We are storming the heavens
To raise the swords and shields
We ascend to our destiny
To the Elysian Fields
- Elysian Fields, Megadeth
Elysium was a beautiful world. John Grissom couldn't have chosen a more picture-perfect planet to settle on and enjoy his retirement… Hard to believe that was 16 years ago…
The majority of the land formations on Elysium were situated high above sea level, and on a vast, sweeping plain, situated in the shadows of two high mountain ranges that pierced the white clouds, and where Grissom had finally decided to retire, the capital of Illyria had risen swiftly and steadily around him. Within in five years, the city had become a booming space port for not only humans, but a vast portion of the known species in the galaxy.
The planet was positioned fairly close to several major and minor relays, the newly opened John Grissom Academy, and within FTL distance to one or two other tourist worlds, making it a textbook travel destination. The fact that Elysium sat on the fringes of the Skyllian Verge, and remote outposts and settlements were occasionally attacked by small bands of pirates, did not seem to deter visitors or colonists. Most felt relatively safe and comfortable, due to the high presence of Alliance military personal stationed here, both on and off duty. Many Alliance soldiers even enjoyed spending their shore leave in the capitol city or on the stark white, snowy slopes of Mt. Aeden.
As it happened to be, Aurora Shepard was relieved to be on a sabbatical, no matter how short it may be. She was planetside for the next three days, and had no plans to venture into the city like many of her peers. Instead, she opted to stay in a small town about 10 clicks from the furthest outskirts of Illyria. She had made a promise, and being a tenured soldier, she meant to keep that promise.
The sun was beginning to set, as Aurora made her way down the town's only main road. Her omni-tool read that it was nearly 2200 hours, casting an orange glow onto her cold and wind burned cheeks. She was making decent time and would arrive on schedule at the 20th century style diner, just around the corner from her motel. Rounding out the last bend before her destination, she spied the man she was to be reuniting with. He stood under the soft white halo of a street lamp, casually leaning against the post, shuffling his feet in the newly fallen snow.
Aurora happened upon him as he was still deep in his own thoughts, and said quietly, with a halfcocked grin, "Long time, no see, Brian."
Brian Potts practically jumped out of his shoes at the sound of her voice, and no wonder, the street was almost silent, save for the light crunching of the snow beneath their soles. It was almost as if they were the only two people here.
Once he realized who had snuck up on him, Brian doubled over, hands on his knees, breathing heavily. Aurora snorted, he had always been too jumpy.
"I hate when you do that," he said, shaking his head crossly. "You've always done it… for as long as we've known each other." She shrugged her shoulders, now grinning from ear to ear. He stood up straight and gazed longingly at her.
"You look fantastic," he said in a wistful voice. Her grin faded just a bit, and she rubbed the back of her neck with a gloved hand.
"Thanks…," she managed awkwardly. She hadn't meant to dress up or look "fantastic". She was wearing her fatigues, a pair of worn combat boots, a heavy jacket and gloves, and of course her sidearm on her hip.
Needless to say, Aurora was attempting to appear as any other ordinary soldier. While she did promise to meet Brian here, she was planning on breaking things off with him once and for all… The on again, off again thing wasn't working out the way she had anticipated, and Brian didn't deserve to be strung out. Aurora harbored no hard feelings or dislike for him, but he wasn't suited for this. He needed someone who would be there for him and share his feelings, someone a little closer to home.
Brian reached out and took her hands in his, and said with a smile, "Let's go inside… it's freezing out here. Aurora nodded in agreement and the thought of hot coffee took a foremost precedence in her mind. He held open the door for her and pressed his lips against her cheek sheepishly as she walked by.
They were seated momentarily by a VI bot that also took their drink orders: two coffees; Brian's with cream and sugar, and Aurora took hers black. In the minutes the VI was gathering their orders, Aurora grabbed a hold of her dog tags and twisted them around and around, suddenly aware of how anxious she was to have this discussion. She had replayed it over and over in her head, until the script was flawless, until she knew precisely what to say, but it had all seemed for naught. She was thoroughly uneasy and had no clue where to begin.
After the bot had dropped off their coffee and a few apprehensive moments of muteness, it was Brian who spoke first.
"Something wrong dear?" he asked, clearly bewildered by the tension between them
Aurora flinched, she hated pet names, particularly that one. Oh, how she wished there was an easier way to do this, one that didn't involve obliterating their friendship. This was going to be more difficult than that krogan she fought who gave her the deep scar now permanently etched in a diagonal line beginning from her eyebrow, crossing the bridge of her nose and ending on her opposite cheek.
She sighed heavily. Finding her resolved, she began, "Brian… This… We can't… Us… This is not something I have taken lightly…"
But just as she was about launch into her apparently ill prepared speech, there was a loud explosion that reverberated off the walls, shattering windows, and spraying the patrons of the diner with shards of glass. Several people uttered high pitched squeals of alarm.
"What the hell was that?" Aurora swore, craning her neck to peer over the fragmented frame and out into the dark streets. She was unable to see anything except for a turian couple across the road, glancing wildly around, and perhaps wondering the same. She glanced around at the other clients in the eatery. They were just as bewildered as she was.
Standing, she shook bits of glass from her jacket she hadn't bothered to remove upon entering. Brian was still cowering in his both, hands over his head. She shook her head wearily at him, and turned to everyone else, placing her arms in the air to gain their attention.
"Please remain calm… I am an Alliance soldier. Stay where you are… I'm going to make contact with Command to see if they have any idea what that was."
Because Aurora knew the SSV Agincourt would be in orbit around the planet, she opened a secured line on her omnitool. As she was ready to connect her call, a second, closer blast sent her sprawling on the floor.
From these last several years of training, she knew one disaster may be an accident, but two? Two was surely an attack of some kind. And she had a high suspicion of who was behind it.
Ears still ringing, Aurora got to her feet, and pulled her pistol from its holster. She was no longer Aurora Shepard, a common no one on shore leave… instead 2nd Lieutenant Aurora Dawn Shepard of the 103rd Division Alliance Marines emerged.
"You all stay inside," Shepard ordered to the civilians, raising up to full height. "And no one, I repeat, NO ONE is to come out until you see myself or another Alliance soldier. Do you understand?"
She watched as a dozen frighten eyes bobbed up and down in compliance. Satisfied, she strode out into the street, the snow crunching under her boots.
"Did you see in which direction it came from?" she called out to the pair of turians still on the other side of the road. The taller one, the male she guessed, shook his head, mandible twitching in an unreadable fashion.
The smaller of the two, female, gestured north and said in a flanging voice, "It sounded like it was almost on top of us!"
Shepard followed the turian's pointed finger and saw an angry orange and red glow coming from somewhere between them and Illyria. Beyond that, she witnessed a number of non-Alliance fighter ships dart toward the capitol city. Not moments after they disappeared, three tall skyscrapers when up in flames, like fiery torches licking the heavens.
A deafening roar overhead sounded two other unknown fighters giving chase to a military cruiser. The anti-air cannons surrouding the capitol city began to go off with thundering BOOMs, sending shockwaves across Elysium's terrain. More bombardments shook the earth, rattling even Shepard's bones. It felt like a terrible earthquake was ready to split the world in two.
As Shepard watched the scene unfold in numb shock, she felt Brian's prescence by her side.
"What's happening?" he asked, visibly shaken.
"I told you to stay inside!" she snapped at him as if he were a small child. He stood with a dumbfound look upon his face, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, gasping for air.
Terrified screams echoed through the darkening town.
"They're here!" someone shouted from an adjacent block. "Batarian slavers! They've come to enslave us all!"
Engraged, Shepard marched over to the turian couple. If it truly was the batarians come to take what wasn't theirs, she was not about to go down quietly.
"I need the two of you to find as many skycars as you possibly can and begin blocking both ways into town," she demanded. Spotting an asari, coming from inside a gift shop, Shepard rounded on her. "Good! You can help them!"
The asari frowned back at Shepard. Aurora was beginning to get pissed. This is not exactly what she had in mind for her shore leave… AND WHY THE HELL WASN'T ANYONE LISTENING?!
Punching angrily at her omni-tool, she brought up the microphone app, and started to yell, "Do you not understand? Elysium is under attack, by the batarians, no less!"
"Why should we care?" the male turian asked, crossing his arms. "What good will it do us if we help you humans? The batarians are only upset with you because you took their planet!"
Shepard's eyes widened. She really could not comprehend what she was hearing.
"Are you really that stupid?!" she barked. Both turians made a threatening move towards her. Instinctively, she raised her pistol and point it at them, causing them to hault in their tracks. "The batarians are pirates… raiders… slavers… Do you know what that means? It means they don't descriminate when they take slaves, when they kill… as long as they get what they want! It means that when this planet falls, we all go down with it."
She lowered her firearm, and turned on heal to face the small buildings. She knew people were hiding in them, listening to what was unfolding.
"So I'm not gonna stand idly by to allow some batarian THUGS to walk all over me! You can run, you can keel over and let them take you… I can guarentee that you will all beg for death before the end! Now, I am defending this town with or without your help, but if it's without, you better just stay out of my goddamn way."
There was a moment's respite, where silence hung eerily in the air, before the female turian stepped forward, nodding, "We'll block both ends off, like you said…"
Shepard nodded, letting out a sigh of relief she hadn't realized she was holding.
Eleven minutes later, she knelt in the snow, gripping an older model style machine gun, set in the driver's side window of a vehicle. They were using the skycar barricade as cover. A retired Marine who owned a pawnshop around the corner had brought his entire inventory of weapons, ammo, and a small arsenal of grenades for their minor coalition to use. Besides Shepard, the group consisted of an N7, 3 asari, the two turians, one very cranky krogan, and Brian, who was exceedingly frightened to stray too far from Shepard's side, no matter her insistence.
And thus, they waited… They waited with bated breath for the next quarter of an hour. The aerial dogfights seemed to have subsided, the anti-aircraft guns only sounded every so often and there were very few wails and gunfire echoing through the night. Perhaps the Alliance had stopped the attack before it even began.
Just as Shepard's legs began to cramp from kneeling in the same position for so long, she thought she heard a noise growing closer and closer.
"Maybe that was it…," Brian whispered.
"Sshh!" she hissed. It sounded like something large and hulking moving across the snow.
"I think it might be over Auror-" Brian started again.
"SSHH!" she whispered more harshly than before. It sounded like the loud trundling of giant tires… like a whole fleet of tires…
Shepard stood up, her knees cracking as she did so. Four M35 Makos making their way toward them. She sighed, relief washing over her. She could just make out the Alliance symbols on the sides of one as it skidded and slid on the freezing ground.
She waved at it, signalling that they were indeed here. It proved to be a huge mistake that nearly cost them all dearly. One 155mm round discharged just barely overhead, tearing through the air like a bat out of hell.
"Open fire!" Shepard roared, instantly reacting. She dropped down to her knees and unleashed a barrage of gunfire into the Makos. All four minigun turrets responded, hailing down on the makeshift blockade with ferocity. It would never hold if this went on much longer.
As if reading Shepard's mind, one of the asari threw up a biotic barrier to reinforce it, just as the other two flung Warp after Warp at the first vehicle in the hopes of taking down its armor plating. The N7 lobbed grenades at it, doing minimal damage. The tiny army continued like this for several minutes, before Shepard admitted that if they were to keep this up, at the rate these things were taking damage… or rather not taking damage, they would all be dead or kidnapped sooner than she cared to admit.
"This… isn't… working…, human!" the krogan growled between blasts from his customized, modded shotgun.
"Really?" Shepard retorted. "I hadn't noticed!"
Something was going to have to change here. Continuing to spray and pray her machine gun, she watched as the N7 chucked another grenade at the Mako. She watched it fall in a graceful arc. When it finally touched down, the grenade rolled to a hault under the ATV, and Shepard aimed her weapon at the grenade and squeezed the trigger.
The result was what she could have hoped for. The vehicle went up in a flash of blazing warm colors, reaching 30 ft or more into the night sky.
Maybe this was the way to bring the remaining three bastards down. But glancing around, Shepard understood that wouldn't happen. They were running low on ammo already, and running out of time. Something drastic needed to be done.
On a whim, Shepard decided the first idea that popped into her mind was the best idea. She chucked the machine gun to the side, causing Brian to startle. She grabbed an older style Avenger, clicked on the Distruptor ammo and began clamboring over the skycars.
"Reinforce that barrier!" she yelled at the second and third asari.
"Just what the bloddy hell do you think you're doing?" the N7 operative demanded.
"What does it look like?" she snapped. "Cover me!" And with that, she jumped down to the otherside of the makeshift barricade, her booted feet sending up a flurry of snow as she landed.
As she made her away nimbly past the ruined Mako to the other three, Brian's protests were drowned out by the cannons. She was a bit inclined to agree with him. This was probably not the best idea she had ever come up with, but she didn't see any other alternative. With the Alliance comm channels all but static, she would be unable to raise anyone. These batarian bastards were not getting this planet, even if it meant putting her life at risk.
Shaking her thoughts from her head, Shepard hoisted up her Avenger and sprinted around the backside of the next closest Mako. Pulling herself up the small access ladder in the back. Once on top of the vehicle, she steadied herself. Once sure she had a decnt foothold, Shepard made her way across the roof to the emergency hatch. She was able to hear voices coming from the belly of the Mako.
"Someone's outside!" a voice exclaimed. Definitely batarian.
"Probably some dumb Alliance prick," a second voice said. "Get your ass out there and give them a proper Skyllian welcome.
The trapdoor opened faster than Shepard could have anticipated. Out of the hole, came one ugly, four eyed batarian, baring his razor like teeth in a foul grin. He raised a pistol and pointed it directly at her head. Instictively, she kicked him in the face so hard, she heard an audible "crack"… possibly a cheek or an orbital bone. He howled out in pain, clutching his face with one hand, and wildly swinging around his gun with the other. A shot discharged from the pistol, and a round promptly found its new home in Shepard's upper arm.
Ignoring the burning ache that began to spread down the length of her forearm and into her hand, she pulled the trigger on her Avenger. The blast from the rifle, coupled with firing it one handed and at close range, sent Shepard careening onto her back, head buzzing and ears ringing.
Scrambling back to her feet, she realized the batarian was dead. His head had been torn apart. Brain matter, blood and bones littered the roof of the Mako, and Shepard couldn't believe she had completely obliterated the batarian. She stared at the body in half disbelief, she didn't think she had killed anyone by a point blank shot to the head yet… it was a mess and if it ever happened again, it would be too soon. But this wasn't over yet.
Hauling the body out of the hatch opening with all her strength and tossing it over the side of the vehicle, Shepard dropped through hole, rifle still in hand.
"I hope you took care of the problem," the second batarian growled, without turning. He was still at the controls for the weapons.
Shepard raised her Avenger a second time, saying, "Not yet… but I'm about too."
The other pirate whirled around in the captain's swivel chair, surprise etched across his pockmarked face.
The moment they made eye contact, Shepard fired another shot, hitting this assailant squarely in the chest. He was gone in almost a second, as she watched the light leave his eyes. Heaving the dead batarian from the chair and discarding it behind her, Shepard sat down and took to the Mako's conrols.
Having driven several M29 IFVs, the M35 couldn't be much different. No windows, outside mounted cameras, a monitor to view the outside surroundings, a machine gun turret and the 155mm cannon. She just hoped to whatever gods were listening, that she wouldn't have to drive damn thing.
Shepard spun the turret around to face the final two hijacked military vehicles. Without heistation, she punched the large red button and sent a volley of cannon fire at them. With every shot, the Mako rocked slightly back and forth from the recoil. It was mano y mano… Mako y Makos... She winced at her own poorly planned joke.
Their drivers had barely any time to react before both went up in an explosion that sent its own shockwave out across the battlefield.
She whooped loudly inside her cabin, grimacing when she smacked her wounded arm on the head rest. Sitting back to survey the destruction she had wrought and her little squad's victory, she noticed movement on one of the monitors.
At least half a dozen more Makos were bearing down on their position. Unsure of how much more firepower her vehicle had left, Shepard panicked slightly… This was it…
But just as she settled herself behind the controls once more to make a final stand, she caught sight of Alliance fighters sweeping down on the stolen equipment, carpet bombing the shit out of the batarians.
Shepard hollered jovially once more as a voice came through her comms.
"This is the SSV Gettsyburg… is anyone alive down there? Over…"
"About damn time you showed Gettysburg!" Shepard said happily back through her omni-tool. "2nd leiutenent Shepard of the 103rd Division, Sir!"
"Good to hear your voice LT," replied the voice. "What's your situation down there?"
Shepard snorted, it could certainly have been worse, "No causualties… except if you include the bastards that started this, Sir."
"Your platoon leader down there?"
"Nope… Just a number of civilians, three asari, two turians, an N7 op, one crab ass krogan, and myself… you know… enjoying some well deserved shore leave."
"Hell of a job, soldier," came the reply. "I'll be surprised if they don't give you the damn Star of Terra for this."
Well this certainly turned out a bit longer than I was expecting... But I still hope you enjoy... once again, thank you all for the continued support! Back to the present next time! :D