A/N: Another delay to apologise for; I was away at the weekend which meant that I couldn't do any writing.
Asphodel
It was actually rather amusing, Charon reflected, how easily one could manage to twist the aimless, useless masses into a volatile and dangerous swarm that could serve one's agenda like no other tool, in some cases. As long as you neglected to classify pouring hundreds of thousands of credits into tailoring a bio weapon for one specific purpose, and thousands more getting into the position to use it effectively, as a difficulty. Other than that, it was really quite effortless.
What was funnier still was the fact that most of the people out there, looting and stampeding and killing each other weren't dying any faster than they had been before he'd interfered, and were unlikely to start now. Whilst the pathogen had a very low incubation period, it couldn't survive outside of a host for very long, and wasn't particularly contagious. Of course, neither the Alliance nor the civilians were to know that, and, having some grasp of the concept of prudence, they were unwilling to find out. Of course, all they had to do was set up a little scientific experiment and his little plot would be foiled utterly, but they wouldn't. After all, experimenting on people, playing with their lives, was conventionally accepted as being morally wrong, although in this case doing the 'right' thing would result in more unnecessary deaths and wanton destruction.
However, he hadn't gone to the trouble of creating a disease that had a worse bark than it's bite for the sheer entertainment value; sick people didn't make for very effective mobs, and mobs that one could lose oneself in made for a very effective human shield; particularly if those you were protecting yourself from wanted to preserve human life wherever possible.
This, ironically, meant that the person best equipped to save the most lives here was the one least concerned with doing so, besides himself of course. Assuming Shepard was still alive, of which Charon was reasonably certain.
He'd lost himself in the midst of a crowd straining against the defences hastily raised at the edge of the quarantine zone, manned by a meagre number of carefully dispersed Alliance personnel, as well as a few law enforcement officials that had been lucky enough to be beyond the city limits when he'd released the weapon. Thus far, the mob had remained reasonably peaceful, simply demanding that they be allowed out and away from those that were sick, demands that the soldiers clearly couldn't give in to.
However, the situation was volatile enough; it just needed the appropriate push to send it off in the right direction. A push that the terrorist happily provided, in the form of a manually triggered explosion that he had planted earlier, which blew a hole in the fortifications and killed a few of those that defended them.
It was accompanied by another, more distant detonation, at another crucial location that had a crowd outside, and a few people valiantly trying to keep them out. The spaceport. Another vital component in the machination that would get Charon off-planet; the Alliance fleet would now be forced to contain the threat of potentially infected people trying to leave the city, allowing him to slip past them as a lesser priority.
Back at Charon's location, seeing their salvation dangled before them, the mob surged forward, forcing the remaining guards to open fire as a deterrent. Escalation-isn't it wonderful? Charon thought to himself, humming Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' quietly as he was swept along with the crowd towards the gap in their defences. Too many looters were garbed in a similar fashion to himself for him to attract any attention from all but the most experienced eyes.
One pair of which were watching from half a mile away, halfway up a building, through the sight of a batarian made sniper rifle. Shepard sighed, the air leaving his gas mask in an exasperated, mechanical hiss. Situations like this were just about the most awkward a precision sniper could encounter. He caught periodic flashes of his mark every couple of seconds, but never still, and never for long enough for him to take a shot and expect it to succeed.
And yet, he had to keep Charon within the quarantine zone, somehow. There was no chance that he'd manage to get anywhere near the terrorist's current location before the man was long gone. Fortunately, the assassin didn't have to worry about collateral damage; many of these people were dead anyway, would be mown down by the security forces trying to hold the line, or crushed beneath the feet of their fellow victims in the vicious currents of the panicked and vengeful crowd, or would be killed by the pathogen.
Bringing down all of those who surrounded Walker was unlikely to work as a tactic; he'd be alerted to Thaddaeus' efforts, and clearing his way could potentially make life easier for the nihilist to escape the line of fire and perhaps the quarantine zone. A far better option would be to make him a victim of his own strategy, by using the crowd against him. Shepard added to the rounds being poured into the front ranks of the mob, firing ELE as frequently as he could without overheating the weapon, aiming for shots that would mutilate and maim multiple targets instead of his usual clean headshots; he had to make them afraid, send them running in the opposite direction to Charon's destination.
It was grim work; shooting fish in a barrel, as the idiom went, or, equally appropriately, feeding the meat grinder. He killed one and crippled two, and three more would be forced helplessly into their place; the crowd as a whole was slow to respond, and continued to press forward. There was no challenge, no puzzle, and next to no precision required.
The process bored and aggravated him, yet firing at the back of the crowd wouldn't help; it wouldn't solve the problem of the front ranks breaking through the lines, at which point there would be no stopping Charon's escape, and it might well alert the terrorist to Shepard's survival, although if he had any sense he would assume the greatest threat to his plan was still active, and work on that basis. However, there was no point providing clear confirmation.
Even so, there had to be a more efficient solution. Shepard scanned the defensive lines, hoping vaguely that the guards were still holding back to some extent, that they might have something else suitably horrific that they weren't yet willing to use on what were still mostly (to them at least) desperate civilians simply trying to save themselves. His smile when he spotted the grenades wasn't pleasant.
He moved his fire to the few remaining officials trying to hold the line and keep fatalities down, brought down those firing least frequently and effectively in order to remove their restraining influence from their comrades. He then ceased fire briefly, making some quick but crude, and, most importantly, reversible, modifications to ELE, reducing the rifle's lethality, before inflicting some mutilating shots to his remaining pawns, shots designed to provoke and enrage, but allow continued function so that he wouldn't weaken their defences to the point where the mob broke through.
It worked; one particular enterprising fellow began to make use of some grenades that he already had on his person, and his comrades rapidly adopted the practise. Later, many of them would doubtless be horrified by their actions, 'thinking' (if it could even be described as such, Shepard sniffed disdainfully) with their emotions, rather than logic, that their actions were inexcusable, possibly driving some of them into depression. If that occurred, then so be it; it would be their own poor reasoning skills that left them there, in which case any and all consequences would simply be more applied Darwinism. The reality of the situation was that their actions, prompted by his provoking, had certainly saved more lives than would have been the case had they not employed the explosives.
Maybe they'll get medals. Or maybe I'll get one instead... Shepard thought and chuckled quietly in spite of himself, as he restored ELE's optimal function; the thought was that absurd. The sound coming out of the gas mask's filters was utterly alien.
In any case, unsurprisingly, the gruesome detonations in the midst of the dense swarm of civilians did the trick, distributing discouraging sprays of shrapnel (both organic and synthetic) and viscera throughout the mob, and frightening them with the concussive roars that accompanied each explosion. The mob recoiled, turned in on itself like a spasming beast entering its death throes, and fled, carrying the terrorist puppeteer with them. Shepard caught a glimpse of the man as he was swept away-almost meeting the assassin's gaze through his scope, a wry grin on his face that failed to reach his feverish gaze.
An impressive feat. Someone else might have found it unsettling... Thaddaeus smirked, smug in his victory and vengeance as he made his way out of the building to pick up his quarry's trail.
The streets, however, were by no means clear when he resumed the hunt. For the most part, people saw him, in the trenchcoat and armour, with a gas mask and visor, bloodstained eyes and face and armed with a sniper rifle, and gave him a very wide berth, as he stalked through the streets. However, one truth that Shepard had long acknowledged was that if you could think of something stupid to do, there would always be someone out there who was convinced it was a good idea; in this case, a group of bystanders electing to interfere with him.
A gang of them would probably be the more appropriate phrase; young men in their twenties, at most their thirties, tightly clustered, watching him as they followed on a parallel vector. Some of them were armed, carrying basic pistols or sshotguns; others had improvised close quarters weapons in the form of knives and makeshift clubs. There were eleven of them, enough to bolster their confidence enough to see him as a target, yet they were cautious, so apparently not totally lacking in neurones.
It would have been better if they were. Instead, they were likely to make nuisances of themselves at the most inconvenient point they could, something that Shepard didn't want, and though he had no time to get sidetracked, now was as good a moment as any to deal with the threat, such as it was. They were amateurs, certainly, inept at close quarters combat and by no means marksmen, which meant that there was no need to worry about those armed with pistols; in his armour, they'd only be able to do any damage at point blank range, where they'd be lucky to get a shot at all.
The shotguns were a different matter. Any ape could use a shotgun effectively at close range; one of the reasons Shepard privately loathed the weapon. All in all, it was a confrontation Shepard would rather not go through, which was why, rather than filling the area with gunfire and picking a few of them off with ELE from a distance, he decided to approach them and offer some polite advice, instead.
At which point, belatedly, they tried to pretend that they weren't watching him.
"Excuse me?" Shepard paused, searching for a way to phrase the death threats in a way that would still be seen as polite in 'civilised' society. Not that he, or these men for that matter, had seen any for quite some time. The thugs turned towards him, endeavouring to be innocent and failing to such extremes the assassin found it comical.
"I noticed that you seem to be assessing me as a possible target for some... offensive actions. I wanted to advise you that your attentions would be better placed elsewhere, in the interest of your collective wellbeing."
"What?" The leader, by sheer impetuousness it seemed, responded coarsely, injecting his voice with what he thought was menace, but came across as mindless aggression.
"Oh, I'm sorry; do I need to simplify my vocabulary for you? I should have realised that words of multiple syllables would be perceived as incomprehensibly complex." Shepard said, keeping his voice mild but unable to prevent a note of condescension from entering. It was force of habit.
The thug seemed to have had his higher mental functions suppressed by testosterone, and instead attempted to cast the first blow, ignoring the shotgun he carried like a club in his left hand, and instead lunging at the psychopath's face with his right. Shepard moved, allowed the overpowered blow to sail past him, and simultaneously, in one smooth motion, drew the Kessler pistol and shot the ape in the forehead.
"Well, that was more or less inevitable." He sighed mock-sorrowfully, and then turned to face the new corpse's comrades, who were already rushing him in a flawless demonstration of synchronised stupidity.
Some of those bearing firearms moved around to flank him, firing as they went; apparently it hadn't registered that their opponent was armoured and shielded. They did still present the most grievous threat, although that didn't really mean much, so once Shepard had met their comrades' charge, keeping them from firing for fear of hitting their friends, he steered the combat in their direction, leaving a trail of dead or incapacitated thugs and dropped weapons.
The situation became somewhat more frustrating when it transpired that those not already engaged in combat apparently had just enough sense to realise that it was in their best interests to keep it that way, and, as they weren't busy fighting as well as trying to move, they could back away faster than Shepard could pursue them.
And that was the point at which Shepard's organic options for cover started dropping like flies, the high velocity rounds only missing him due to luck, and the fact that Shepard never stopped moving. Someone out there had a sniper rifle and most certainly knew how to use it, and that really didn't fill the assassin with optimism. He gave up on the idea of pursuing the thugs that had guns, given that they were no longer the greatest present threat, and concentrated on getting to the nearest cover that would at minimum put him out of the sniper's line of sight, and preferably be capable of stopping a bullet as well.
He found it indoors, in a shop that had already been looted and had its windows smashed and its door circuits gutted so that it stayed open. The owners were nowhere to be seen, although there were extensive bloodstains on the walls and carpet that suggested a reason why that might be. Shepard kept running in, just as the bullets continued flying past him, occasionally missing him by a hair's breadth, dived over the counter and stayed there, crouching and gasping in order to make up the oxygen deficit he had built up due to anaerobic respiration.
His omnitool vibrated, indicating that he had an incoming connection.
No-one should have his contact details other than command, which left two options; either they wanted to give him/receive an update on the situation, possibly with new orders, or someone had broken into the system and stolen his data.
Now, who could that be? He thought dryly, as he allowed the connection.
"See? It's not so fun having a sniper interfering with you when you're trying to accomplish a task, is it?"