Mass Effect is the property of Bioware. 20th Century Fox owns the Alien/Predator franchise.

!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!

Turian headquarters (temporary) Shanxi city, Shanxi

The small command post had been set up in an abandoned building on the outskirts of the human city, near enough to the actual front line that the occasional burst of automatic fire could be hear din the distance, though it seemed that the fighting had died down somewhat. Colonel Macrus' mandibles flared in a turian sigh as he studied the map in front of him. His soldiers had become stuck, again. It wasn't the first time and he strongly suspected that it wouldn't be the last. Initial progress had been good. As his regiment entered the major city of the human colony, they had encountered little to no resistance. Then, the trouble started. Urban combat was arguably the most unpleasant form of warfare imaginable, but it appeared that they had found the one species in the universe that positively loved it. There seemed to be a sniper on every rooftop, an ambush behind every corner; and even if these weren't actually present, his soldiers had to proceed as thought they were there, causing endless delays. So far the regiment had been fighting street to street for two days and they had little to show for their efforts. On top of that, it wasn't just the actions of enemy troops that were causing problems; it was the city itself.
The outlying areas, apparently living quarters of some kind, were singularly uniform. There was little to no variation in the building style, which had resulted in turian patrols wandering aimlessly, trying to find their way through streets that all looked alike. Once they entered the buildings it got worse. In citadel space, centuries of trade, migration, and exchange of ideas had led to a certain level of conformism in architecture and design. You could walk into a building on any given planet and be reasonably sure were everything was and how everything worked. Unfortunately, nobody had informed these humans, who had decided to do things their own way. This resulted in endless delays as turian soldiers wasted their time trying to open doors that weren't even locked and operate elevators that seemed to have their controls in all the wrong places. It had also let to several unnecessary losses when soldiers entered darkened rooms only to be gunned down while they were trying to find a light switch.
That thought brought Macrus back to the defenders themselves. Initially they had seemed like easy prey. Physically they were not particularly impressive and their equipment had seemed incredibly primitive. Unfortunately, first impressions had been wrong. It wasn't so much that the human equipment was inferior, as that it was completely different. For example, they seemed to lack any form of personal element zero technology, which resulted in a complete absence of either personal shields or cloaks. The lack of shields was indeed a disadvantage, however, the lack of cloaking gear had been compensated for. The human soldiers were dressed in drab uniforms, sporting a mix of grey, green and brown colours that allowed them to blend in with their environment. It didn't provide the same level of stealth as a proper infiltrator style cloak, but it was permanent, rather than temporary; could be used by anyone; and certainly had to be a lot cheaper to produce. The body armour itself was not all that impressive, resembling the outfits of asari commandos more than the hard-scale armour of turian soldiers, but that too turned out to have certain advantages. The humans didn't just resemble the asari in facial structure, their bodies seemed to be similar as well. As a result, a human soldier in flexible armour could fold himself into a space that no turian, even without hard-scale armour, could possibly enter. This had led to unpleasant surprises as the advancing troops found themselves under attack from areas that they could not possibly fit into. As to the weapons... His eyes were drawn to an assault rifle lying on a table nearby. It had been picked up by an enterprising soldier and brought to headquarters for inspection, which had led to something of a religious experience for many of the officers.

It was an ongoing joke that the turian hierarchy, arguably the most militaristic government in citadel space, had never been able to provide its soldiers with personal weapons that did them justice. Not that the Phaeston assault rifle was a bad design. It provided its user with a weapon that was reliable, moderately easy to control while using automatic fire, and delivered decent firepower with an acceptable accuracy. It's main drawback was that it was just plain boring. It didn't really excel at anything, it simply worked; no more, no less. Again, the humans clearly designed their weapons to a different standard. Initially, Macrus had been astonished to learn that the humans still used chemically powered rounds in their weapons. Astonishment had quickly given way to a grudging respect as he realized the implications. Where a mass effect based assault rifle had almost infinite ammunition, the chemically powered ones had to be reloaded on a regular basis. However, this was off-set by the fact that they did not overheat. Time and again turian soldiers had to duck into cover while their weapons cooled down, a dangerous situation in the short range combat of urban warfare, where an enemy soldier could quickly close the distance and engage his opponent with hands or talons.
A human soldier who had shot his weapon empty could reload within seconds and keep fighting. The implications were far-reaching. Human soldiers could put out a staggering amount of firepower. Each individual round might be relatively weak -although even that had been at least partially compensated for with specialized ammunition- but the shear volume of fire was overwhelming. To make matters worse, the weapon actually had a secondary option, which allowed a soldier to launch a grenade with high accuracy. So far, no one had been able to fully comprehend how these worked, but they seemed to come in several forms, exploding either on contact, or at a set distance(*). And, just in case this wasn't enough, the rifle carried a blade, attached to the barrel, which allowed the user to engage anyone who had managed to survive both the bullets and the grenades in hand to hand combat. Add it all up, and you had a weapon that seemed to have been designed by a mad salarian scientist, at the request of an asari commando, with input from a krogan battlemaster.

Between the standard problems of urban warfare, and the firepower of the defenders, frontal attacks on human defensive positions were simply an ugly way to commit suicide, and since they knew their own city much better than their opponents, they could position themselves in such a way that any large scale advance by turian troops inevitably ended in just such a frontal assault. Macrus had tried using air support to break through, but it had not worked. A fighter on a strafing run simply wasn't effective against individual soldiers hiding in and around buildings. Unless they were willing to reduce the entire city to rubble the battle would have to be won on the ground and so far that didn't seem likely. Macrus had entered the city with nearly two-thousand soldiers. By now he was down to about seventeen hundred. At least half his casualties would not live to fight again, ever, and he was no closer to actually achieving his objectives than when he started. Nor did any of the other regiments that were trying to push their way into the city seem to have any better luck. It was time to change the game.

"Send in the specialist teams."

Suburbs, Shanxi City

"There it is, first floor, second window from the left!"

Corporal McKinney, colonial marine corps, levelled his M56 and released a short burst into the indicated window. There was no way to tell how effective it had been, but one way or another, whoever had been moving around in that room would be keeping their heads down for a while.

"Anything else?"

"Not right now, corporal. All seems to be clear."

"Good."

He released the front grip of his gun and let it fold back against his body. The M56 smart guns were heavy bastards to move around, even with the help of a body harness. Still, they were marvelous weapons when defending against infantry assaults, especially against an enemy who didn't seem to have an equivalent weapon.
MacKinney shook his head. These aliens were just plain weird. On the one hand, some of their equipment was incredibly advanced, on the other there seemed to be some serious gaps that were just begging to be exploited. For one thing, they seemed to lack any weapon capable of sustained fire relying instead purely on the assault rifle of the individual soldiers. Also, none of them seemed to have heard of the concept of basic camouflage. Of course their body armour, all composed of hard scales, didn't lend itself very well to blending in with the environment, but even so, they could at least have tried, or, even better, covered the whole thing with a ghillie suit. Instead they walked around in gleaming plate armour that advertised their presence to anyone who wanted to look. It didn't help, that they were being weighed down with all kinds of high-end tools, all of which drew power. This meant that they needed an internal power-source, which showed up brightly on an infrared scope.

Still, not all the news was good. The alien armour might have been flashy, it was also tough as hell. Where it usually didn't take more than three or four rounds to dispatch an enemy, the aliens sometimes took twice as much without going down. That could be a major advantage. An alien soldier who took a bullet could actually risk standing still and returning fire, rather than diving for cover; and the marine who shot him had to expose himself to enemy fire to score additional hits. Not a good thing, especially against the high velocity rounds from the alien assault rifles that tore through body armour with little difficulty. Worse, at least some of them seemed to carry some sort of personal shielding, like a miniature form of the shields on space ships and fighter craft. Those took at least half a dozen more bullets before they dropped. Ammunition expenditure was way up from what had been expected, making the smart guns with their large internal magazines even more crucial than normal.
The marines were learning, though. Snipers were going for head shots whenever they could and many of the marines were now using the rifled grenade launchers on their Lacrimae assault rifles in a direct anti-personnel role. It might seem wasteful to use a grenade against a single enemy soldier, but if the alternative was wasting half a magazine worth of bullets, it started to make sense.

The Ghost team crept slowly from building to building, using their cloaks whenever they had to cross open ground. It was a slow, boring process, but sergeant Krylon was happy, or at least as happy as he ever got, which wasn't very much. So far the specialist teams had been kept out of the fighting. There had not been all that many of them available when the fleet had set out and the officers in charge were loath to risk the highly trained soldiers unnecessarily. Now, it had become necessary. The line infantry was hopelessly stuck, unable to advance, and it seemed that they were now satisfied to stay wherever they were and trade the occasional shot with the defenders. Krylon had snorted with contempt when he had heard the news. Hierarchy soldiers stopped cold by a handful alien scum on some backwater planet. Disgraceful! He had barely listened to the briefing that one of the line officers had given his team. People always made excuses for failure. It was time to show these rookies how these things should be done.

"Sergeant! We have spotted them!" One of his soldiers pointed to a low building overlooking the nearby crossroads. "They are occupying the ground floor."

"How many?"

"Six to eight. mainly armed with assault rifles, but there is at least one heavy weapon."

"Sniper rifle?"

"No, sergeant. Heavy automatic fire. A lot of it."

Krylon nodded briefly. That must be the 'heavy firepower' that the conscripts kept whining about. He studied the terrain. The location was awkward. The human position effectively controlled the crossroads. To engage the human soldiers his team would have to cross the street, and their cloaks might time out before they made it all the way across, leaving them exposed.

"Listen up. We'll move about a hundred meters down the street, cross there under cloak, then double back.

-o-o-o-

Corporal, I swear I saw something move, but..."

McKinney hesitated. It was not impossible that the marine had been deceived by his own eyes. The longer you watched, the more likely that imagination started to fill in the blanks, making you see things that just weren't there. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry. There had been no contact with the enemy for nearly an hour and it seemed unlikely that they would just pack up and go home. Sneaking around to take the human defenders in the flank or in the back, well, that seemed to be a far more likely course of action.

"We'll check it out. One man with me. We'll move through the backyards for one block, than turn back to the main street. The rest, keep an eye out and warn me the moment anything happens."

Followed by one of the marines, McKinney snuck out the back door, his heavy gun at the ready.

-o-o-o-

The Ghosts had crossed the street without being spotted and were on their way back. They had re-activated their cloaks and where looking for a place to find cover form which they could make the final assault on the human-occupied building. The sudden appearance of two human marines, coming out of a small alley between the buildings cam as an unpleasant surprise. The rear-most turian, acting more on instinct than thought, typed a quick series of commands into his omnitool, overloading the heavy weapon on the first marine, then, even as he de-cloaked, fired a long burst of automatic fire into the second human. It was a sound tactic: disable one opponent, then kill the second, then go turn to kill the first before he could recover. He had practised it endlessly and used it successfully in combat many times. This time should be no different.

-o-o-o-

McKinney cursed as his computer sight went dark. This was NOT the moment for malfunctions. The next instant his eyes went wide as the air in front of him seemed to ripple and one of the aliens, covered head to toe in heavy armour, suddenly appeared as if out of nowhere. Shots rang out and he felt, more than saw, the marine beside him go down. His finger closed on the trigger.
Whatever they had done to his weapon, the firing mechanism worked just fine. The M56 spat out a stream of bullets, catching the alien in the torso. At this range the body armour was all but useless and the heavy bullets nearly cut him in half. More of the air seemed to move and McKinney swung his smart gun around, bullets flying in all directions

The remaining turians had seen what happened, and had understood what their squad-mate was doing. While the outcome was unexpected, it took only a moment for them to realize that not only had the overload failed to even delay the human from firing, but also that the shear volume of fire coming out of the strange weapon was not something that they should be dealing with at close range. Two of the Ghosts dashed across the streets, their cloaks failing under the impact of several bullets. Their armour held long enough for them to reach cover. Sergeant Krylon was too close to the human. He saw the barrel of the massive gun swing back toward him. Instinctively he activated the jets on his armour, leaping up toward the roof of the building.

McKinney watched as the alien jumped up. "What the hell?" He snarled. "They have jet-packs too?"

He aimed his M56 again, trying to get a clear shot, but the angle worked against him and the alien disappeared over the rooftop. From a hundred meters further down the street another marine, who had been posted on a rooftop to serve as lookout, noticed the turian jumping up onto the roof, saw she had a clear field of fire, raised her assault rifle, and fired a single grenade.

Mass effect technology was marvelous and its application were widespread. However, it came with a downside: it was so useful, that people who had it often forgot to look for alternatives. Armour penetration was one of the areas where mass effect tech truly dominated and the hierarchy had long since stopped the development of alternatives. Sergeant Krylon had never heard of plastic explosives, nor would the acronym HESH (**) have meant anything to him. This oversight in his education was rectified for the last seconds of his life as the 20 mm grenade slammed into his armour.
Rather than penetrating, the explosive shell stuck to the surface and detonated, sending a shock-wave through the hard scale armour that had been designed to stop fast-moving projectiles, not nearby explosions. In doing so it tore numerous small shards off the inside of the plate and send them flying, straight through the sergeant's body. He bled to death before anyone could reach him. When help finally came the soldiers were astonished to find that the sergeant's armour, though scorched and dented, still seemed intact. Only when a medic managed to pry him out of his armour did anyone realize how he had died.

Down on the street McKinney knelt by his fallen squad-mate, but one look was enough to see that nothing could be done. He activated his helmet radio.

"Pass the word. They have some sort of stealth gear. It's like your looking straight through them. Check infrared scopes and motion detectors."

That's why they don't use camouflage paint. He realized. The bastards came up with a fancy trick to make themselves completely invisible and didn't bother with the low-tech solutions anymore.

-o-o-o-

Not everyone reacted equally well to the news. Less than a kilometre from McKinney's position a platoon of local militia, holding a small square, thought they spotted movement. Tired and already on edge from two days of waiting for the enemy to appear, they cut loose with smart guns and assault rifles in an attempt to saturate the area with bullets. It took nearly five minutes before their commanding officer managed to restore a semblance of discipline and buy that time they had shot off nearly a day's worth of ammunition. Desperate to avoid further panic, the lieutenant went from one position to the next in an attempt to reassure his troops. It was brave and might have worked, but also served to make him stand out. A single shot rang out and the lieutenant's head seemed to disappear in a small explosion. It was too much for the soldiers. First one, then another abandoned their positions, running away from the invisible enemy.

On a roof-top nearby a single turian Ghost smirked as he stroked his sniper rifle, waiting for it to cool down. A whole platoon routed with a single shot. It was a feat worthy of the salarian STG. Minutes later a turian infantry unit, moving cautiously through the streets, entered the square and occupied the abandoned position.

A marine unit, called up hastily to close the gap in the defenses, launched a counter attack that nearly drove the turians back, but as they pushed forward a solitary turians soldier suddenly slammed into their midst, propelled by jets on his armour. Two marines were killed instantly and a third succumbed to close range fire from a shotgun. Before the others could react, the turian jumped away, leaving the marines in disarray. It took several minutes before they could sort themselves out. By the time they started moving again they found themselves in a crossfire coming from several remotely operated weapon stations that seemed to float on tiny mass effect fields. The fire from the turrets forced the marines into cover, slowing their advance. Again a turian jumped into their midst. This time the marines were prepared. Even so, one died and two more were wounded before the turian was brought down by a bayonet thrust between the plates of his armour. The delays had allowed the turians to regroup and take up positions in several buildings, turning the square itself into an open firing range without cover. The marines having managed to secure at least one of the square's corners took cover and called for armour support, only to be told that none could be provided because the Grizzlys where too vulnerable to air attack. Both sides kept exchanging fire until nightfall without any measurable success.

Shanxi, low orbit

Lieutenant Saren Arterius could feel the rush of excitement as his shuttle descended through the atmosphere. Finally, finally, he would be able to engage this new upstart race in combat. Finally he would be able to prove his worth.
Word had come that the specialist teams were finally achieving some success in penetrating the human defences in and around their capital city and Saren had fully expected to join them there. Instead, the unit to which he had been assigned had been diverted to a new target. At some distance from the city was a massive industrial complex. Although its exact purpose was so far unknown, it was clearly a major economic asset and his brother Desolas had ordered that it should be taken intact, a bargaining chip in the negotiations that would inevitably follow the conquest of the human colony. There would be no orbital bombardments. Instead, a regiment of soldiers was standing ready to enter the compound and take it one building at a time, and Saren and his team would be ready to implement the same type of tactics that had proven successful in the city.

No-one aboard the turian shuttle was aware that they had picked up a companion. In fact, the turians would most likely have ridiculed the notion that such a thing was possible. Making a cloak to hide a single soldier was already a challenge. A cloak to hide a complete shuttle? Ridiculous. The crew of the second shuttle shared Saren's excitement though. Stalking your prey was all well and good, but nothing could match the thrill that came with actual combat.

Geneva, Earth

It had started within hours of the first broadcast. A large group of protesters was marching through the city streets, they had done so day after day for the last few weeks, calling for peace, love, and coexistence with 'our alien brothers' and denouncing the terrible aggression of the United Systems Military which simply had to be responsible for the disaster that had overtaken humanity. Apparently the peace marchers hadn't got the news that things had changed. They certainly seemed sadly unprepared when, halfway through their daily parade, they encountered another demonstration.
This one was of a slightly different kind and certainly fuelled by a different attitude. Their signs looked somewhat rough and unfinished, as though they had been slapped together by people in a hurry. This didn't detract from the message and the peace marchers were horrified to find their path blocked by street-wide banners informing them that 'POLITICS = TREASON' and 'GOOD ALIENS = DEAD ALIENS' and similar sentiments.

It was too much to hope that two groups with such diverging opinions would be able to work things out peacefully and in any case the newcomers seemed singularly uninterested in talking. Instead, they simply charged, swinging their signs around like battle-axes. The melee lasted for nearly fifteen minutes, mainly due to the fact that there were just too many people in too small a space to easily run away. By the time that the riot police appeared the streets were littered with bodies, both wounded and dead. Those demonstrators who were still standing took one look at the police and decided that the servants of law and order just had to be guilty of something; either that, or they were simply having too much fun to stop the party now. The result was a second battle, this one rather less one-sided. It lasted through the evening and most of the night, flaring up again and again as isolated groups of protestors rallied in side-streets. By then the political part of the fight had been largely forgotten, but that hardly mattered as people simply took out the fears and frustrations, that had been building up for weeks, on whatever target they could find. By the time the fighting finally died down, more than a hundred people had been killed and thousands more were wounded. Property damage from burned out vehicles and smashed store-fronts could not even be estimated. Meanwhile the unrest had spread to other cities with reports of mass riots coming in from all over the planet.

From the local military headquarters general Spears watched in silence as events unfolded. It had certainly been entertaining to watch as some of his most vocal opponents had their skulls beaten in with their own signs, but this situation could not continue. Something had to be done. Unfortunately, his aides seemed unable to reach a consensus on what

"General, we have to stop this!" One of them said, for what must have been the thousandth time. "We have to put boots on the ground in the major cities. The chaos is spreading. If we don't seize control now, it may take months before any kind of policy can be implemented."

"I know," Spears said. "But we cannot take control by force of arms. We'd lose the public support that we've just gained and it would lead to a constitutional crisis."

"Then what can we do?"

Spears smiled. He had had plenty of time to think on what could be done to channel the rage that would inevitably follow the news of Hammerstein's betrayal.

"Get me the directors of every military band and orchestra we have in this city: marines, navy, militia, all of them. I want them in my office within the hour. And prepare a communication centre to make calls around the globe. We have a lot of work to do."

!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!

(*) The latter actually works by counting the number of rotations as the grenade flies to the target. This option is available today.

(**) High Explosive Squash Head. Also known as HEP (High Explosive, Plastic) It works as described here and has been a favourite anti-tank round of the British army for a long time.

A/N Next time, the assault on Exogeni