Chapter 36 – Until Dawn
March 14th, 2211, 2231 hours —New Thebes—Anhur National Bank Complex – Top Floor
Data Corruption… Automatic Reconstruction Failed…Data Corruption….Profile Reconstruction Required…
(Team Commander Darken Krystos – Project Transcendence)
Mission Objective – Asset Retrieval
Darken stood like a tall, dark sentinel. He was calm and focused, watching quietly, his talons gripped tightly around a heavily-modified Phaeston. His black combat armor made him nearly indistinguishable from the shadows that pooled in the corner from which he had chosen to situate himself. Two of his other turian commandos had each picked another corner of the room, weapons aimed to catch whoever exited the elevator or the stairs in a deadly cross-fire. Even from across the room, Darken could sense the impatience radiating from his turians.
"Tor, how much longer?" he rasped.
A smaller turian commando was crouched in front of a massive metal door that dominated an entire side of the room. A service panel lay torn open in front of him and a datapad was connected to the inner wiring within. The commando was tapping furiously at the pad, his helmet was off and his mandibles were twitching in frustration.
Toran Bryik let out a pointed hiss, "Whoever's on the other side of this door isn't a novice. He's shutting down my every attempt."
"We should have brought explosives," Cassius Barro grunted. The other male turian commando knew better than to break his position, but he never could pass up a chance to add his two credits.
Darken ignored the outspoken turian and tilted his head towards his frustrated subordinate. "Can you do it?" Darken asked.
Toran sighed and placed his head gently onto the cold, steel door. "I'm not sure, commander. If Valon were here, maybe he could do it."
The last turian commando was looking out the window and down into the city proper. "Commander, the gunfire outside the mall has stopped. I can see ten – no, twelve – armored figures crossing the street," reported Lantra Medinus. She tracked the tiny shapes down on the street for a few more moments with the scope of her Phaeston before they disappeared into the mall below them. "Humanoid I think – either batarian or human. Armored. Too dark to tell if they are Suns or Alliance."
"We can leave now, call in a drone-strike once we're out of range," offered Cassius. "Our standing orders are kill-or-capture, right commander?"
"We have maybe fifteen minutes before the intruders switch on the power to the elevators," Lantra added. The female turian vaulted back behind a table and resumed taking aim at the elevator.
Darken cursed quietly. Severus was depending on him to either terminate or return the escaped subject. If the subject managed to find himself in the hands of the Spectres, Project Transcendence would be in serious jeopardy. The subject would tell them what he had learned, the Spectres would tell the Council and then Mordred and her fellow believers would find themselves racing to create a viable revival procedure with a fraction of the time that they would have liked.
Darken would not fail Severus.
"Your orders, commander?" Lantra asked.
The bank vault was designed to withstand missile strikes. Darken could not risk it.
"Can you do it, Toran?" Darken asked one final time.
The smaller turian turned and looked resolutely at each his fellow commandos. He then pulled several grenades from his belt and set them down beside himself. "Buy me as much time as you can."
Cassius sighed and checked the charge on his Phaeston. "I was afraid you'd say that."
"We hold until we can't hold out any longer, then we leave. We will call in the strike as a last resort," decided Darken. "Toran, do your best. The rest of you, watch the elevators. We may be facing Spectres, and they are not to be underestimated."
"Spirits, if I'm going to die, at least I'll die fighting Cade Kitiarian," Cassius chuckled.
"Die for the cause," Lantra exclaimed.
"Die for the cause," both Cassius and Toran echoed reflexively.
Darken nodded grimly and prepared himself for a fight. Neither Darken nor his commandos had been there when Severus had fought the Spectres aboard the human ship, the SSV Hippocrates. However, Darken had listened to Severus' account of his fight with the legendary Cade Kitiarian as well as the blue-eyed biotic human Spectre.
In the days that followed, Severus had his commandos study all of Kitiarian's mission logs and combat footage back from the young turian's days as a Turian Ghost and from his time in the Blackwatch – even the mission where Cade had saved the Primarch and shot his own father. No official recordings existed of Kitiarian's time during the Spectres, but raw footage from slavers, mercenaries and pirates which had made their way onto the extranet painted a portrait of a vicious fighter and a peerless marksman – even among turians.
That footage often saw Kitiarian fighting alongside two other human Spectres. The sheer synergy that they displayed would have put even the most seasoned turian Blackwatch team to shame. Individually, they were each a force to be reckoned with – together, the three had been the scourge of the Terminus Systems these last five years, cutting a bloody swath through the criminal underworld.
But Darken and his commandos had been through the crucible several times in the last decade. Before Severus had committed them to the Project, they had served as elite, private shocktroopers and in counter-terrorism on dozens of non-Council worlds. Cassius, Toran and Lantra were each veterans of more than a dozen campaigns, and Darken himself had been fighting for nearly thirty years. When Severus had asked his old friend and mentor to bring back the escaped subject, Darken had not hesitated when he has asked his three other commandos to accompany him. He trusted each of them with his life.
"Stand firm and remember—Kitiarian is good, but he's no Garrus Vakarian," Darken deadpanned.
Cassius snorted loudly and even Lantra looked surprised for once.
"Did you just crack a joke, commander?" Lantra asked. Darken's impenetrable stoicism and icy-facade was legendary amongst the commandos. Both Darken and Severus had a reputation for being completely void of emotion – even in the heat of combat. They were model turians to the core. None of the commandos had ever heard Darken attempt anything even remotely close to humor.
The dry attempt at humor made Toran stop his attempt to hack the door and peer incredulously at his superior officer. "If you are trying to cheer me up, commander, let me tell you that you are failing. Spectacularly."
"Spirits, we are definitely going to die tonight," Cassius laughed sadly.
March 14th, 2211, 2231 hours —New Thebes—Anhur National Bank Complex – Main Entrance
Data Corruption… Automatic Reconstruction Failed…Data Corruption….Profile Reconstruction Required…
(Spectre Operative 04272182-Cloud)
Mission Objective – Asset Retrieval
"I've got a bad feeling about this…" Jay whispered over the channel. The short Jaeger was already high strung under normal circumstances. His nervousness had risen by an order of a couple of magnitudes after having been nearly torn apart by those weird, new creatures in the parking garage.
We had just entered the complex. It was quiet and dark. There were no emergency lights and we couldn't see anything beyond what our tac-lights on our rifles revealed.
"You've always got a bad feeling about something," Rake scoffed.
"Gunny, were you there when those armored-dog things were trying to tear us apart? Or were you too busy being senile?" Jay snapped back.
"I was there… I was there when you tripped like a goddamn school-boy and basically handed them an invitation to fuck us up!"
"Chasers… we're calling them Chasers," Fly stated. The matter-of-fact way in which he had named them brooked no disagreement. Those creatures that had attacked us in the parking garage had been quadrupedal former humans. They were quiet, fast and sported a frightening array of sharp teeth and claws that were common characteristics of these creatures. Worse, all of them had been wearing armor containing tactical cloaks when they had been changed, allowing them to move unseen.
"Stay quiet," Accer commanded. The first lieutenant swept his N7 Hurricane back and forth across the room, scanning wearily for the tell-tale shimmer of the Chaser's tactical cloaks.
Aside from the newer jaegers, everyone else had come down from all the adrenaline off the fight. We had entered the massive complex where Anhur's National Bank was housed on the top level. The room we were in seemed to be a sort of atrium. The complex itself seemed to resemble one giant mall. Even in the darkness I could make out stores lining each side of a trio of diverging halls or passageways branching off from the atrium, with tiny benches in the middle of said halls where people could sit. One hall led right, one led left, and another led straight ahead. They were wide halls with high ceilings– the sort you'd see in any average shopping complex you'd find on a well-developed and colonized world. A massive fountain dominated the edge of the atrium.
Galen and Rayla had weapons poised down one massive hallway. They had each taken cover behind a pair of large flowerpots. The asari commando must have spent time with a turian force at some point, because I could see her sending subtle hand gestures to Galen that the young turian nodded at.
Percival, Accer and Teewin kept watch down another hallway. The three Systems Alliance veterans began to engage in what I recognized to be one of the sweeping patterns typically taught to Systems Alliance marines. Their weapon-lamps revealed bits and pieces that when, pieced together, told a story of panic and bloody carnage wrought by the sudden arrival of the creatures.
I moved up towards the front of the group and checked my bio-scanners. The scans showed nothing besides from my team alive in the immediate vicinity. As dark as it was though, I could notice large brown and blue splotches dotting the floor and bits of matter and cloth. Abandoned shopping bags and clothes littered the ground. This place must have been filled with civilians when the outbreak started in the city.
I was glad we all had our helmets on. It probably smelled like death in here.
Oddly enough, it triggered happier memories. Happy not because of their content, which was still pretty dismal by all standards, but happy because they were memories from a time when I was still too young to realize the kind of future a child like me was destined to have. The dark building brought back memories of the times Elektra and I would break into old, abandoned buildings when we were kids – either to hide from angry storekeepers we had stolen from or peace officers who were chasing us, to take shelter from a gang of older, bigger kids or perhaps to simply find a place to sleep or weather out a storm.
Elektra nudged me gently with her elbow and gave me a knowing look, almost as if she could read my mind. She used to be so scared of breaking in and of the darkness within those buildings, arguing that there could be monsters hiding within, waiting to get us. She had remained scared until I had turned it into a sort of game. We would pretend to be Systems Alliance soldiers or Spectres on a mission, or explorers mapping out a long-abandoned planet. It was too bad those times were long gone. It was too bad that both of us learned that there were actual monsters now.
Cade strode up beside me and held up his omni-tool. "Camilla sent me a map. Looks like the majority of the complex is only six floors, with the exception of the tower the bank is situated on. The main elevators are straight ahead."
My friend looked around us. "A lot of blood, but no bodies…"
I turned to the turian and shrugged. "Let's not stick around too long then."
"This place shakes my scales. This Baird guy better have some solid intel," growled Cade.
One of the Jaegers padded up behind us. "Sir," ventured Soph. "None of the emergency lights are working. Someone must have shut down both the main and the back-up generator."
I frowned. "We're not going to be able to take the elevators directly up, are we?"
"No, we're going to need to restart one of the generators – preferably the back-up, and preferably re-route the power only to the elevators. Then, we're also going to need to reset the elevator from wherever their central hub is," the tech specialist said.
"Great, our first trip to the park as a team and we're already splitting up…" Cade groaned.
I ignored him and focused on the specialist, "Can you restart the generator and handle the re-route? The rest of us can handle flipping a switch."
"You wound me," scoffed Soph. "Granted, it's not easy to shut down a back-up generator as well. Whoever did this had some decent technical knowledge. It's possible they may have tampered with the generator."
Cade grinned beneath his helmet, "We could always take the stairs…"
"We are not taking the fucking stairs, Kitiarian!" Elektra hissed over the radio.
I ignored them both and instead turned my head towards Percival, who was still guarding one of the hallways. "You catch all that, Perc?
"Power, elevator, grab the guy... Just like the simulations,"
"What is he talking about?" asked Elektra.
I let out a light grin beneath my own helmet "You wouldn't get it."
I signaled for the team to move. We arranged ourselves into our de facto formation, with Cade, Elektra and I at the front, Percival and the Jaegers at the back, and the specialists on the flanks.
Many of the stores on either side of us had broken windows and smashed shelves. Much of the merchandise had been knocked askew. Some of the walls were pock-marked with bullet-holes. Seemed like some of the complex guards had to have been armed.
Suddenly there was a loud crunch, prompting all of us to halt and scan our surroundings with alarm.
"Sorry," Jay shrugged sheepishly. The Jaeger had accidentally stepped on a pile of glass shards.
"Goddamn idiot…" Rake sighed.
"Those Chasers are attracted to sound, so let's please keep it as quiet as we can," ordered Percival. I could always count on my friend to be as professional as they came.
"And they can stealth…" muttered Teewin. The Gunnery Chief had his Revenant clutched tightly in his massive hands, training it back and forth on all the possible points we could potentially be ambushed from.
We resumed our wary march and eventually came upon the elevators and the scene of an absolute massacre. Jay crossed himself quickly at the site of all that carnage and Soph gagged over the comms.
There were bodies everywhere. Many of them were civilians, some of them were Corpsers. The elevators themselves sat in the middle of a large room or lobby. Around them were a bunch of make-shift barricades. Several barely-intact but armored corpses with terrible wounds were shrewn about them, some with weapons in their dead hands.
I picked my way respectfully across the ghastly mass-grave. We'd seen a lot of bad things during our tours in the Terminus Systems – torture… murder… enslavement... Mass executions were the worse. It didn't happen often since a civilian population was usually more profitable alive than dead, but once in a while some Blood Pack warlord would fail to keep a tight rein on his Vorcha, or a small civil war might break out between rival gangs and each would employ scorched earth, mass attrition tactics against each other and the civilians within their respective territories.
Rayla knelt down before the body of what had been another asari, perhaps in her late first century. "Many of these civilians died from gunfire…." the asari commando pointed out.
The old Krogan strode up to the nearest of the armored corpses and jabbed at it with the barrel of his Spitfire. "Paramilitary force…" Garm grunted.
"Probably a security force hired by the banking corporation's owners. They must have been sent here to protect their interest," Cade ventured. He peered down at the armor the bodies were wearing. "Well-funded by the looks of it."
Percival glanced at the weapons the dead guards were holding, then at the civilian corpses closest to them. "Civilians must have made a run at them, thinking they could help. Guards might have panicked, not understanding how the infection spreads, and opened fire."
"Humpin' Pyjacks… nothing worse than a coward with a gun…" Garm growled.
I was inclined to agree with the grizzled krogan. Nothing we could do now though.
"Percival, can you take Soph and Rake and go restart the generators? Elektra, Cade and I will find the control room and restart the elevators while the rest of you guard this spot. Accer, you're in charge," I ordered.
"Permission to search for survivors?" Accer asked.
I pondered it for a moment. "Don't do it alone. And keep it quiet."
Accer nodded. The young biotic jerked his head towards Galen and Rayla and then down another hallway. The two specialists nodded in return and departed immediately.
I looked back at Percival. "Keep in touch."
"Schematics say they're in the basement. Shouldn't take too long," my friend replied.
"The basement? Great…" muttered Rake.
Garm situated himself squarely in front of the elevator doors and began a careful sweep with his spitfire. The Jaegers who were assigned to guard the elevator took cover behind what was left of the makeshift barricades and joined him. Percival and his team headed down another pathway while Cade, Elektra and I turned down a third.
We passed a few more deserted shops. Cade glanced wistfully into an ice cream shop. His tac-lamp revealed a melted sundae sitting ontop of a small, circular table. A children's backpack hung off the back of the chair, a small pool of blood staining the seat.
"Why… why would the saboteurs do this? Why would they start another outbreak after seeing what the last one did?"
Elektra gave a passing glance at the scene. Her knuckles tightened against the barrel of her N7 Hurricane.
"You've been a Spectre for six years. Monsters aren't rational. That's what makes them monsters," she replied.
I said nothing. My omni-tool said that the security control room was another eighty meters down the hall. Thankfully, the complex seemed deserted. I didn't fancy fighting through an eighty-meter gauntlet of those creatures.
My head suddenly spiked with pain and I could suddenly hear a faint whisper. It was coming from a store to my left – a children's clothing store.
I paused in place and cocked my head. The spike of pain quickly dropped to a low, dull throb.
"Cloud, what is it?" Elektra asked. Cade stopped as well, the barrel of his Vindicator dropped as he regarded me with concern.
"Do you hear that?" I asked.
My friends grew silent and scanned around. "No, nothing," Elektra replied.
"You two go on ahead. I want to check something out." I told them. The whispering grew louder. It had to be in my head, there was no way they couldn't hear it.
Cade shifted nervously in place. "I don't think that's a good idea…"
"Just trust me," I urged. "I'll catch up with you, I'll only be a minute."
My friend shrugged. "Don't be long," he replied. My friend resumed his quiet walk towards the control room. Elektra lingered behind for a moment longer before following him.
I sighed, then turned to the children's store. My hands were sweating inside my gloves. I loosened my twin knives in their sheaths and double-checked the status of the ammo block in the Avenger that Captain Murgen had lent me.
The inside of the children's store was a mess. The aisles were lined with child-sized mannequins of all species. Some had missing arms or legs, others were knocked over. All of them were dressed in the latest Outer Rim fashions – perhaps six months behind the latest trends in the core planets.
The whispering got worse as did the pain in my head. I gingerly stepped over a fallen mannequin, panning my rifle back and forth. The tactical lamp did little to cut through the darkness. It was almost as if the store was filled with a heavy, black fog.
A dark blur suddenly cut across the corner of my field of vision. I instinctively shifted my aim towards the movement, waiting for it to show. Nothing. The whispering voices in my head suddenly grew louder.
Save us…
Another blur, this time racing between the aisles. I moved to track it but it was too fast. I couldn't quite make out its shape.
The dull throb that had been festering in the base of my skull began to claw its way back throughout the rest of my head, causing me to grit my teeth in pain. I blinked back the tears that had begun to form beneath my eyelids and took a few steps deeper into the store. My hands began to flare with a dim, blue light. The stress must have triggered my biotic implants somehow.
My pulse began to quicken and my breaths grew heavier and heavier. I was about to step over a fallen mannequin when a particularly bad spike of pain made me completely close my eyes. I couldn't stop myself. My Avenger fell from my fingers and clattered to the floor as I grabbed my head in pain. I doubled over, willing it all to go away.
When I opened my eyes again, it was to the sight of bodies. Where the mannequins had lay scattered, they were now the bodies of an alien species. They were humanoid and had bright-blue skin – much like an asari. The males were large, each having a series of bony headplates which swept upwards from their foreheads. The females lacked this feature, and instead had very human-like faces. Both sexes had horns of different shapes and designs. The aisle of the store had disappeared to become a shiny, silver road.
I grabbed my helmet and pulled it off, letting it fall to the ground beside me. I then looked up. Instead of the ceiling there was now a brilliantly-red sky – almost as if the sky was on fire. It was filled with massive, dark shapes with long, grasping fingers. Several of them spat ruby-red lances of light at cities off in the distance.
The sound of a terrible horn filled the sky and I closed my eyes and moaned in pain. When I opened them again, there was a small girl standing in front of me. She was clearly a member of the species which lay dead around me. I recognized her. I had dreamt of her before.
"You…" I whispered.
"Me, Tar'elessar…" the child replied.
When I had dreamt of her in the past, she had spoken in a beautiful language that I did not understand. Only in my last dream of her had she actually spoken to me in a language that I could somehow understand.
"I've been called that before…" I said.
"It is what you are," the child said.
"Who are you?"
The child smiled sadly, a forlorn twinkle in her eyes. "I am one whom this galaxy has long since forgotten…"
My mind cast back to when I had last seen her. Memories flashed before my eyes. There was a beautiful city of tall, metallic spires on fire. The dead filled the streets. The survivors ran and hid while monstrosities hunted them. There were dark, cold hands in the sky and that terrible, terrible horn. I had carried the child through the city.
One memory stood out, that of the body of a dead alien female. The child had ran to it – had pressed her face into the body, sobbing.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save your mother…" I told the child. In saying those words, I couldn't help but recall another child who had lost his mother – a person who I had not been strong enough to save.
My next memory of the dream was that of an approaching monstrosity. I had turned to fight it, only to find myself in the body of a small child.
The child's glowing eyes gleamed brightly. They radiated with a bright, blue light. Beneath it I could see her pupils and irises, but they glowed brightly as if they were tiny, blue stars.
"You can save her, Tar'elessar… you can save all of us," the child said. She gestured behind her at the burning cities and the broken bodies. "You are the key… you are the one who will either save us or doom us…"
"How? How can I save you? What happened to your people?" I asked desperately.
The Star-child stepped towards me. I found that I couldn't move. I felt as if some cosmic force had rooted me in place.
"All will be made clear if you would only stop fighting it.…" the star-child whispered. "My people and I – we only wish to live. To learn… laugh – to feel the sun on our skin…to walk, to sing, to dance… when the time comes, you will know. Just stop… stop fighting it..."
The Star-child smiled sadly at me, her glowing, blue eyes gleaming even brighter. She raised a hand and gently stroked my cheek, and suddenly everything went dark.
March 14th, 2211, 2242 hours —New Thebes—Anhur National Bank Complex – Intergalactic Children's Clothiers
Data Corruption… Automatic Reconstruction Failed…Data Corruption….Profile Reconstruction Required…
(Spectre Operative 04272182-Cloud)
Mission Objective – Asset Retrieval
"—Get up… Cloud, get up!"
I groaned. My head felt like the morning after I'd downed a liter of ryncol. My mouth felt dry and my eyelids felt as if they weighed a ton. I felt a hand roughly grasp my shoulder and shake it.
"Spirits! Get up, man!"
"What—,' I began. A pair of hands pulled me up so that I was sitting up-right. I finally managed to pull my eyelids apart and saw a scaly, familiar visage hovering over me. I blinked blearily at it.
I groaned again, pressing a hand to my forehead. "Cade? Is that you? What happened?"
The turian let out a hiss of relief. His helmet was off and on the ground beside him, alongside my helmet. His blue eyes were filled with concern, but they softened somewhat as I shook off the worst of the episode and managed to sit up of my own accord. "You tell me. We heard a crash, thought something got you."
"How long was I out?"
"It couldn't have been more than two minutes since we left you," Cade whispered quietly. My friend then nodded his head in the direction behind me.
I turned around. Elektra was a few feet ahead of us, standing at a half-crouch with her arms raised halfway in the air. Slowly and deliberately, she brought a hand down to her side and unholstered her Predator pistol, bent over and set it down beside her Hurricane. The female Spectre then removed her helmet, shaking free her long, black hair and set that down as well.
My eyes panned forward. Crouched behind a clothing rack was a small, asari girl who looked maybe six or seven years old – roughly John's age. She had light-blue skin and was wearing a blood-stained yellow sun-dress. She eyed Elektra with wary, but her eyes otherwise betrayed not a hint of fear.
"Don't be afraid… I'm not going to hurt you…," Elektra whispered. She held both her hands up in the air and approached cautiously.
The asari child looked at Elektra, then glared at me. I waved sheepishly at her. She had probably been what I'd been tracking in the store. Probably hadn't taken kindly to me pointing a gun at her.
"What's your name?" Elektra asked.
The asari child did not reply. Elektra stopped advancing and instead simply stood there with her arms held in front of her in a non-threatening gesture.
Eventually the child came forward. She took a few looks around the store and then walked over to where Elektra was. The child quickly snatched up Elektra's Predator pistol, looking it over curiously.
Elektra let out a yelp and immediately made to secure her weapon, directing the barrel away from the rest of us and then gently removing it from her grip. She flipped the safety on and re-holstered it.
"Spirits, do not ever have children. Ever." Cade groaned.
"The safety was on, ass," Elektra hissed. "What's your name?" Elektra asked again.
The asari child immediately flashed a series of signs with her fingers.
"What did she say?" Cade asked. Neither Cade nor I were well-versed in anything beyond your standard Systems Alliance and Turian Military handsigns.
"She'll show us later… and she asked if we have any food?" Elektra slowly translated. The female Spectre pulled out a ration bar from her pouch and handed it to the child. The child scrutinized it carefully for a few moments before unwrapping it and taking a bite.
I grabbed my helmet and my Avenger and got to my feet. "Come on. We'll take her back to the elevators after we're done restarting them, let's not wait around."
Cade got to his feet as well. "Wait. We're not going anywhere until you tell us what's going on."
"Cade, we don't have time for this," I sighed. I tried to move past him but he placed a hand on my chestplate and firmly pushed me back.
"Make time," my friend growled. "Elektra told me about your nightmare while we were en-route to this system. She said that you were moaning about how you could save them. Save who?"
I turned and glared at Elektra, immediately annoyed that she would rat me out like that, but I could see only concern and sympathy in her brown eyes and so I relented.
Cade grabbed my chestplate and pulled me so that I was facing back at him. "No—don't look at her, she's not going to help you. She made the right call bringing this up. When we found you just now, you were also moaning about saving people."
The turian let go and jabbed a long talon into my chest. "You had those nightmares and said those words before, back when we were on the Citadel. I thought you were perhaps feeling guilty over the people on Hippocrates, so I directed you towards that psychiatrist, except you're saying those words again after suddenly falling unconscious in the middle of a mission. So, what is going on?"
I stood there quietly like a child who had been caught misbehaving, or who had broken something and had kept it secret. I didn't know what to say to my friend.
Cade let out a long sigh. "Because if this isn't simply guilt… because if…. Remember that crazy asari doctor on the Hippocrates? The one who shot all her patients and tried to kill Accer? Jaelen and Rentea were there when you killed her. They told me she was also spewing nonsense, saying how she had to "save them". And I remember, back on the ship, you also had these episodes where you'd seize up and grab your head as if you were in pain."
"So tell me, what in the spirit's name is going on with you?"
I ran my hand through my hair. Cade was right. I hadn't forgotten what that deranged doctor had said and what she had gone on to do. I had just pushed it aside, choosing not to confront the possibility that something else had happened to me on that ship. Something I couldn't explain.
I told them about the dreams that I had been having. I told them about the beautiful race with their magnificent cities of silver. I told them about how I saw their cities being burned by giant shadows and how they were changed into these abominations that hunted their own kind. I told them about the star-child, how I had failed to save her mother, and how she had called me Tar'elessar and had asked me to save her people.
What I didn't tell them was about how the Chimera on the Hippocrates had somehow talked to me towards the end, how it had told me to save them, how it had showed me images of hundreds of planets like Earth and Thessia and cities with tall spires on fire and large, metal claws with red eyes and red light and heat. I remember feeling an endless hunger, a desire to consume. What I didn't tell them is how it too had called me Tar'elessar. That was no coincidence.
I wanted to, I knew I should, but I couldn't do it. I just couldn't bare facing the reactions that I knew my friends would have. I wasn't ready for their looks of disappointment or worry.
We all stood in silence after I had finished. Cade looked pensive while Elektra continued to stare at me with concern. The little asari child simply stood there quietly, her eyes panning back and forth between the three of us while she slowly ate her ration bar.
"What do you think I should do?"
The turian Spectre twitched his mandibles and let out another big, audible sigh. Cade was only about twenty-five, but that sigh seemed to age the young turian nearly two decades.
"I think that once we've done what we came here to do and we've gotten off this planet, you should have Jaelen take a look at you. I have no idea what it is that is happening to you, and that salarian is the closest thing we have to an expert on these creatures."
I nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Come one, let's move. We're falling behind on time."
Cade grabbed my arm. "Were you going to tell us?" he asked quietly.
I opened my mouth to reply when the communications indicator in my helmet started blinking. I immediately slipped it back on and sealed it. Cade let go and did the same with his own helmet.
"—Cloud? You there? Cloud, it's Percival. We hit a few snags but we're at the generators. Sophie is trying to restart them now. You in position?"
"No, not yet," I replied. "Got a bit sidetracked. We found a survivor, we'll be in position in a minute."
"Need back-up?"
I turned to see Elektra signing rapidly to the asari child. The child looked at all of us and nodded resolutely.
"No, we're green," I replied. Cade depolarized his visor and quickly gave me a look. This conversation isn't over, his eyes seemed to say.
We gathered our weapons and left the store. Somehow, we managed to make it to the security room without running into any more of those nightmare-ish creatures. Elektra moved to the main security terminal and began to hack in while Cade and I patrolled the perimeter of the room. The child hovered behind Elektra's thigh.
After about thirty seconds we heard a confirmatory tone sound out from the console. Elektra turned and nodded at me. I nodded back and opened a channel to Percival's team.
"Percival, the elevators are reset. Feel free to head back."
"Roger, we'll meet you there in five."
"Copy."
I cut the link and signaled for my team to depart. We moved back to our strongpoint without incident.
Percival and his team arrived moments after we did. I gestured at a line of newly-acquired gashes running down the front of his chestplate which hadn't been there prior.
I took off my helmet and clipped it behind me. "Just a few snags?" I asked wryly.
My friend did the same with his, revealing a cheeky grin. "Corpsers attacked us in tandem with a few of those camouflaged Chasers. Would have lost half my jaw if Fly here hadn't been so quick on the trigger."
The Jaeger medic waved a hand dismissively and re-joined his comrades. I could see that Galen and Rayla had returned as well from searching for survivors. The asari-child peered curiously up at the asari commando, growing wide-eyed at the sight of her battle-scared combat leathers and her cold, penetrating glare.
"Galen, Rayla, you two find anyone?"
The stoney asari commando scoffed wearily. Though her face was a stony mask, her eyes were a window into her disguised pain. "The ones who run the mall must have triggered the auto-lockdown when the outbreak started. Trapped the civilians in with the creatures... Fuckers," she repeated for emphasis. A little bit of relief seeped through when Rayla spotted the young asari child hiding behind Elektra.
"What's up, kid?" she asked. The child smiled and waved shyly.
"Aside from the entrance we came through, all the other entrances are still locked. We'll need time to breach them if we can't go back the way we came," Galen reported. The turian soldier pulled up a map of the complex on his omni-tool and showed us all the entrances he and Rayla had marked.
I nodded. We hadn't encountered any creatures on our way in, but we couldn't count on them not interfering with our exit. Ideally, we would grab Baird from the vault, come back down, and book it back to the APCs before the creatures knew what was up. However, Murphy's law was a bitch. Hopefully, between our biotics and our guns we had the firepower and the luck required to fight our way back out. Calling an evac was always an option, though it'd attract a lot of attention and it would tip the saboteurs off on our progress.
"So what's the plan?" Accer asked. The biotic ran an omni-scan of his amp and hefted his Hurricane. He was ready for action.
"Your team is going to hold down here, alongside Garm, Rayla and Galen," I told him. "Us four are going to go up and get the High-Value Target – actually, give us Soph just in case we need her electronic expertise."
"Roger that, don't take too long up there. If these creatures pile up I don't fancy our chances of making it back to the APC's in once piece."
A low, throaty howl suddenly sounded out from the bowels of the abandoned mall, causing all of us to shiver. Speak of the devil and he will appear, or so they say.
Garm grabbed a giant metal barricade and dragged it across the ground so that it sat directly in front of the elevator doors. The massive Krogan then set his Spitfire down atop it and peered down the scope with his one good eye.
"You pyjacks better get a move on," he huffed. Percival nodded and pressed a button, calling the elevator down to the atrium.
Rayla and Galen both took flanking positions on either side of the large krogan, rifles pointed outwards as well in anticipation of the oncoming horde. Accer directed the rest of his Jaegers to take up positions at the barricades around the elevators.
Cade grabbed more than half of his Arc grenades and shoved them into Teewin's hands. The big Jaeger nodded and clipped them to his armored utility belt.
Elektra, Percival and I did the same with our Lift grenades, Inferno grenades, and Sticky grenades respectively. We gave the Jaeger what grenades we could spare, knowing that they would need them a lot more than we would.
"Buy us as much time as you can, but don't be heroes. Take the elevator up if you have to," I ordered.
"What about the child?" Cade asked.
"She stays here, with them."
Elektra knelt down and signed to the child. The kid looked up at me and nodded, then crouched a few feet away behind Garm. The large krogan gave her a fleeting glance, then chuckled.
"What's your name, kid?" he asked. The asari pointed with her chin towards Elektra.
"She said that we could call her Nat," the female Spectre replied. "She lost her mother and father in the attack. She can't speak but she can hear you, she'll respond to orders."
"Nat, huh?" the krogan growled. His good eye gleamed in the darkness. "I'm about to make these bastards pay. Dearly."
The asari child huffed in acknowledgment and gave a savage smile. If she felt any sort of sadness or anguish at the loss of her family it was deeply buried. Whoever she was, she had an iron core. It was almost unsettling to see such a young child relish the thought of revenge. Inwardly, I cursed the saboteurs, Mordred, and Locke and his little band of psychotic assholes for creating yet another damaged orphan. I would make them pay too. Dearly.
Another howl erupted, and then another and another. In the darkness of the halls beyond we could faintly see ghastly orbs of blue lights begin to appear one after another – blue lights that Corpsers emitted from their metallic eye sockets and their horrific, teeth-ridden maws. Hidden beneath the howling but nonetheless still audible was the sound of scraping, metallic footsteps. They began slowly at first, then soon began to pick up in pace until they were louder than the howls. The horde was approaching.
The elevator bell rang to signal its arrival and the doors opened. "Go! Let's Go!" Percival urged. Elektra leapt into the elevator, followed closely by me and Soph. The young Jaeger was shaking at the sight of the oncoming horde. My friend shoved Cade inside and then joined us. Percival pressed the button for the utmost floor and the doors closed just as Garm began to fire his weapon and swear in krogan.
March 14th, 2211, 2257 hours —New Thebes—Anhur National Bank Complex – Main Elevator
Data Corruption… Automatic Reconstruction Failed…Data Corruption….Profile Reconstruction Required…
(Spectre Operative 04272182-Cloud)
Mission Objective – Asset Retrieval
We had passed the halfway mark. Cade loaded a sink of armor-piercing ammunition into his Vindicator and shifted his remaining pair of arc grenades to the front of his utility belt. Elektra did the same, but instead loading a clip of warp ammunition into her Hurricane. Percival turned on his tech armor. It sprung to life around his black N7 armor with a hum, glowing in its unusual red hue. My friend activated the omni-blade on his Avenger as well. Combined with his size and armor, the red lights gave my friend an ominous, intimidating look. Though not practical for stealth, the tech armor would give him a much-needed layer of added protection as he served as our dedicated point-man.
I slung Murgen's modified Avenger over my back and pulled out my Predator pistol, loading it with disruptor ammunition. Elektra and my biotics would be our best surprise weapon against whoever or whatever was waiting for us at the top of this lift, and I would need a free hand to perform the mnemonics required. Soph tapped her omni-tool and a drone sprung to life above her.
"Thoughts?" Cade asked.
"Same old. I'll get us through the initial barrage. Percival is the opening act. You suppress while Elektra hunts. I'll provide support," I replied. It was our tried and tested method for walking into a known ambush.
"And me?" Soph asked.
"Find cover immediately once we're in the thick of it. We can't afford to lose you."
Cade scratched a mandible. "Judging by the size of the top floor from the outside, that penthouse level can't be more than twelve-hundred square meters. It'll be tight."
"Unlike you, some of us are actually good at CQB," Elektra chided jokingly. Cade bristled and muttered something about 'harpies' and 'backstabbers' and how he was the 'youngest member of the Blackwatch since Saren Arterius'.
"Let's get tactical, Spectres," Percival admonished. Though I hated it when he butchered ancient pop-culture references, the marine was right. We were two floors away now.
I swung my hands up about a millisecond before the doors opened. A thick bubble of blue fire sprouted forth to encase the entire group just in time to catch a devastating barrage of colored gunfire.
My amp immediately began to warm up beneath the sudden strain. "Warp rounds, can't hold!" I growled through gritted teeth.
A pair of grenades sailed out from behind me and landed in the room, causing patches of oily fire to erupt along the ground. The gunfire slackened and I felt an armored hand tap my shoulder. A red and black blur sprinted past me, spewing gunfire and red light. Gunfire began to pepper my friend, though his tech armor was doing a much better job of holding up to the warp ammo than my barrier did.
I dropped the barrier with a sigh of relief only to see a second blur – this time, a flash of blue light – streak past my vision. A black shape collided with another black shape in a small biotic detonation, sending it reeling back. It was a turian in black saboteur's armor.
"One figure, left corner by the windows!" Cade advised. I picked up on his cue and diverted my eyes to that location. I could see another shape half-hidden in the shadows. This one was also a turian.
I let loose a volley of shots at it from my Predator, but the armored turian flipped gracefully out of the way. Soph took the opportunity to slip out and take cover behind a thick table that had been overturned.
Elektra was locked in combat with a male turian near a long window that dominated one whole side of the room by the looks of it. The Spectre was on the offensive, launching a flurry of biotic-strikes in her usual attempt to overwhelm her opponent quickly. The turian however was experienced and patient. He used his Phaeston rifle to deflect half of her blows and dodged the other half, likely banking on Elektra tiring herself out with her overuse of her biotics. He was giving ground however, and it wouldn't be long before he had nowhere to run.
Percival had turned his attention to the smaller turian that I had shot at and missed. It was hard to pinpoint exactly where the turian was. It shifted from cover-to-cover, expertly using the furniture in the room to narrowly avoid Percival's fire and returning fire of her own. Unfortunately, Percival had nowhere to hide in the center of the room. His tech armor was growing brighter and brighter as it took more and more damage, and it wouldn't be long before it gave out.
Cade began to take shots at the turian that Elektra was fighting. I stepped out and tossed a Singularity at the smaller turian. It managed to dive enough out of the way so that it wouldn't be caught in it, but in doing so it left itself open to fire from both Percival and Soph, who began to hammer the turian with Avenger fire. I pivoted and threw a Stasis field at the turian Elektra was fighting, but it missed.
The Singularity swirled brightly in the corner of the room, picking up bits of loose furniture and extinguishing several of the fires. The smaller turian had managed to take cover behind another thick table but was still taking heavy fire now, and it wouldn't be long before her shields were done.
Suddenly, two long bursts of bright-blue gunfire erupted from another corner of the room. One slammed into Percival's armored back, causing him to stumble forward and his tech armor to dissipate with a loud crack. The other slammed into Elektra, pushing her off balance and sending her shield sizzling. The turian she was fighting took the opportunity to take the offensive and launch a volley of heavy fists at Elektra. The first one caught the female Spectre full-on in the face, smacking her helmet back. The other slammed right into her stomach, winding her. She managed to dodge the third one and put some distance between her and her assailant.
"Elektra!" I cried.
"One by the bank vault, he's got disruptor rounds! I'm suppressing!" Cade announced. He fired a volley of bursts at a shape crouched near the bank vault door that had until this point been cloaked. Two of them caught the saboteur – it was another turian – and cracked his shields. He rolled out of the way to avoid the third.
But I had anticipated the dodge and I was ready. I emptied the rest of my clip into the spot that the turian would end up in. Several of my rounds glanced off the armor but at least a few bit deep, leading to a spout of blue blood.
"Bry!" one of the other turians shouted. The male who had been engaging Elektra turned and fired a volley of shots at me, but I dodged out of the way. The wounded turian waved his comrade away and rolled himself behind a counter, where he exchanged shots from behind cover with Cade using a Carnifex.
These guys were good, as good as the lead saboteurs we had fought aboard the Hippocrates, and I knew that we would have to end it soon or else the team back at the atrium would be overrun. I felt my amp spark violently as I prepared to unleash a devastating warp towards the turian Elektra was fighting.
I raised my hand, only to feel a massive armored gauntlet surround my wrist. I then felt my whole body being yanked forward and then a massive jolt of pain lance up my arm to settle in my shoulder. I let out a pained yell and fell to my knees. My left shoulder was in agony and I couldn't move my left arm.
De-cloaking above me was a massive, armored turian – easily seven feet tall or more. He kneed me hard in the helmet, sending me onto my back writhing in pain. Time seemed to slow down as I watched the turian levelled a massive Phaeston at my helmet.
A bright flash of light and armor blurred over my head as I was laying prone. Cade had triggered his armor rockets and had boosted directly into the massive turian. His knife was out and he began lashing out at the massive turian.
The turian ripped Cade off and tossed him to the ground, but my friend was able to recover and re-engage the large turian almost immediately. Cade had his knife out in a reverse grip, edge out, circling his larger foe warily. The larger turian was being equally cautious. Though he had nothing but his bare hands, he stood head-and-shoulders over the already-tall Cade, was built more robustly and looked as if he weighed twice as much as my lankier friend. They began to engage in a deadly dance.
I rolled over to my side, teeth gnashing together in pain as my left shoulder shifted. I immediately opened my omni-tool and set my armor to splint, then used my good hand to push myself up and grab my pistol.
The heatsink had cooled by then. I fired a new volley at the smaller turian that had been harassing Percival and Soph. Percival's helmet had been knocked off somehow, revealing a large gash above his left eye that dripped blood into it. My friend was panting heavily, his armor sported multiple new bullet-marks and he was bleeding from a hit beneath his left arm. Soph looked largely intact, since the turian had likely focused their attention on the more obvious threat.
The bullets slammed into the smaller turian's chestplate, cracking its shield and sending the saboteur reeling. Percival took the opportunity to charge forwards and wrap the turian in a bear hug, bringing it to ground. The turian let out a groan, revealing them to be a female, as the bulky marine crashed into her. Percival slammed his armored fist into her helmet, stunning her, and wrapped his armored hands around her neck and began to squeeze. The female turian produced a knife and aimed a few cuts at Percival's face, but the N7 grabbed her wrist and bashed it against the ground.
Soph took the opportunity to shift fire to the male turian that Elektra was facing. The two had been evenly matched, though Elektra had stopped using biotically-assisted strikes due to fatigue setting in.
Several rounds from Soph's Avenger and her drone hit the turian in the side, causing him to stumble sideways in pain. The distraction allowed Elektra to plant her feet and lashed out with a reverse roundhouse kick that impacted squarely on the turian's chest. It pushed him backwards off his feet, where he collided with the window and slumped to the ground, stunned.
Before the turian could react, Elektra pulled out her Predator pistol and emptied the entire clip into the turian's chest and helmet with a yell. When she was done, the turian's chestplate was a shredded mess of metal and he was lying in a pool of expanding, blue blood.
The massive turian who had been fighting Cade roared in apparent anguish. He broke off the hand-to-hand combat, picked up my friend and threw him bodily across the room. Cade slammed into a wall and slid down. Instead of finishing him off, the huge turian then pulled out a massive Carnifex and began taking huge strides towards Elektra, firing at the female Spectre's back.
Her shields cracked and bright plumes of red erupted from her armor. She slumped to the floor.
I let out a raw-throated yell. "Elektra!" I screamed.
My sheer anger caused blue biotic light to flare around me. I charged forward blindly, my only desire being to cause as much harm to her assailant as I possibly could.
I tackled the massive turian with a snarl. Given our proximity to the sprawling window and my adrenaline, our combined momentum was enough to shatter the window pane and send the two of us hurtling out in the night. Instantly I was met with that familiar sensation of weightlessness. Cold wind immediately began to snatch at my armor and dull the throbbing on my face. The massive turian was scrabbling furiously at my armor, trying desperately to find purchase.
Miraculously, we crashed into a cleaning platform that happened to be positioned beneath us not six feet below. I fell chest-first with a crash onto the railing of the narrow platform, the wind having been knocked out of me.
That feeling was immediately followed by a sharp lance of pain in my already-wounded shoulder, causing me to gasp in agony. The turian had flown over the railing but in the process he had managed to grab on to both of my pauldrons. He was hanging off the side now,
I tried to grab one of my two talon knives sheathed in my lower back but I couldn't reach them. Though my chest was firmly pressed against the railing and my legs and torso were on the platform, my upper chest and both my arms were hanging over the edge of the railing and the turian was simply too heavy for me to lift them to grab my knives.
I began to land a few body shots against the turian with my good arm in an attempt to dislodge him, but given my position I could put little force behind them.
The turian began to try to pull himself up, exerting more pressure on my left shoulder and causing me to scream in pain.
"Fuck you!" I spat. The turian didn't reply. I was close enough that could see his eyes glinting desperately from beneath his helmet.
Suddenly a round whizzed by my head and smacked into his helmet, snapping his head back. It was followed by another that slammed into his right shoulder, and then another into his left. The fourth shot caused his shields to give out and the fifth caused the turian to lose his grip on my armor.
His grip gave out and the turian fell, talons outstretched as if he could someone hold back on. I watched as he fell down onto the streets below.
I fell back on my ass onto the cleaning platform with a huge sigh of relief. I looked up to see both Cade and Percival standing on the ledge. Both of them had their pistols raised, barrels slightly red.
"You could have shot me!" I hollered.
"Spirits, you complain too much!" replied Cade. Despite his harsh words, my friend had a look of relief on his face. None of us had recalled seeing the cleaning platform on our way up, and it wasn't clear whether I would have been able to arrest my fall with my biotics.
I reached with my good arm and allowed Percival to pull me back onto the ledge. I gave a grunt of pain as my left shoulder shifted slightly. It was dislocated for sure, though how badly I didn't know. I doubted that I could throw my biotics with it. My fighting ability would be effectively halved until it healed.
I surveyed the room quickly. The bank vault where Baird was waiting was still untouched, but the room was a mess. The flames from Percival's Inferno grenades had died off but scorch marks were everywhere. Bullet-holes pockmarked nearly every last piece of furniture in the room. The body of the turian female lay in the corner, and I could see a pool of blood spread beneath the unmoving, booted foot of the turian behind the counter that Cade and I had shot.
Elektra still lay slumped on the floor by the body of the turian that she had killed. Soph was crouched above her, administering medi-gel to Elektra's armor ports.
"Elektra!" I cried. I hobbled over to her and fell to my knees in front of her. I grabbed her helmet and unsealed it. Her skin was paler than usual, her eyes were closed and she had a wicked bruise where the turian had hit her in the face. She'd taken hits before but nothing like this. I didn't know what I would do if the worse should happen.
"She's unconscious. I gave her some medi-gel, but we should really have Fly take a look at her when he can – or better yet, send her back up to the Excalibur to get looked at by Doctor T'Lana," Sophie offered. The tech specialist opened up Elektra's omni-tool and ran her armor's medical diagnosis.
"Merde, it looks like the turian hit her with old polonium rounds," Soph cursed. "She'll need a blood transfusion and the rounds dug out of her. Fly might have a few vasoconstrictors that'll slow it down, but she needs help soon."
My comms suddenly lit up with an incoming transmission. "Spectres, it's Accer! We're taking the elevator up, we can't hold them any longer! Several packs have already began making their way up the stairs!"
I keyed open the channel. "Roger that! Get up here as fast as you can! We'll move together to the roof!" I replied.
"Cade, we need to call an air evac! Have them meet us on the roof!" I ordered. The turian nodded sharply and opened up a private line. He gave me a thumbs up.
I then turned to Percival. My friend nodded and then gently scooped up the wounded Spectre. "Don't worry, I've got her," he said.
I nodded in thanks. I looked at Soph then jerked my head towards the vault door. The Jaeger nodded.
I staggered to my feet and started walking towards it, stopping briefly to pick up my Predator pistol. When I got to it, I slammed my fist onto the door.
"Open up! It's Cloud!"
After about a minute, the vault door slid open to reveal a gaunt, wiry man with straw-like blond hair. He was wearing mismatched, bloodied clothing he had likely pulled from dead civilians. Beneath them I could see a hospital gown. He looked as if he hadn't slept in a week and smelled like death.
"Boy, it sounded really bad out there from in here. I was beginning to think you guys weren't going to make it!"
I was tired as fuck. I had been fighting nearly non-stop for the better part of eleven hours. If you had told me that we had landed on Anhur just earlier this morning, I would have looked at you like you were fucking crazy.
"You Dennis?" I growled.
"First of all, its 'Baird'. Second of all I hope you have a way out of this city that doesn't involve walking, because we're not going to make it fifty feet out on those streets at night."
I wasn't in the mood for his attitude. He had simply sat safely in his vault while my team and I were fighting for our lives and I found the man's voice to be extremely irritating. It didn't help that I was also perilously close to losing my oldest friend.
I could hear the snarling and howling of a horde of those creatures coming from the stairwell. In our current condition we were in no shape to fight them.
I grabbed him by the shoulder with my good hand which was still holding my pistol and pushed him towards the stairs. He yelped as the barrel moved dangerously close to his head. "Then let's get out of here. Evac will be on the roof. Stay close to me and stay down."
The elevators opened then. Accer came out first, gun up. Teewin came out next, supporting Gunnery Chief Rake who appeared to have taken a laceration to his leg. Fly and Jay followed close behind, and then came Galen, Rayla, and finally Garm with the little asari child Nat clinging onto his hump.
The other members of our team surveyed the state of the room with amazement. "What the hell happened up here?" Jay asked in wonderment.
The snarling was getting louder. "No time," I told him. "Everyone in the stairwell and up to the roof, before those things cut us off!"
Accer, Galen and Rayla immediately moved to the stairwell, followed by Percival who was carrying Elektra. I shoved Baird towards the stairs again, urging him to move faster. Together we all moved up the stairs, trying our best to forget that a horde of abominations were mere floors below, clawing their way towards us and intent on causing our deaths.
We all came out onto the roof. It was stark and windy, with nothing but a few landing pads and inactive gun batteries. We immediately backed as far away from the stairwell doors as possible and took up defensive positions on one of the pads. Jay and Fly both set up pressure charges on the door to the stairwell and then quickly joined us.
The air up here was cold. I could feel Baird shivering behind me.
I turned to Cade. "How long?"
"Maybe three more minutes," the turian replied. He slapped a fresh new heatsink into his Vindicator and peered down the sights towards the stairwell doors. The rest of my team that could still fight did the same. Garm set one hand down on Nat's head and stroked her tentacles gently as the child whimpered ever so slightly from the cold and the sound of the approaching monsters. The other held firmly onto the grip of his Spitfire.
We could hear the creatures howling and snarling even over the wind. The first wave surged through the door like a tsunami. They triggered the charges and disappeared in a flash of fire and smoke. Bits of metal and flesh rained back down onto the rooftop. The blast also destroyed the door to the stairs, leaving the entire stairwell exposed to the open air.
Another wave surged out onto the roof, this time a mix of Corpsers and Chargers. Their eyes and mouths emitted a ghastly blue light that casted shadows of their fangs and scything claws onto the ground. Baird gave a panicked gasp and gripped my backplate hard.
I raised my Predator, took aim and put three shots into the mouth of the lead Corpser. Teewin and Garm followed suit, letting their fast-firing weapons rip into the oncoming horde in an attempt to stem the tide. Percival was crouched in front of Elektra with her body lying behind him, shielding her. The N7 was pumping out fast and accurate bursts from his Avenger at anything that got too close to our team.
The rest of the Jaegers and the two turians had split their fire so as to create a funnel and to do their best from preventing the creatures from spreading out and surrounding us. They lobbed a few grenades, blowing huge chunks in the ranks of the creatures.
Soph let out an Overload that arced across the frontlines of the enemy, sending almost a dozen of them to the ground twitching as the electricity ran through their metal bodies. Her drone zipped around her head, firing automatically at the nearest target.
A Singularity suddenly flew out to land among the fallen Corpsers, thrown by Accer. It grabbed them and several others and caused them to whirl suspended up in the air. Rayla through a Warp that collided into the Singularity and detonated it, the explosion clearing out a huge mess of the creatures and buying us valuable time.
Suddenly, I could feel the slight thrum of anti-grav thrusters on the back of my neck. I turned to see two shuttles immediately fly to a hover just off the landing pad we were on.
Their doors opened to reveal a pair of turrets manned by two armored figures. One of them I recognized as Lieutenant Navarrian of the Blue Suns while the other was manned by Malak Ghar'aran. They immediately began to open fire on the approaching horde, mowing dozens of them down.
There was a loud thud as the older Ghar'aran – Revak – jumped out of one of the shuttles and landed on the pad. The batarian looked absolutely massive in his spiked armor. He was accompanied by half a dozen of his Blue Suns mercenaries. He opened fire as well with his modified Revenant.
"Get on!" he growled.
My team began to perform a fighting retreat onto the shuttles. Baird clambered on first, then turned around to help Percival bring the unconscious Elektra onboard. Rake came on next, followed by the asari-child. The massive krogan pulled himself up as well and resumed firing with his Spitfire. The other Jaegers boarded the other shuttle along with Cade, Galen and Rayla.
Percival and I were the last of our team onboard. Once I had clambered on I slumped down onto the deck, exhausted and unable to fire one more shot.
I grabbed Elektra's hand. Her eyes fluttered as if she were having a bad dream.
The roof was now filled with snarling Corpsers and Chargers. I turned and watched as the mercenaries retreated back onto the shuttles as well.
Revak was the last one left. He managed to finish mowing down a trio of Corpsers just as his weapon overheated. A Charger raced up to him and launched itself at the huge batarian, but Revak grabbed it by the neck with one hand. There it hung, snarling and snapping at the batarian. With a roar, Revak tossed it over the edge of the roof.
He slung his rifle over his back, turned and grabbed the top of the shuttle and began to pull himself in. Percival grabbed his other hand and helped him inside.
The pilot sealed the doors shut. "Go! Get us back to base!" Revak growled. The Blue Suns pilot flashed a thumbs up and began to ascend. I could see the other shuttle doing the same through the window.
No one said anything on the ride back, not even Baird. The air reeked of eezo, hot heatsinks, and sweat.
Percival gave me a wordless look. I returned it, nodding to tell him that I was okay. Our first day on this planet and I had already taken an impairment that could jeopardize the rest of our mission. I now had limited functionality in my left arm and it wouldn't fully heal for maybe the better part of two weeks. It would hamper my ability to fight and use my biotics.
I turned to look at Elektra. I was still grabbing her hand. The skin on her lips were cracked and she was still unconscious. Whatever information Baird had had better been worth this. I could feel her pulse fluttering weakly through her gauntlet. She had to hang on. She just had to.
March 15 th, 2211, 0621 hours – New Thebes – Outside the Anhur National Bank Complex
Data Corruption… Automatic Reconstruction Failed…Data Corruption….Profile Reconstruction Required…
(Field Commander Severus Tyrannus – Project Transcendence)
Last known location of Team Commander Darken Krystos, eight hours after their last transmission
Severus stood stock-still, like a statue or a silent sentinel. He starred down at the huge body sprawled unceremoniously onto the sidewalk. The sun was starting to come up, but it was still quite cold at this time. His breath billowed out in a warm stream of fog as he continued to stare silently at his friend.
A commando moved up to stand beside him. "Tara's team has made visual contact. All of them are accounted for. There were no survivors, and the target is missing," the turian reported.
Severus nodded wordlessly, his blood-red eyes dull and lifeless. He continued to stare at the body of his oldest friend and mentor – the turian who had taken him in when even his own father had abandoned him. The turian who had served him faithfully and loyally for the better part of a decade, who had never once failed him and who had always been the rock upon which Severus could rely on. All of a sudden, Severus felt so very small. So very alone.
His commandos silently kept a respectful distance. All of them had served with the fallen turian for quite some time and had looked up to him. He had earned their respect on the battlefield time and time again. He had even saved their lives on multiple occasions.
Eventually, Severus knelt down beside the body. With shaking talons he gently unclasped Darken's helmet, ignoring the pool of dried blood beneath it, and pulled it off.
The old turian lay there peacefully with his eyes closed. His mandibles were relaxed and his plates looked loose. He looked calm, almost as if he was sleeping.
Severus broke then. The quiet, stoic young turian began to sob. It came slowly at first, and then escalated when he realized that his best friend in the entire galaxy was truly dead. Severus placed his head on his dead friend's chestplate and let his tears fall onto the cold metal. His body began to shake as the sobs wracked him.
The commandos all stood in silent vigil as their commander grieved. Despite the famed turian stoicism, several had tears in their own eyes. The sun slowly inched its way higher up in the sky.
Eventually, Severus stopped shaking. The turian wiped away his tears and stood back up.
He finally turned to his fellow commandos. "Get commander Krystos and his turians back on the shuttle, we're not leaving them here," he rasped. Severus' voice was hoarse and broken. His commandos saluted and immediately got to work.
Severus watched as Darken was gently placed in a body bag. He kept his eyes trained on his dead friends face right up until a commando zipped up the bag. Truly, he could have been sleeping.
Goodnight, Darken, Severus thought. I will see you soon.
AN: Been a while