner, most of those men hanging on to the exterior skeleton.
Ashley didn't pay them any attention though, as she picked up Thomas and slung him over her shoulders before backtracking towards the closest real cover. Jane and the rest of the squad, no longer needing to gun down the geth as the arrival of the remaining armor had dealt with them, rushed over to where Ashley sat Thomas down behind the wreck of a tank, its treads having been blown out as well as its frontal compartments. None of them paid any heed to the stench of boiled human flesh and plastic that emanated from within the tank.
"How is he?" Was the first words escaping John when they made it behind the tank and he turned to look at the corporal. To his pleasant surprise, said corporal just shot him an annoyed look.
"Shepard, I got away with being blown up and had my neck broken, among other things. Still, that was one hell of a punch. What hit me, a rocket?" He asked, a small, if annoyed, grin on his lips. John's eyes went to the human's chest, or rather his side, where a good portion of the armor was more than dented, it was caved in. He didn't know much about human physiology, but thát had to both hurt and be rather unhealthy.
"Not a rocket. A biotic geth." Jane said. Thomas just shot her a disbelieving look; "I know, I know. Scientific impossibility and all that crap. Fact it you were on the receiving end of a biotic punch that would have knocked Wrex out."
"That...explains it. I thought- Ahh, that hurt!" He sneered as Ashley jabbed him with a stim, waiting for the armor's Medigel to kick in.
"Crybaby" She muttered, but with a softer tone than the words implied. Fisher just scoffed;
"You know I hate needles." He grumbled, then winced again. This time, notably, no one had touched him; "Arkay's pimples and... fucking... my side hurts like hell." He said, straining his face. Jane shared a look with Ashley, who nodded.
"Williams, get him out of that armor." She said, sounding more than a little concerned. Which was fitting, seeing as she was concerned. If the caved in armor was any indication, then they would be lucky if he only had a few broken ribs.
"On it." Ashley said, then she took out a new syringe, smaller than the first one, from her medicinal kit. Before Thomas could resist, she had jabbed that one into his neck as well; "Sorry Thomas, this is probably going to hurt."
"Wait, why is it going to..." He started, then faded out, like he was in another place. Conversing with Roku, if the different expressions was any indication; "Damn... ow, I knew it hurt. Now I know why. Lazy bastard didn't even notice... wait..."
Thomas was silent for a few moments again, then looked back up at the group leaning over him. Expect for Wrex who was leaning against the hull of the tank, paying attention to both the ongoing stalemate as well as the operation. Having eyes on each side of your head had an advantage like that.
"Ah crapcakes... let me guess, I have... about most of my ribs broken... plus some internal bleeding?" Fisher muttered, sounding almost ashamed over his ragged speech. Jane was taken aback for a moment, the remembered that Thomas's spirit probably knew how each and every cell of his body was feeling. Jane shot a glance to where Williams was kneeling over the corporal, her ashen grey face clearly showing that she had in fact, not expected that amount of trauma. Still, she finished with the clamps, prying open the chest-piece that was caved in, about ten or so centimeters in a form almost like a rock had hit a piece of cardboard.
"Most likely. Just lie still corporal." Jane said, motioning for Ashley top pull off the final piece. What met her was the sight of a bloody sore, easily covering the entirety of his right side. It had the color of a fresh bruise, only much more intense. Red blood was leaking from multiple openings in his skin where the splinters of bone, most likely his ribs, were peaking through. His entire side was like one, big broken bone that oozed with blood. Jane, despite having both seen and done much worse things in her life, felt a little sick at the sight. Thomas, wincing in pain, just looked as much as he could from the angle he had.
"Well... I guess." He started, but was cut off by a cough that brought blood to his lips, and less color to Ashley's face; "I guess that's gonna leave a brui... a bruise, huh?" He muttered in-between the coughs. Ashley just placed a hand on his mouth, her expression growing more and more worried.
"Don't talk, okay?" She muttered, her low voice audible despite the constant explosions from tanks firing off their guns, machineguns and the whirring of gunships as they performed strafing runs on the geth, as well as flying behind the enemy lines to bombard them from behind. A lot of those gunships were lost to the sudden appearance of anti-air weapons.
"Roger that Chief." Thomas smiled, moving his bionic hand up to a small salute. This time, Ashley did slap him, if only because he was so calm while she was close to having a heart attack; "...ow?"
Jane, who had never really been good at the part where she was supposed to save lives, found herself somewhat at a loss at what to do, while Ashley seemed like she was already in the process of wanting to carve him open to set the rips right, if nothing else. Thomas, who had been rubbing his cheek, winced with pain as the entire present team looked on in bafflement.
Where his side was exposed with all its grime, blood and broken bones, the skin was now glowing with crisscrossing green lines and symbols, almost like looking at some of the runic tablets and stones that Jane had been force-fed during her affair with the Icelandic marine. Too bad she never bothered learning them.
"What the..." Ashley stammered, looking more confused than frightened. Of course, they knew Roku could heal Fisher in some ways, but the sheer amount of damage had made Jane firmly think the spirit would be at a loss here. As the symbols glowed all the brighter, it was as if they reached into the wounds, burned away the spilled blood on his undersuit, and mended the bones. The whole thing gave off a strong smell of ozone, while sounding like the engines of the Tantalus drive core. In other words, it was almost as if the spirit was pouring Eezo into the wounds. Ashley fell back, ending up sitting in much the same way she had on Therum when Thomas had revealed the truth.
In a way, this was a revelation of the same kind. None of them had actually seen the spirit at work with healing Thomas before, and only Jane had seen it once when it gave him powers no humans should have. So as a result, both were mildly scared out of their wits, while John was looking on with a hidden expression of disbelief. His jaw was on the hinges, unable to close due to what he was seeing.
After a few more seconds of bafflement and astonishment, as well as disbelief, the glow started to fade away left the skin and flesh of the human body whole again, but with a long scar where one of the ribs had been poking through. Thomas, seemingly much less surprised than the rest of them, looked down to his side again, the nodded with what almost looked like approval.
Ashley, her helmet having been dropped the moment she had put the wounded corporal down behind the tank, allowed herself the slip in professionalism as she embraced the corporal, giving him a short, but desperate kiss of relief. Then, she slapped him again, leaving a red mark on his right cheek.
"Seriously, ow!" Thomas exclaimed, rubbing at his sore cheek; "Why did-"
"The next time we yell 'geth' or 'to your right', you fucking pay attention, you hear me?" She barked, causing even Jane to blink with surprise. It was, if nothing else, always special to see how Ashley reacted to one of Thomas's near-deaths.
"Yeah, but why did you-"
"Because you were being stupid. You kept trying to pull out the sword even though there were geth all around you. What the hell was going through your mind Thomas?!" Ashley demanded, drawing the eyes of some marines resting in cover behind a jeep to their left.
"I've been in worse..."
"I don't care. Do you know what it felt like? Seeing that geth slam you across the ground like that? I was scared. I was honest-to-God scared because any regular human would have been killed by that kind of attack." She shouted.
"But I'm not..." Thomas tried, even though his voice sounded more ashamed now than anything.
"Maybe, but when I see you being beaten to a pulp like that, I don't instantly think 'oh, he has the spirit, he'll be fine'" She exclaimed, the lowered her head, looking at the sands stained with blood. His blood; "I just see you, being punched or shot. I just... I just think 'Oh God please no!' when I see you taking a hit that would have killed anyone else. Please, just... just please don't put me through that just because you can take it. I can't..."
Thomas, if any, looked and probably was, Jane reckoned, baffled. Also, more than just ashamed. The look on his face told them all that he completely forgot this was actually an active war-zone.
"Ash, I... I'm...I'm sorry. I...sorry. I know, I know I am just treating this like it's... I don't know. I don't know..." He muttered, looking just as ashamed as Williams looked distraught. Jane, seeing as there was no immediate threat to him, and as a little privacy might be available despite their location, got up from her crouch and looked around. John, having been standing all the time, looked at her but didn't say anything. Possibly he thought the same thing.
Jane looked around, noticing how a number of what looked like officers were gathered behind one of the tanks at the rear, looking at something on a holographic image from an Omnitool.
"Wrex, stay here. I'll be right back, so keep them safe." She said, then gestured for her Quarian counterpart to follow her. Waiting for the geth to fire somewhere else, the pair of Shepards went from cover to cover, protecting themselves with barriers in the places without cover. Not that there was much, the remaining thirty or so tanks were lined up in one long row across the beach with a single tank at the rear apparently making due as the command center.
The officers, the highest-ranking apparently a colonel with long, blond hair going down in a ponytail, looked at the newcomers. More specifically, they looked at John. Both saluted, given how the other officers were higher of rank, except for a lieutenant-commander with one of the shoulder-pads missing, as well as his right arm held in front of his chest by the plaster and make-shift patching up some medic had done. One, who wasn't an officer per se but still held authority, was an N7 standing by the hatch to the tank, checking his rifle. Apparently the guy had survived his little suicide-run on the geth with little injury to show for it.
"Lieutenant-Commander John'Shepard reporting, Captain Jane Shepard reporting." The Shepards both said. The woman nodded, gesturing for them both to join them.
"Introductions. First, I'm Colonel Sasha Tokev, your commander-on-the-ground while we're here in this lush paradise of flowers, white sands and maniac Turians. You will address me 'Ma'am', 'Colonel' or 'Boss'. To my right is Major Pavel Emin" The Major gave a nod. "Major Boris Kilesso" The major nodded, though his eyes were examining John with something akin to searching for flaws to point out. "Lieutenant Commander Oleg Chudov" Sasha gestured at the Lieutenant with his arm in a sling. "And finally we have Special Forces Sergeant Isaac Clarke." The colonel said, gesturing at the N7 soldier with his rifle opened and under self-conducted maintenance. The man looked up, briefly with his face obscured by his helmet. This one was a bit different than the rest though, and had three horizontal gabs in the visor instead of the T-shaped one. Other than that he was clad in the regular armor the marines wore, while she herself was wearing the Bulwark power armor. In comparison, she felt a little overprotected by the amount of armor she was toting.
"All due respect ma'am. I thought the entirety of the 6th Raiders was Russian." Jane said, noticing the obvious lack of Russian in Clarke's name.
"Clarke was transferred to the 6th last month by Petrovsky's request. Now..." She said, bringing up the same map Jane had seen from afar; "We're blocked from this pass. The geth are too deeply entrenched for anything but an orbital strike. And since we're inside the shield, that's not an option."
"Could we bring a rear-strike in by gunship?" Boris, the major, asked.
"Tried that. Barely managed to turn them around before the AA-guns tore them apart." Chudov said, the set of small, golden wings on his chest marking him as responsible for flight- and aerial operations.
"Do we have any artillery?" Pavel asked; "A concentrated barrage could at the very least break down the big guns, allowing us to bring in the air-support."
The colonel shook her head;
"No, the only heavy weapons available to us are the tanks. This was meant to be a fast strike. Artillery was deemed too time-costly." There was a tone of annoyance in her voice, but Jane couldn't figure out if it was annoyance over incompetent superiors and supplies-managers, or just annoyance over being asked questions she couldn't give good answers to.
"I don't suppose we could sap the geth? Dig beneath them?" Boris tried, not sounding like he himself believed it an opportunity.
"No. Even if we had the gear to do it, it would cost far too much in both recourses and time. Shepards, any of you have an idea?" Tokev asked, looking from the map to where John and Jane were contemplating their opportunities and possibilities.
"I don't suppose you have enough biotics to create a barrier protecting enough soldiers to get a decent amount through the chokepoint?" John asked. Tokev shook her head again.
"Aside from Clarke and a few others, no more than five others I think, you are the only biotics here." She muttered, annoyed once more. Apparently, Jane reasoned, Sasha Tokev had something of a brash or bad temper; "So no, we don't have enough biotics. Sucks, I know."
"The Phase-II armor is equipped with rappelling-hooks and lines, right?" Jane asked, starting to form the outline of a plan in her head.
"Yes, but there are no underground passages, and as mentioned, we can't get gunships over their defenses." She said. John, however, seemed to perk up at Jane's words.
"But the lines can easily both lower and pull up a person, right?" He said, causing Jane to smirk behind her helmet.
"True, otherwise they wouldn't...you have an idea, I take it?" Tokev asked, looking between the Shepards.
"Maybe. The Bulwark suits are equipped with climbing-cables. A few people with them could carry up the lines for the rappelling-lines, fasten them to the top of the cliffs forming the wall between us and our objective..." Jane said.
"...and then the rappelling team could follow up and we would be able to rappel down the other side and have men behind the geth!" John finished. Jane smirked even harder, nodding to her counterpart. Sasha though, seemed to be contemplating the pros and cons;
"How many people could you take over the cliffs?"
"Depends on the amount of soldiers in Bulwark armor you have." Jane said. At the tank, Clarke had finished with his rifle and was now paying rapt attention to the conversation.
"Say we have twenty." Tokev said.
"Twenty... twenty... that would let us take..." Jane mulled, doing the math.
"You'd be able to take at least fifty marines to the top." He said, then added "And I'm going with you."
Jane, being more than a little surprised at the offer, mulled it over. True, the fact that he was alive after the stunt she had seen him pull spoke to his skills, but on the other hand she had no knowledge of his methods and the way he thought and fought. Still, even counting in Wrex, she would be able to take everyone from the Normandy she needed, and then some.
"I suppose we can take you. I'm guessing you only have the rappelling-line and hook?" She asked, once more noting that he was only wearing the regular armor, not the Special Forces armor the Bulwark was intended to be before it just became the standard issue for Special Forces, officers and the troops manning heavier weapons, such as light machineguns and rockets.
"Didn't have the chance to get the new gear. Don't worry though, I don't rely on armor much." He said with a kind of professional boasting Jane both could identify with, and found rather annoying. Maybe because he reminded her of herself?
Nah...
"So, we have a plan?" John asked, looking around. Colonel Tokev just sighed, a habit which seemed to be spreading everywhere the Normandy went.
"As good as any I suppose. If anything we'll only lose a few dozen men if your plan fails. Better than face the massacre an assault on the choke-point will be. How long do you need to prepare? I'll make sure the needed people with the Bulwarks are at your disposal." She said. It was clear that the other officers were either intrigued by the bold strategy, or annoyed that they hadn't been able to come up with anything better.
"Just give me a few minutes to gather my people. I'll let you know when and where we meet." Jane said, saluting before she turned and headed back to the place she had left Ashley, Fisher and Wrex.
"And Keelah help us if we screw it up..." John muttered low enough that only Jane could hear it.
"Keelah help us indeed." Jane agreed. Somehow this whole situation seemed annoyingly familiar.
Well...shit. Things could be better, but at least no one from the crew is dead...right? So far we've only met geth, and they alone are giving the Raiders a fight for their money. What happens if the marines come to face Krogan or even the Reaper units?
Once again: I'm glad I'm not there.
Do be a jolly good bunch and review. I need (feed on) your thoughts and opinions, reviews put short, concerning what I do. Virmire is one of the most important sections of the story, so if you give me some good feedback, I'll do my damnest to give you some nail-bitingly exciting chapters.
Cheers,
Mivpus.