"Alright, are you two ready?" asked a booming voice over the speaker system, as two figures walked forward. One was in the typical Terran armor, painted in officer's colors, and was checking the seal on their left shoulder. The other was a holo-projection of a quarian, one who lived without her suit, and looked just young enough that that wasn't a unique thing for her. She did however wear a hood that resembled a suit, marked with her family's colors, and her silvery eyes shining in the low light of the empty room they were in.
"Link One, ready," said the male Terran as he finished his check, looking forward.
"Link Two, ready," said the quarian next to him, smiling at the blank room before them, watching it with almost giddy anticipation.
"Link test, beginning in five, four, three," said the voice from the speakers, and then suddenly the walls glowed brightly, as other holos like the quarian's began to emerge from everywhere around them, transforming the chamber from featureless gray walls into a city, sized for micronians. The quarian girl, smiling still, spun in place, and her form seemed to collapse in one itself, the hologram shrinking down until it was revealed that beneath all that, she was riding in a pill shaped pod, that floated in mid air.
"Link connection, engaging," she said, her fingers flying over a set of controls in her pod as it slowly floated over towards the Terran, spinning around him and coming up behind his back. The pod gently settled between his shoulderblades, various connecting ports opening on both the armor and the pod as it glided into place, a small buzzing sound echoing over the silent cityscape as they came together. Once in place, the pod was secured by a small bar coming out of the arm, wrapping itself around the unit, and causing both to hum as the barrier of the pod extended itself over the whole of the armor.
"Link connected," said the quarian and Terran together as the city sprang to life around them. Formally quiet, empty streets were suddenly awash with people, including micronized terrans, batarians, quarians, and even a smattering of geth platforms.
"Link test, Level Ten, beginning," said the voice of the controller, and the pair braced themselves, the armored Terran standing at attention, looking around, while the quarian's fingers flew over her controls, the view on the inside of her pod showing not just the status of her partner's armor, but also every byte of data the sensors could detect. They didn't have to wait long for the test, as sonic booms soon echoed over the area, the various civilians looking into the sky, as they scanned for the incoming assault.
As one would expect, the knife ships were the culprit of the noise, as they slashed their way through the air, the front blade shining almost red as they took in the heat of the air friction, focusing it into the edges so that, as they landed, they were able to literally burn holes in the ground, be it soil, stone, or concrete, landing with slamming noises. The instant they were down, the hilts of the knives split open, revealing a hundred ground troops per knife, along with a smattering of tanks and wanzers.
The troops quickly assembled, the infantry running up to stand alongside the tanks, creating a three pronged assault, one which the wanzers soon turned into a solid wall as they filled the space between the prongs. They then began to march forward, the dull thudding of armored feet echoing into the city, only to be drowned out by the screams of civilians as they began to stream past the Terran's feet, trying to fight their way deeper into the city, and whatever protection it might offer against the coming army.
"Rise and Starfall, infantry," said the Terran, his voice transmitted to the pod, and the quarian quickly began to adjust the mass effect field around the armor, the generator beneath her feet straining as it took away some of the mass from her partner, allowing him to leap into the air, almost ten times his own height, and spinning. Holding out his hands, his palms began to glow, like a bright star being held in his grip. However, that view soon distorted, as a barrier appeared in front of the opening, shaping and reshaping itself as the quarian worked her magic.
When the shot left his hand, the blast was not a single stream of fire as it should have been, but instead the lens of barrier energy refracted the shot, the shape dividing a single strong shot, into hundreds of tiny ones. Bolts, instead of streams, rained down on the troops below, not a one missing the mark. Each hit was perfect, and the ground troops, a mixture of asari, salarian, and turian, were felled by them. Despite their armor's barriers, they were nothing to the power of reflex energy, which clove through them as easily as the air, reducing them to their constituent molecules.
"We need to protect the city!" shouted the Terran, and held out his arms as the blast ended. Rather than pull a weapon, or otherwise threaten the ones on the ground, the Terran merely clutched his fists, and suddenly had omnitools glow on his arms, forming from the energy of the barrier. Inside the pod, the quarian continued her work calculating angles and how much energy to divert to what process. Feeding the data back into her console, she struck a button giving her partner the go ahead.
"Chakram storm!" he cried out, and then spun in the air on one heel jet. The ones below, intent on their mission, continued to advance on the city, many taking aim at the fleeing civilians, but as they fired, the disks from above struck the ground between them and the city. The instant after a disk struck ground, it expanded, going from half a dozen feet diameter, to almost fifty a piece. Each disk seemed at first, to be hollow, but as the fire struck home, the disks proved their worth, and not a single shell was able to pass through them, forcing the wanzers and tanks that remained of the ground force to refocus on the Terran above.
"Time for knife fight range!" he shouted again, and whipped his fists out to his side. The omnitools responded by forming blades on his forearms that looked like orange wings as he finally came down from the sky, swooping in like some avenging angel. The units below reacted as one would expect, firing wildly at the incoming enemy, but their smaller slugs found no purchase on his barrier, and he would simply turn his assault to the side to avoid the heavier, slower shots that might have at least damaged him.
When he landed, he struck hard and fast, cutting a tank in twain as he came down, and then immediately spinning to avoid several new streams of fire that came his way. As he spun, his arms found new targets, his left slicing cleaning through one of the wanzers, the suit groaning in protest as its reactor was pierces, while he took the turret off on of the tanks with his right, kicking the thing into one of the still standing mechs, which was too top heavy to take the impact and fell backwards.
"Shield and sword combo!" shouted the Terran as he came to a halt, his arm blades vanishing even as he spoke. He then let his left hand go a bit, the fist uncurling and leaving a slight space between the fingers and palm. The next second, the reason for this became obvious, as the barrier around his arm changed shape, becoming a long thin shaft about half as tall as he was, a shaft that began to fill with blue light as the reflex weapon in his palm sprayed the liquid energy into the space. His right hand, in the meantime, soon had a buckler shield shaped barrier on the forearm, one that he used to block a shot coming in from that side, before leaping into the air again.
He came down hard into the middle of the thickest part of the enemy formation, slashing with his sword as he came down, cutting apart a half a dozen units with a single stroke even as he landed. Behind him, the quarian's hands had vanished as she worked the controls, keeping the barriers around him strong, even as she focused and refocused the one continuing the sword, allowing the reflex energy contained with it out in small, razor thin shards, which would slice easily through the enemy's armor, after the containment barrier pierced their barrier.
The buckler was used both to block more of the fire from his right, intercepting a huge blast that came to take his head off from a wanzer that was equipped with hands, but held a massive bazooka in them. Cold, and emotionless, he then proceeded to dance through the mechs and tanks, all of whom now focused on him, not a one noticing the chakram barrier to the city falling as the power ran out on the devices. Had they noticed, they probably couldn't have taken advantage of it anyway, as the Terran tore through them.
Thirty-seven wanzers, fifty-six tanks, and almost a thousand infantry, these were the forces that had been sent to lay waste the city. In less than ten minutes, the infantry were smoking craters, the tanks were, at best, nonfunctional, and at worst were smoking piles of slag, and the wanzers were in pieces. The Terran, stabbing the last of the mechs through the cockpit, watching the life fade from the eyes of an asari, whose face twisted in hate for a moment, before going dark, simply thought of it as a job well done.
"We've got incoming!" shouted the quarian in his ear, and the Terran turned where his indicator pointed to see something huge in the sky. It didn't take a genius to figure out it was the cruiser that had launched all these knives in the first place, and it screamed bloody murder as it came out of the sky. A quick thermograph showed it was hot, mostly from re-entry friction, but somewhat because it was spinning its weapons to power. Specifically, it was spinning the big cannon that would wipe out the city up for a kill shot.
"Give me a wave shot!" responded the Terran, and then opened his hands, holding them at his said, his fingers pointed at each other. The sword and its energy dissipated the instant he held his hands in that fashion, and the quarian had to work even faster as she diverted power, the barrier now forming in orb between the Terran's palms, palms which then shot forth their blue energy, beams of liquid light colliding and spray around the orb, pressing outward against the barrier, but never piercing it as the shell contained the destructive force.
The Terran's stance changed, leaning down as he braced himself for the force of the backblast, his eyes never leaving the cruiser overhead as he could see the glow from inside it's main cannon, as well as several smaller lights from the lesser offenses which would likely be used to devastate the countryside for miles, just to make a point about defiance. The Terran did not intend on giving them the chance, his view soon filling with targeting locks as he took aim with his blast.
"Kamehaduken!" he cried out, and then shifted his stance again, now holding his palms upwards and out, facing them towards the ship in the distance. The barrier between his hands breached in the direction he was facing, the energy inside being directed by the barrier, which shaped itself into a funnel. The shot blew forward, and one could feel the heat off it, as it burned its way skyward. Better, one could see the force behind the shot, as the Terran's armored feet dug into the soil, forcing them down into the dirt, and creating several feet deep holes beneath his soles.
Even had the ship been shielded, the force of the shot's impact would have been enough to at least divert its course. In the atmosphere, without its barrier, the ship shuddered at the touch of the energy beam, which tore through armor and flesh, exploding outward from the point of impact. All across the ship, one could see explosion on the hull, as superheated air tore through the inside of the vessel. A forms could be seen in those flames, silhouettes that looked to be screaming as the fire consumed them. Finally, the ship itself was split asunder, and the pieces fell to ground, far from the boundaries of the city.
"Confirming target's destruction, protoculture engine down to six-point-one-six percent capacity. Pod reactor's power level is at fifteen-point-oh-oh-seven percent power. Battle time, nine minutes, eighteen seconds. Civilian casualties, zero. Sync Rate...oh my, two-hundred-eighty-seven percent, that can't be right," said the voice of the controller, as the pristine cityscape and the torn up field around pair began to dissolve, becoming wireframes that then withdrew into the walls, revealing the chamber as it had been when they entered.
"Confirm again, our sync rate was what?" asked the quarian, as she detached her pod from the back of the Terran's armor, the man slumping a little as his full weight returned. She then projected the hologram of herself, smiling at him as he stretched and rolled his shoulders, keeping them loose.
"Ah, I see. My calculations were at fault. I had set the bar quite a bit lower for what the limit of sync would be," said the control voice, and said speaker soon entered the room through a side door. The visage was one known throughout the Federation, and both Terran and quarian snapped to attention as the Prime Thinker entered the holochamber.
"So we were off the charts?" asked the quarian as he came close, writing something down in his notes.
"Indeed you were Ms. Zorah. Might I ask some questions of the strategy you employed, however?" he said, and the two nodded.
"Your last few missions have resulted in an almost one-hundred-percent capture rate among your targets, even the slavers and pirates. Why then, were you go intent on killing these targets? Was it simply because it was a sim?" he asked, and the Terran shook his head.
"No, sir. Pirates and slavers are criminals, and possibly not by their own choice. There are a variety of sociological and economic factors that can force one into such a state that makes such a lifestyle choice the best option from a lot of bad ones. Those sorts of people deserve our pity, until a life is taken, and our help, if at all possible," explained the Terran, never leaving his attention stance.
"And the forces in the sim?" asked the Zentraedi.
"Organized military force attacking a civilian colony. They weren't there for resources, or slaves. If that had been the case, the heavier artillery would have stayed in the rear as a support, less risk of damage to what you want to steal or capture. They were here to exterminate, only reason for the formation they used. Anyone willing to follow an order like that isn't worthy of pity. Or remorse," said the Terran in a cold voice, and Exedore nodded, while jotting a note down.
"And if they had been here for capture, what would their formation have looked like, and how would you have responded?" Exedore asked as a follow up.
"They would have had the infantry in the front, with their tanks in the rear firing into the sky, landing shots at the edges of the city, to keep the people boxed in. The wanzers would have followed the infantry to the edge, but stopped there, so the mechs could provide support fire for the infantry, while also keeping an eye out for runners," this answer came from the quarian, interestingly enough, with just enough of an edge to her voice to make it known that she was likely a survivor of the New Raaya Offensive of some ten years previous.
"Chakram charged with overload pulses in front of the infantry would have been enough to cripple their barriers, then a second overload, this one designed to stun organics to knock them out. The wanzers would then be forced to become the vanguard of the assault, likely blocking the tanks from firing on us as we drew closer. Wanzers disabled by having their limbs chopped off, it would have taken some time, but it would have been doable with them basically getting in each other's way," began the Terran.
"After the wanzers are down, you take out the tanks via simple means of a mass effect field. Lower their mass enough, and unlike the more articulate wanzers, they'd be helplessly flopping around in the air, probably unable to get any kind of firing angle, and even if they did, shots would seen them flying backwards as the force of firing would translate into them as much as into the shot, reducing the overall damage a shot could do by a significant portion regardless," he concluded..
"And what of the cruiser?" queried Exedore.
"It would have little reason to destroy the city in the event of a failed assault, and thus, would likely simply flee, whereupon we could call in fleet assets to capture it. Should its commander decide to 'scorch earth' as it were, the beam we fired could be adjusted to blast their engines, while also altering their flight path, crashing them well outside the city safely, for later retrieval of the crew," he answered promptly. Quick to check, Exedore ran the numbers on his omnitool, and found that, with the data he had, he could easily see the pair pulling off just that plan, should they be faced with it.
"Hmm, I will have to adjust my charts to account for your sync ratio in this test. Until that time, I want the two of you to recover. That means your personal projects are sealed, am I making myself clear?" he told them, and the pair nodded, before saluting in the Terran fashion. The man then marched for the door without another word, offering his arm to the quarian girl as he exited the holochamber, and they then quickly made their way down the corridor towards some unknown destination, hopefully some place they could relax, but knowing those two…
"Begin log entry," said Exedore as he sealed the door shut behind them, locking it with his own personal code. The room around him then hummed, a hologram of an indeterminant biped taking shape in front of him.
"Log open, what would you like to discuss today Prime Thinker?" it said in a woman's voice, and Exedore smiled. The holo was a physical representation of the algorithm that ran the Factory. She was, for all intents and purposes, a tool, rather than a sentient mind like an AI, but he had come to depend on her, and used her to bounce ideas off of, as well as recording his thoughts for later perusal.
"What do you think of the performance of our two young people today, Zero-Zero-One?" he asked as he brought up a smaller version of their sim in front of him, showing only the important area where they had been fighting.
"Tali'Zorah's skill at manipulation of the mass effect fields are second to none within the current Research Teams. Jon Shepard has also exceeded most other candidates at combat proficiency, ranging from hand to hand combat, to general tactics," said the holo, and Exedore nodded, still impressed by their efficiency in dealing with the invaders in the sim.
"Still, Ms. Zorah has no real world combat experience, while Mr. Shepard has almost half a decade under his belt," he said, bringing up their files. Zorah's was mostly empty, only her assignments to the Rannoch Home Guard and the Factory being noted. Still, at fourteen, she had more than proven her worth in the sims, and her mind was second to none. The current pods were, if he was honest, more than half her design, milking power from the eezo cores that even Exedore himself hadn't been able to do. Certainly she'd proven to some neighsayers that the quarians recruiting thirteen and up, their age of adulthood, was justified.
Shepard, meanwhile, had been in the military for a little under five years himself. At nineteen, he was a decorated combat operative, with at least four 'heroic adventures' behind him, including an incident where he had somehow defended Mindor from a pirate attack for twenty-three minutes, including four wanzers, twelve tanks, and about a hundred infantry, all without arms or armor beyond a civilian classed omnitool. Without him, that colony would have been torn apart.
And that was ignoring his contributions to engineering. The boy was a genius, plain and simple. The chakrams, made by shaping mass effect fields, were his own invention, and at nine he'd proven himself to be adept at understanding eezo tech, more so than even most of the so called scientists of the Council. Without his understanding of the barriers the infantry had used on Rannoch, it was likely that world would have been taken before they could have gotten forces to aid them a decade ago.
"These two could do such good here, on the Factory," he mused to himself, opening a registry he kept on his Research Teams. Scrolling down to the end, he opened Purple Team's folder, and looked them over. Since those two had started to work together, the Team had been responsible for multiple innovations, including a segmented core design that would be put into production later that year which would finally, after a decade of research, allow protoculture engine equipped ships to also contain an eezo core. They would finally be able to match eezo pirates in real space, rather than having to piggyback geth and quarian ships into fights.
"The data suggests they could do good off the Factory as well, and they are requesting field assignments," the holo reminded him, and Exedore sighed. The young, always wanting glory on the field of battle….no that was unfair. Shepard didn't want glory. That was his sister who acted like that. He wanted to help people, really help them, and be able to see their faces. He never seemed to be able to understand that even if he didn't see the results, helping them by developing new tech in the factory was far more efficient.
Tali for her part, merely wanted to stay by his side. It was her first assignment request, and Shepard had agreed to it, which is what had brought them here, to the Factory together. She was up for an officer's promotion, and after their performance today, Exedore would give his go ahead on it. Then they would get reassigned, probably to some far off outpost where their brains wouldn't have access to all the tools the Factory offered them. They'd be happy, that was certain, as they would be together, but they wouldn't be helping develop the future of their people.
"Ah, to be young and in love," he said, and the holo looked at him.
"Statement, the pair have yet to express a romantic interest in one another," it told him, and Exedore chuckled. Sometimes, computers could be so blind to the data right in front of them.
"Such is the way of the young as well. Still, we will need to get these results to Red Team right away. Perhaps Sarge can motivate his team to use the data in the development of that new vehicle of theirs. What did they call it again, the Puma?" asked Exedore, trying to remember.
"Records indicate that they are currently referring to it as the Warthog," offered the hologram, and Exedore just stared at it for a moment, before shrugging. It wasn't like he was one for names anyway. Pushing a few buttons on his omnitool to save some personal readouts, he then exited the holo training room, moving on to Blue Team's area, to see how they were coming along with their latest development.