I hope y'all like this chapter. Big shout out to Art, thanks for the feedback.
As usual, please review and comment. Let me know what you think.
Luke had his back to the crate as the rifle and pistol fire surrounded him. Claire was pinned like him behind a support column less than 5 meters away but if he tried to get to her, he would get gunned down for sure. The geth troopers and juggernauts were pouring the fire down on them. Garrus had gotten a few rounds off with his sniper rifle but the juggernauts' shields were too strong and recharged before he could fire again. Wrex was on the floor next to Garrus while his body healed. The krogan had charged in to the main room and had taken a direct hit from a prime's rocket launcher. Wrex claimed that his pride hurt worse than the wound (and perhaps with a redundant nervous system it did) but the wound still looked bad.
Luke started thinking about how to lower the shields of the juggernauts long enough for Garrus to get a shot at those damned flashlight heads of theirs but everything he ran through his head ended with him, Garrus, or Claire dead on the floor.
"Claire, we're in trouble! We need to kill these things, accomplish our mission and go home…although at this moment we might just want to skip straight to the go home and come back with…you know…the whole crew." Luke spoke into the radio.
"Come on Luke. I know this looks bad but we can figure this out. We just need something to give us enough time to cross the room. If we can get behind them, then we can pressure them enough that Garrus can get a couple shots off."
"I like it, but how are we going to get someone across? You two barely made it to that crate and column." Garrus asked. Luke looked around and his eyes went wide.
"Wrex, I need your shield batteries. Claire, do you have your shield boost program?" Luke shouted. Wrex pointed to his back for Garrus to removed the batteries. Claire opened her onmi-tool and brought up the program.
"What do you have in mind?" Claire asked.
"There was a theory that if you put enough energy into a shield generator that you could make a nearly in pregnable barrier like a ship's kinetic barrier. If Wrex's batteries have enough juice left in them and I can use your shield boost program to force all their energy into the shields at once, then maybe my shield will hold up against that amount of fire and I could get across the room." Claire looked over at her brother as Wrex slide the batteries across the floor. Luke caught them and scanned them with his omni-tool.
"Luke, are you 100% sure about this?" Claire asked.
"Yes…no…possibly…50/50…" Luke said bringing up his omni-tool and scanning his sister's program. Claire's face turned to a worried scowl and Luke started typing away on his omni-tool.
"That is not very reassuring." Claire scolded. Luke smiled as he linked the batteries to his own generator and pulled his pistol.
"I'll tell you what, I'll be more reassuring if I live through this." Luke grinned at his sister as she lifted her hands in defeat. Even in a life or death situation, Luke was joking. Maybe he was more like Joker than she wanted to admit.
"Alright, give me some covering fire on three." Luke breathed slow and looked up at Garrus then back over to his sister. "One…" They raised their weapons. "Two…"
"Wait, wait, wait…is it one, two, three, then shoot? Or do we shoot on three?" Claire asked. Luke turned to look at his sister. There was no smile on her face.
"Oh for the love of… On three! One…two…THREE!" Luke activated the program and the shield went up. Even the sound seemed to lessen as he ran forward. The shots hit the shields and he could feel it push him back slightly. Suddenly, a rocket connected to his side and hurled him into the air. Though he continued forward, the shot had sent him spiraling into a stack of crates. Luke crashed through the crates and landed hard on the floor. He was pretty sure he had even bounced.
As he settled on the floor behind the crates, Luke let out a breath. The shields had worked…for the most part. He was in cover and on the opposite side of the room but his shields were completely drained. They would need almost a minute to recover.
"Luke! Luke, are you alright?" Claire called over the radio.
"Yeah, just feeling the whiplash." Luke said stretching his neck. "Look, I'm stranded here for the moment. That blast drained my shield and I'm going to need a minute to get them back on line."
"Are you telling me you have no shields at all right now?" Claire snapped.
"Yeah, Claire. That's what I'm saying." Luke could hear Claire sigh. She might as well have been standing right in front of him rolling her eyes.
Luke fired blindly around the corner of the crate until his pistol overheated and started venting. He sighed and decided to gamble. The brought up his omni-tool and diverted all the power his suit had in reserve plus what was controlling the suits temperature control system and even the waste disposal system to his shields he focused the power on his upper body from the bottom of his chest plate and up including his arms.
"That might last me until my main shields are back on line." Luke retrieved his pistol and stood up peering out over the top of the crates. There were five geth troopers in cover against Claire and Garrus, but they were completely exposed for him. He fired in a calm controlled manner taking the few milliseconds it took to take a careful aim at each target and eliminate them. Each shot ruptured the chest cavity of the geth spraying white coolant fluid all over the walls and floor. All that were left were the two juggernauts on the balcony upstairs.
"Luke, are your shields back up?" Garrus asked.
"To avoid bodily harm at the hands of my sister, I'm going to say 'no comment'." Luke responded.
"Luke!" Claire snarled. "You're telling me you are fighting without shields?"
"Against geth? Are you nuts? Of course I have shields…on my arms, chest, and head." Luke made sure to mumble the last part before clearing his throat.
"Remind me to whoop your ass later." Claire snapped. Luke laughed and reset his generators back to normal.
"Alright, that reduced the cross fire enough that we should be able to take those juggernauts down. I'll throw a grenade, Garrus takes the shot, and Luke keeps his head down. Got it?" Claire said. Luke leaned back against the wall behind him allowing him a small view of the doorway leading to the stairs.
"Got it." Garrus answered.
"Yeah, I'll just be over here…you know…twiddling my thumbs." Luke thought he heard his sister giggle at the remark but it very well could have been a sigh.
"Okay Garrus, on three. One, two, three." Luke heard the juggernauts open fire and then the explosion. Garrus' rifle sounded twice in close repetition and there was silence. Luke heard his shields charge and deploy again and he slowly stood.
"Wrex, how are you feeling buddy?" Luke asked as he trotted back across the room.
"Like I got hit by a rocket, but I'm good." The krogan responded. Luke stopped seeing his squad mate turn the corner. His armor was in pieces but there was enough omni-gel over the holes to give him the time to get back to the Normandy.
"You look good Wrex." Luke said patting him on the shoulder.
"Better than you, as usual." The alien joked smacking Luke on the back. Thanks to his armor, Luke didn't feel a thing but the heavy hand did knock him forward.
The two laughed until they saw a transmission on a geth monitor. It was a vid of a quarian singing that quickly cut off. Luke sprinted over to the console and linked his omni-tool to it. He triggered a data dump like he use to back with C-Sec. The data would be raw and would probably take years to decode considering it was geth code, but it was intelligence the Alliance or the Council could use. The data dump was completed in less than three seconds and Luke pulled an OSD from his pack and transcribed the data to it from his omni-tool.
"What did you get?" Claire asked stepping to her brother's side.
"No idea, but its intel so maybe it will help somewhere down the line." Luke said slipping the OSD into a small storage pocket in the thigh pad of his armor.
"Let's have a look around. See if there is anything else that might prove useful, then we'll get out of here and head back to the ship." The group nodded and began their search. Luke leaned against the wall and looked at the geth he had shot.
Their bodies were motionless. Holes riddled their entire bodies. The white liquid slowly turned red in his eyes and the cold metal melted to flesh. The dark flashlight heads twisted into faces. Luke closed his eyes and covered his ears. He could feel tears pushing against the insides of his eyelids trying to escape on to his cheeks but he refused to let them out.
It was the quiet that was difficult, the silence of the dead. They always became what he feared most; what he still had nightmares of.
"Luke? Luke, what's wrong?" Claire's voice ripped through the silence and opened Luke's eyes again.
"Nothing…nothing…I'm fine." Luke said wiping his face and sniffing. He wet his lips and started for the door.
"Luke wait! I know something is wrong. I'm not concerned just because I'm your sister, I'm also your commander. Now tell me what's up with you?" Claire said grabbing his shoulder and turning him to face her. She could see the sorrow behind his eyes. She had seen that look before…a long time ago…in the mirror. "It's Mindoir isn't it."
"Claire, don't. Don't try to make me talk about it."
"I can't help if I don't know." Claire replied gripping her brother's shoulders so he could not turn away. Luke ripped himself from her grasp and pushed her away.
"It's not your job to fix everything in the galaxy! Bad shit happens and people have to deal with it. So I went through a trauma, so did you. So did Mal. So did just about everyone in the galaxy at some point in time. But I am dealing with it so lay off!"
"Luke, if you would just tell me what happened, maybe I would understand." Claire was staying calm even with Luke screaming in her face.
"No one understands. No one can. I'm not just going to spill my guts because you ask. It is my burden and I'll carry it…" Luke turned to leave and closed his eyes. "I always have."
Claire watched her brother head back to the entrance of the facility. She didn't understand why Luke was so tight lipped about what happened. When she was placed in the foster system so sought out a council to talk to about what she had seen. Of course, she and Mallory had escaped less than two hours after their parents had died. They had been found by a marine unit that was trying to help evacuate the colonists and hold the line against the slavers. The Alliance psychologist had explained that that was why Claire had wanted to join the military. She wanted to save people and keep them from harm like she was.
"He has been like that as long as I have known him." Garrus said stepping to Claire's side. She looked over at the turian with a slight smile. She liked having him close. She could not explain it. He just made her feel safe.
"Not always. He use to sneak into Mallory's and my room just to talk to us at night. Sometimes about the boys we liked, others about the girls he had a crush on. Sometimes it was just to talk to us about what he did that day. He was never to proud to ask us for advice and help." Claire crossed arms and leaned against a crate.
"I don't think it is pride that is keeping him quiet now." Garrus remarked. Claire looked over at him. Garrus was us to the way Luke was now. Maybe he would understand what made him the way he was.
"Do you know anything about what happened to him?" Claire asked.
"Only what was in his file. Most of it was redacted." Claire stood up again and turned to face Garrus.
"A civilian's file was redacted? Is that common for C-Sec officers?"
"For an officer like Luke, a redacted file is pretty common. Luke had a lot of undercover assignments against criminals that had a connection to dirty officers in C-Sec. All I know for sure is that there is a sealed file that is attached to Luke's C-Sec file."
"How sealed?" Claire asked taking a step closer.
"Nothing a specter couldn't get a hold of." Garrus said with a smirk.