The war for Feros

Disclaimer

Starcraft is the property of Blizzard entertainment.

Mass effect is the property of Bioware.

Any elements used in this story are used only in order to create a story for no monetary gain nor do I claim any ownership over them, beyond the names and characters unique to this story.

SSV Normandy - Theseus system

Shepard

Feros was under siege…

They had arrived in the system less than an hour ago and Shepard could see why the whole damn system had gone silent.

Geth.

Like before, they had severed all connections of that one cluster with the rest of the galaxy in order for them to make their play while going unpunished.

And they were witnessing the consequences of their cunning.

"Damn it" was the only thing he could say as their long range sensors and optics showed to them what had become of this distant world on the edge of the Alliance space.

The world was lit aflame by the destroyed settlements of the planet as they appeared like orange torches from the void of space.

Shepard had instructed for the vessel to remain near the edge of the system until he had decided on a course of action.

But in all honesty… he didn't know where to start.

A quick glance around the CIC could reveal that like him, most of the crew were distraught at the mere sight of another attack by the geth on one of their worlds.

Looks of horror were present in the face of most operators and officers while a few showed a stern expression at a repeat of what had become one of the worst tragedies in recent human history…

Most of them had seen the carnage of Eden prime after all.

The sheer number of victims…

Was it the same here?

No.

He wouldn't allow this to repeat again.

And he would make sure that his crew understood this much.

Fight the war now… bury for the lost later.

"There isn't much time to waste…" Shepard began as he broke the spell of despair that was present in his crew "If we are to save Feros then we have to find a way to get rid of the ge-".

"John" navigator Shepard interrupted him as she looked at him with an incredulous expression "Look at that!" She pointed to the massive geth fleet that was bombarding the planet as they spoke "We are one vessel. How are we supposed to get rid of THAT?!".

By destroying every geth with their bare hands if need be.

"We aren't fighting on this navigator Shepard" the Commander replied with a cold but decisive tone "The more we linger in orbit the worse the situation will get planet side" Jane seemed to still be opposed to his decision but still followed protocol. Shepard then turned to the rest of the officers and began to delegate orders "We need to know the situation down there… Grenado, try to find any signs of active resistance to the geth on the surface. Waaberi, see if you can overpass the geth contingency and raise a distress beacon to the Alliance".

Both officers nodded and went to their respective stations to coordinate their subordinates on this task.

Shepard then turned to Jane who stood ready for his orders "We will need to devise a strategy in order to rescue any survivors and fend off any geth" he placed a hand on his chin "What do you propose?".

Jane nodded and turned to her terminal "As far as I can tell, the vast majority of the geth fleet remains in orbit around the remains of the prothean megalopolis. Which is both good and bad for us" the display then focused on one for the planet's landmasses and showed the primary center of geth activity: a massive prothean ruined city that spanned two/thirds of the planet's continent and in which colonial efforts had been greatly focused upon "Good because it means that whatever it is that the geth are after isn't in any of the other landmasses or what remains of the city…".

"And the bad?" Shepard asked the obvious question.

"That we still have a continent sized city to comb through in order to find any survivors or whatever it is the geth want" Jane began before her frustration showed itself "I don't understand. They supposedly attacked Eden prime in order to steal a prothean beacon but nothing like that was discovered here. What could possibly be-".

Jane was interrupted by staff officer Grenado "Commander, there seems to be some signs of survivors near the spire designated as Helios. A geth flotilla seems to be circling near what used to be Exogeni's h-" she paused for some reason "Hold on, something seems to be leaving that region and entering orbit. Patching visuals to holo display".

The hologram of Feros was enhanced until they were overlooking a visual of low orbit and saw a sea of clouds down below as best as they could.

This sea of clouds seemed to be calm save for the plums of smoke that mixed the calm visual of evaporated water with the infernal traces of smoke and cinder.

Then this sea of clouds began to stir as an object began to move through it. At first it only looked like the clouds were being mixed by some sort of air current but then an object breached the clouds like the fin of a shark and began to rise to an impossible size even as it moved at a speed beyond any living organism.

Then the object rose beyond the clouds and made its way towards the heavens.

It was a ship… one that Shepard recognized.

Its massive dark hull shifted upwards like a living organism swimming through the sea and began to travel away from the planet with such an incredible speed that it would have outrun any vessel in the galaxy that was roughly its size.

Part of the geth armada peeled off from the assault and tried to catch up with this vessel as it ignored the Normandy and made its way to the edge of the system to most likely jump towards the Hercules system and the mass relay within it.

Regardless, Shepard was now sure that this assault wasn't a coincidence.

All because of that ship… that damned ship.

It had destroyed another of their worlds and Shepard could do nothing but watch as the one behind this all got away with it.

"John… was that-?" Jane asked with some trepidation in her voice but went silent when she saw the expression that was plastered in her brother's face…

John had a hate filled glare in his face after all.

Hate for the machines that were massacring more of his people. Hate for the damned vessel that had brought the one responsible to this world; And lastly hate for that who was for sure within the confines of that vessel…

Saren.

The traitor had been right in front of him and Shepard had just let him slip through his fingers…

But he couldn't put his crew at risk.

That bastard would have to wait.

"Don't focus on him…" Shepard finally decreed "Was there any port or settlement near the place where the dreadnought left?".

Jane nodded and began to comb through the registry of the alliance settlements in that region.

The colonization of Feros had begun as an archeological expedition at first since the presence of a former prothean megalopolis covering two thirds of the planet screamed of possible relics and lost technologies to be found within its decaying walls.

Unfortunately for the archeological community, the colonization rights for this world had been quickly bought off by corporate interests as they had a stronger claim to the planet since it was their prospectors that had discovered and claimed this world for humanity's corporate interests.

Shepard remembered this little detail from a flier he had once seen in an office of the Alliance's colonial interests.

"There seemed to be two distinct settlements in the region, both within Helios spire… the bigger one is called Farid's gift while there is an outpost higher up called Zhu's hope" Jane showed both settlements in the display and hovered over Farid's gift "This settlement is the bigger one of the two and has shown most potential to establish defensive positions and act as base for research teams if our data banks are anything to go by. If we were to look for survivors then these two locations would be our best bet in this region".

Shepard nodded and overlooked the display. In front of him were two towers that were right next to each other and had been called by the colonists as Helios spire as a whole, in the shorter and most stable of the towers was the settlement of Farid's gift in-between the towers as a sort of middle ground extended from there to the bottom. Meanwhile, Zhu's hope rested higher on the other tower.

Unfortunately for them, the only port that seemed to be more stable of the two was the one near Zhu's hope so they couldn't help lift the attack on Farid's gift without crossing what would most likely be a dead zone.

But they had no choice.

"Navigator Shepard, chart a course for the port at Zhu's hope and engage the stealth drive for our approach" Shepard ordered before he activated his omnitool "Kaidan, have the ground team meet me in the comms as soon as possible".

"Roger that, Commander" Kaidan answered from the lower decks.

Shepard nodded at the response and turned to see that the rest of his crew were working their respective areas.

Now it was his turn to try and coordinate the beginning stages of an all out war.

A few minutes later

Liara

Feros… Liara knew of this world.

The prothean ecumenopolis had long perplexed the community of archeologists back on Thessia as this place was supposed to be a treasure trove of knowledge on that long gone race.

But as this world was far beyond the reach of the republics and its proximity to the terminus systems on this side of the galaxy would place any surveyors or potential colonies at constant risk had deterred any attempts at exploration from her people.

Now she would be one of the first asari to step upon this world after its initial discovery.

But she wouldn't be doing this as an archeologist… or a member of her mother republic.

Think of the bright side, Liara.

Should the planet be cleared of the geth then maybe you could lose some centuries exploring everything this world had to offer after they had found Saren.

She just hoped there weren't any more ancient security measures in this world.

But with her luck there may be one waiting for her somewhere down there.

"Any questions on our mission?" Shepard asked as he had concluded his brief explanation on the details of their next deployment.

All those present were more than prepared for what was to come as they would be landing in a war zone.

This mission would be a difficult one and Liara had just recovered from her wound, she hoped to be able to keep up with everyone after what happened on the last place they visited.

There was only one detail.

"Just a comment, Shepard. But we seem to be one person short this time around" Garrus replied as he crossed his arms and reclined on his chair while looking towards the only empty chair in the room.

Most people in turn shifted uncomfortably at the mention of one of their crewmates' absence as, indeed, one chair remained empty.

Xiltar had been grounded by Shepard for the time being and this had offended the protoss to such a degree that he had completely disappeared after some time.

Apparently, no one had seen him ever since.

All but one person.

The only batarian in their ship had told Shepard that he had appeared in the late night shift and had been helping him with his late night tasks.

Why would he only appear to aid Ekrork in something so… menial?

"He may well be looking for a way to destroy the ship" Sergeant Williams whispered this comment in order to vent out her frustration on the topic but the only thing it managed was to unnerve the team.

"You don't have to worry about him. I think he has enough hatred for me to blow you guys up" Shepard joked while giving her a quick glare and turned to the rest of the team "If you have nothing else to add then be sure to get ready for immediate deployment. Dismissed".

The ground team remained silent for the most part and made their way towards the cargo bay to get their equipment.

All save for Liara.

"Anything to tell, Liara?" Shepard asked as he sighed in exasperation at his current conundrum.

"I just wanted to see if you were alright" Liara began with some trepidation "Given how many things have changed on the ship in just the past few days I wanted to see if you are doing alright".

Shepard seemed to cheer up slightly with her concern but quickly shifted his expression to one of stoic disposition "Don't worry Liara. I know that things have been strange in this journey but that's not something that concerns me that much" Shepard began to move towards the exit while motioning for Liara to follow him.

"Is that so…" Liara followed the Commander as he walked down the stairs of the upper deck and made his way towards his weapons locker "I'm quite surprised that you could adapt so easily to a situation like this one. After all, I haven't seen anyone do exactly what you have accomplished…" Liara saw that Kaidan was gearing up on the opposite side of the room and became slightly self conscious "I mean… being made a spectre, interacting with active prothean technology that is millennia older than our societies, making first contact with an unknown race and uncovering one of the biggest secrets of our galaxy… is too much to take in".

Shepard fainned a smile thanks to her amazement "Well… keeping calm under pressure? I suppose it comes with being a human" being… human? "Actually, it is a good thing that you decided to come with me Liara".

This took Liara by surprise "Why is that?" She asked.

"I… have a favor to ask" Shepard began before he scratched the back of his neck for some reason "I wanted to ask if you could… remain behind".

This… wasn't something she was expecting.

"I… why do you want me to remain here, Commander?" Liara asked the obvious question as this concerned her somewhat.

"Two reasons mainly… maybe three if you caught anything of what happened a couple of days ago" Shepard began to explain what was his reasoning for holding her back.

Liara nodded as she listened to the Commander while trying to recall what occurred a couple of days ago but only one thing came to mind…

Xiltar.

Or could it be something else entirely.

"I mainly want you to remain behind to look out for yourself… as well as our other two companions" Shepard began to explain his reasoning "Dr. Chakwas told me about your overall state and while you are the most stable of the two I wish for you to remain back and take care of Xiltar… at least for now".

Liara was… disappointed.

She may never have an opportunity like this to explore this world and this made her a little apprehensive to the request.

But Shepard was right.

It had not been long since she was discharged from the infirmary and the wound in torso still flared up from time to time.

And the matter of the one that had come almost as bad as her… If the protoss had been avoiding the crew for this long and only interacted with the only individual who wasn't completely loyal to the vessel then this could spell trouble for them.

That or… their friend might just need some help after a bad experience.

"I understand, Shepard" Liara agreed while trying to hide her disappointment "But if you need help from any of us we will be ready".

Shepard smiled and nodded at her.

Liara then left the Commander so he could attend to his own duties and made her way to look for the batarian.

Let's see if he knew where Xiltar was hiding.

SSV Normandy - arriving at port B-27 (Feros)

Wrex

It seemed strange that Wrex wasn't as excited for this particular deployment.

Call him paranoid or whatever you wished but he understood that there was something wrong with this whole situation.

For starters they had remained on the edge of the system for so long and were also unable to contact reinforcements?

Wrex had joined up with Shepard in order to hunt Saren, not to remain idle while he escaped.

The fact that the bastard had already left this rock unpunished coupled with Shepard's decision to not pursue him did not sit right with Wrex.

And on top of it all they were not forced to fight more geth in the ruins of a city for a colony of humans did nothing to better the humor the already pissed krogan.

All of this felt wrong.

But there was nothing he could do about it… at least for now.

At least he would get to pummel any geth that dared to get in their way.

This time around it was only the Commander and part of the ground team that had come to join him on this mission instead of all of them.

But he honestly didn't care that much about those who were missing.

The vessel finally rocked slightly and this indicated to the gathered team that they had arrived at the space port from which they would be operating.

"Alright, people. Let's see if we can find out any survivors" Shepard spoke as the pressure equalization begwn.

"Equalizing internal pressure with exterior atmosphere" said the incorporeal voice of the ship's VI "Logged: the commanding officer is ashore. XO Shepard has the deck" as this was said, the hatch to the outside world was opened and the team left the confines of the Normandy for solid ground in quite a while.

They exited into a run down hangar that was attached to the side of a decrepit skyscraper while it was by some miracle large enough to hold the human frigste within it.

As they walked towards the only exit to the hangar the group was surprised to see that someone was waiting for them over there.

Wrex glanced at the rest of the group with some disinterest but managed to see that some of the others were a little on edge by this fact as they all had come to a stop at the sight of this human.

After a tense moment, Shepard took a step forward and tried to address the other human that now stood in their path but the other person got to speak first.

"We saw your ship approach. Fai Dan wants to speak with you immediately" the mysterious person began as he looked wearily at the whole group.

"Wha- who is Fai Dan?" Shepard replied in turn "Where are you from?".

"Sorry I am colonists from Zhu's hope, Fai Dan is our leader" a sound behind this man seemed to startle him for a moment before he turned towards Shepard and continued saying what he wanted "He needs your help to prepare for the g-".

The man never saw it coming, but a geth trooper had gotten behind him and blew his jaw off with a precise shot from a plasma gun.

The whole group flew into action and moved behind what little cover this part of the hangar could offer them as more geth accompanied this lone trooper and began to launch an assault against their team.

Wrex moved beyond the corpse of the poor bastard that never saw his end come and charged against one of the geth as their whole team had begun to focus fire on their back line.

"Garrus! Tali! Get rid of those rocket troopers" Wrex managed to hear as Shepard commanded more of his companions to focus fire on the geth that he had decided not approach.

The response of the others was swift as a pair of disks was flinged in the direction of these geths and managed to short circuit their motor functions.

Wrex had already eviscerated the geth that he had charged against and began to make short work of the other ones while the rest of the team fought to catch up with him.

After some more fighting, the battle was over and the ambush had been destroyed.

"Well… they know we are here" Garrus said as he approached the krogan and combed the area for more geth.

"Yes" Ashley replied from further behind as she was overlooking the corpse of the murdered human as she sighed "He never saw it coming".

The human seemed slightly disappointed due to what had happened but another human reassured her as he placed a hand on her shoulder.

Shepard on his part moved beyond the corpse and the geth while looking towards the stairs that led down towards whatever place it was that the first human had come from "Let's make sure they can't get to the Normandy. On the double, people!".

The group agreed and began to follow their Commander as they moved through winding paths and decrepit corridors.

Eventually, they came across a massive crevice that held only a single bridge for the group to cross the abyss.

Wrex looked over the edge and saw that there was a gruesome fall waiting for whoever fell down there.

He also thought that he had seen a shimmer in the abyss but it was quick and did not reappear even as he looked at it trough his weapon's sight.

He had remained behind for too long and sprinted back towards the group.

Wrex caught up with the group and remained in the back line to make sure that they had not missed any geth on the way.

It was because of this that the krogan found himself matching pace with the only team member that was lagging behind.

The quarian.

"I thought you would be far more excited to fight geth after what happened on the meteorite" Wrex began as he continued to search for more of the machines.

The quarian girl took longer than necessary to register his question and far more to give him an answer to it "Yes. It's just… thinking that my people are responsible for what happened here, it's just… nevermind".

They continued to walk in silence some more until they found another group of geth and engaged this smaller party.

The group managed to dispatch this ambush far more easily since they were already expecting something like this to get in their way.

But Wrex saw something strange.

He had half expected for some of the geth in their way to be trashed already since he guessed that one particular member of their group would have followed them despite having spoked half of the crew by keeping out of their way and avoiding everybody for a couple of days.

But maybe Wrex was wrong this time around.

And maybe he wasn't the only one that was disappointed that Xiltar had not followed them.

Shepard interrupted Wrex's train of thought as he held up an arm and indicated to the group to stop and quiet down.

Silence reigned for a minute before the group heard what had gotten the Commander's attention in the first place.

Gunfire.

And it was nearby.

"Move it people" Shepard gave the order and the group began to pick up the pace as the firefight got closer and closer while its intensity only grew.

They dealt with one last pair of geth that were guarding an entrance and as they exited this final doorway, they were welcomed by the sight of the war torn sky and the sound of more gunfire coming from beyond some ruble.

The group found themselves in an open terrace that was large enough to hold a landed shuttle and some prefab structures that most have served as accommodations.

Wrex managed to aces the situation fairly quickly and saw that the firefight they had heard was ongoing on the other side of the terrace.

The krogan approached the Commander and tapped him on the shoulder while pointing towards the direction of the active battle.

The Commander nodded and motioned for his team to divide in two groups and flank the shuttle in order to get any sense of what might have gotten into this place.

Wrex went with Shepard's half and right as they turned the corner, they found a group of survivors that was engaged with a geth skirmish that had pinned them behind the last barricades before they breached the outpost on that side.

They had not even realized that some gets had gotten behind them.

The krogan looked at the Commander for orders and the human on his part signaled for him and Alenko to drag the machines out of cover.

Wrex got ready and began to focus a mass effect field right next to the geth position. And as the machines picked from their cover once more to finish off the colonists, the pair of biotics lifted some of the machines from the ground and allowed the remaining colonists to destroy two geth platforms before they were joined by Shepard's squad in their gunfight.

Their intervention tipped the scale in their favor and the colonists managed to repel one final assault from the geth.

The place was allowed some respite after that.

Wrex saw that a pair of humans peeled off from the defender's barricade and approached their team.

It was an old looking human male and a somewhat angry looking human female.

Shepard stepped forward and addressed the incoming pair.

"I'm Commander Shepard of the Alliance. We came here as soon as we saw that your world was under-" Shepard found himself being interrupted by the younger looking human as she seemed to be the one with some military training.

"About time the damn Alliance finally decided to show up" the woman spoke with some arrogance in her voice as she pointed an accusatory finger at the Commander "Where were you when this fucker-".

"Arcelia, please" the other human interceded in his companion's reprimand and tried to calm her down "Sorry about my companions thone, soldier… I am Fai Dan, leader of this group" the old man said as he extended a hand.

Wrex looked intrigued as the Commander ignored the clear challenge from the other human and just decided to speak with the more calm of the two.

"A pleasure. We came to look out for any survivors" Shepard began as he shook the hand of the other human.

"Glad to have you here, Commander. Any help we can get against those machines is more than welcomed" the old man let go of the hand and motioned to the destroyed outputs around them "I bid you welcome to Zhu's hope".

Their stay would prove to be an eventful one.

Afterword

Proud to say that I accomplished a goal of mine to write this chapter in under a day.