Jon woke with a start, the alarm ringing across the room, and his eyes flying open. His brain, used to more continuous thought trains, was momentarily unable to do much more than run around in a circle. At least until he felt the three fingered hand draped across his chest, and looked down to stare into the silver face of the woman he'd spent the night with. Smiling, he punched a button on the wall of his quarters to silence the alarm, and then, with her breathing softly, he slowly moved away from her, pushing off the bed, and then standing up.
Stretching, working a kink out of his back, Jon looked around his shared quarters, before finally spotting his omnitool sitting on the shelf, haphazardly thrown into the space between a set of hardback novels. Smiling, remembering tossing the thing off before he'd been dragged off to bed, he slipped the device onto his wrist, feeling that tingle that came from the eezo core inside it pressing against his skin. When the display was active, he pressed a few buttons, and then wandered over to a slot set into the wall of the room, opening it and pulling out two trays that he gently set down onto a nearby table and waited.
He didn't have to wait long. As heavy a sleeper as the quarian woman was, she still awoke when she smelled breakfast, and rose up to a sitting position, before stretching out her arms, getting a few pops for her effort. Following this up by wiggling her long, surprisingly dexterous fingers, she turned towards the source of the smell. Pulling the covers off her lower half, she revealed that at some point, she'd at least been able to find a pair of pants, whereas Jon himself was nude save his omnitool as he gestured towards her seat.
"Good morning, Lieutenant Zorah," he told her as she sat down. She then held up her hand for a moment, taking her coffee cup in the other hand, and quickly downing several gulps of the stuff before sighing contentedly.
"Good morning, Lieutenant Commander Shepard," she told him with a smirk. before they both began to eat. The meal was actually rather elegant, considering their posting on the command cruiser, Intrepid. Fresh, for most definitions of the word, eggs, some bacon, and a few pieces of toast. Compared to most of the Terrans on the ship, he ate well, though that was considering most of them chose never to come down to their crewmates level and thus didn't eat. Tali's meal was much the same, though she got a few pancakes made with dextro ingredients, that she cut with precision using a single fork, enjoying the flavors.
"So, what orders were Bill and you discussing before you decided to sweep me off my feet last night?" asked Tali through bites of her fluffy breakfast, and large gulps of coffee.
"Nothing too complex. He just wants us to pull off another miracle is all," explained Shepard, sopping up a bit of grease from his plate with one of the slices of toast, before shoving it into his mouth.
"Oh? Any sort of miracle in particular?" she said nonchalantly.
"They think they finally have the coordinates for that pirate base we've been trying to track down for the last six months. We're going to lead the ground assault squad. Captain Eisen said he wants as many live prisoners as possible. We have to find out who's backing these guys, and shut them down this time, rather than blow up the moon and kill all the little fish, so the big ones can slip away and try again with some new patsies," he explained, and Tali nodded, hearing a note of derision in his voice as he spoke of the incident from eight months previous.
"So, just some quick smash and grabs. Sounds like a rather mundane miracle. Still, this means you'll need your big boy pants, I suppose," she told him with a smirk, and the Terran smiled back at her, as they two of them finished up their meal, placing the plates back into the slot they'd come from.
"It does at that. It also means we should get going. We don't want to be late for the debrief," he told her, before curling her arm around her waist, and pulling her closer. Their lips met for a few short, sweet seconds, and Tali leaned in to push her hands into his chest, letting their bodies feel the warmth of each other, before her let her go, and then snapped off his omnitool, this time laying it properly on its holder. Smiling back at her, he walked to the door, which slid open at his approach, letting him out into a huge chamber which seemed to fly into the heavens, many times the height of their quarters, and at least as wide as every room combined.
"Blair, time to get big," he shouted into the empty space, which echoed with his words. After a moment of silence, he heard the telltale chirp of the AI tuning into him.
"Alright Shepard, just give me a moment, Captain Eisen is feeding me some data...done. Magic water, make my Terran grow!" came the voice of the of the AI, giving the same comment as always, just before liquid began to rush into the chamber from the walls, filling it far more quickly than one would expect given the size of the space. Still, the Terran stayed where he was, his body denser than the liquid, with its many floating drops of light in it, that soon reached the top of the chamber.
The instant it was full, lightning started to play along the walls, arcing outward, moving through the various light drops, and then flowing into the Terran, who jerked his body a bit at the touch of the energy, more of of habit than pain or surprise. The sensation was like a small static shock, but it felt warmer, a feeling at spread over every part of his body as the arcs continued, shocking him in places, and slowly draining the lights of their brightness, while causing his own skin to take on the green tones for a moment.
Seconds after he'd stepped into the space, the liquid drained, the light drops completely inside his form, which now filled the massive space. Coughing a few mouthfuls of the liquid out, Shepard shook his head, and moved his fingers through his close cropped hair, before leaning down and knocking on the now tiny door at his feet. Standing again, not even looking down, he pressed his hand into one of the chamber's walls, which slid open to reveal a skin tight suit, a set of powered armor, and a link pod.
"Ah, such a nice view," said Tali, looking up at Jon from the floor. The Terran man chuckled down at her, setting the link pod on the ground in front of her, before beginning to slip into the suit. Zipping it up, he was grateful for Tali's help in shaving the night before, meaning he didn't have to worry about hairs getting caught in the teeth. Once that was done, he pulled the armor out, and pressed a button on the rear of it, the suit standing straight up and allowing him to literally step into it after the back opened up. The thing sealed shut with a hiss of air, and his vision soon showed the start-up sequences, while it also projected Tali's face into the lower right corner of his view.
"A knight in shining armor. Every girl dreams of having one of those," she told him, while outside, her pod rose into the air. Instead of linking now though, she pushed a few buttons on her console, and had the thing start projecting a hologram of herself. First it created a wireframe bubble that expanded out in a sphere from her pod, slowly gaining definition of her arms, legs and face as it grew, then, as it reached the proper shape, the wireframe filed in one square at a time, adding the details of her flesh, and by the time Shepard was able to move his armor around, Tali was standing beside him, smiling at him.
"And of course, every knight needs his lady," he told her, taking her hand and guiding her out the door of the chamber and into the halls outside. The Intrepid's corridors were currently a small bustle of activity, as the command ship's staff rushed to and fro. On their scale were the Terrans and the projected crewmen, most in your average uniforms, though a scant few Terrans wore their armor. At their waists were the tracks one which ran trams running through the ship, carrying the smaller scale crew between their stations, most heading to tactical command, the bridge, or engineering.
"Briefing room three," said Shepard, and then led the way through the rush of bodies, getting a few nods of acknowledgement as he passed by a few crewmembers. He returned the nods he got, and after a few minutes, got to a drop tube. Leaping into the weightless space, he quickly kicked his way downward, pushing against some handholds in the wall, getting to the deck he needed only seconds before Tali joined him, and the pair went straight to the briefing room, finding the captain already there waiting for them.
"Captain Eisen," said Shepard, he and Tali both giving the fist over their heart salute, which Eisen returned, before motioning them closer. The two approached the man, Shepard noticing a slight grey tinge to his formerly dark ebony skin, and his eyes, which used to look bright holding that dull ache that came of too many nights without a rest cycle. Even though Terran bodies didn't require sleep per say, rest was useful, and constant work tended to tire one out. Had this been a civilian ship, Shepard would have ordered his captain to take a leave of absence for a few days. As it was a military vessel on a mission, he chose to hold his tongue, as Eisen pressed a button on the control panel in front of him, causing the tabletop to project a small holo of their current destination.
"This, Lady and Gentleman, is Torfan, an ice moon of an unassuming gas giant, which normally would be so far off the charts not to even bother naming," he began.
"But, this one has been home to several pirate clans in the past, including the Turanic Raiders who harried the Flotilla a few decades ago," continued Tali, and Eisen smiled at the quarian girl, nodding at her statement.
"Very good memory, Ms. Zorah. Indeed, this thing has been so used by the pirates, that most figure it's too obvious to be a pirate base anymore. Our intel says different though. According to our friend you and Mr. Shepard captured at the port a week ago, there's actually a hidden base somewhere on its dark side that's planning something big," as he spoke, he zoomed the map into the presumed location of the base, which was indicated with a large question mark.
"Right now, the plan is simple. We get in, hold in orbit above the base, and send in a ground assault team consisting of some of our best operatives. Hopefully, the pirates see reason, and surrender. If they don't, I want you down there to put the fear of Terra into them," said the captain, and Shepard nodded.
"What am I looking at for a team?" asked Shepard.
"I've got Gash, Catscratch, and Vagabond already down in the bay getting ready for a drop operation," answered Eisen, pressing another button and bringing up the profiles of the men. John 'Gash' Dekker was a tough marine type, with deep blue skin typical of you a close Zentraedi heritage, and tended for brute force over subtlety. Troy 'Catscratch' Carter was everything Gash wasn't, a focused individual with pale pink skin, who tended to treat each fight like a work of art, rather than a battle. Finally, Winston 'Vagabond' Chang was a nice mixture of the two, a man who'd seen far too many campaigns in his time, and was good at most forms of combat.
"So, heavy weapons, close combat, and long range. A good mixture of skills in that team. Is four men all I'm going to get for this op?" asked Shepard, planning out how best to make use of his crew.
"No, I want to add a few to this team, but I'm almost certain you're not going to like all my choices," he said, and then pushed a button to bring up three more files, and he was proven right on how Shepard would feel about it when he saw them. Leeroy 'Headlong' Jenkins, known for shooting first and asking questions never. Veetor 'Boom-Boom' Nara, a quarian of soft spoken nature on the ship, but who tended to be rather violent behind the controls of his unit, an old Monster class destroid he'd pulled out of mothballs. Lastly, but certainly not leastly, Todd 'Maniac' Marshall, a man who used to be a veritech pilot, before he'd proven to be more of a danger to his wingmates than his enemies.
"Hmm, a rather odd mixture there," commented Tali as she looked over the faces of the men who would be serving with her.
"I will admit, their skills aren't really what I would want watching my back either, but they're some of the best combat operatives on this ship. If you run into any trouble, they could be an asset in clearing out the enemy forces," explained Eisen.
"Or, they could trip the rest of us up and cause all kinds of problems on the ground," countered Shepard, as he stared at the floating images of the three men.
"Does that mean you'd rather leave them up here and pick your own team?" offered Eisen, and Shepard quickly shook his head.
"Sir, no, sir. Your assessment of their skills is accurate. Any one of those three is a useful battering ram, and I think I could use them for that purpose if things get dicey. Still, I do want to note that there will be risks bringing them if you want live captures," Shepard answered, going over scenarios they were likely to find on the ground, from entrenched positions to assault capable formations. Each offered a chance to use his team to their fullest, but for the most part, he saw this particular trio as a handicap rather than a help.
"I do want live captures, but I must reiterate that we have no idea what we're going to find when we hit that planet. For all we know they've got an army of old Titan War era wanzers waiting to launch, or maybe even some kind of new super weapon. Either way, these six give the best all around range of skills, with a lot of destructive force, if such becomes necessary," responded Eisen, and Shepard nodded, before saluting.
"This team will do fine, Captain. I assume you've already got my team in the bay prepping for at atmospheric drop?" asked Shepard, and it was Eisen's turn to nod.
"They should be prepped and ready by the time you get down there," he said, and Shepard saluted, before he and Tali exited the briefing room. It was another quick jaunt through the corridors, and up six decks, to get to the bays where they found a fight between their team, already in progress.
"You take that back, small fry!" shouted Maniac's voice across the bay floor, several of the mechanics, mostly holo AIs, shook their heads while pointedly ignoring the display. Shepard, growling a little under his breath, walked towards the sound of pair and got an eye full of Maniac pushing Boom-Boom's Mk. VI Monster. The machine was, as its name implied. Quite large, actually about twenty feet taller than the Terran who was doing the pushing, but Maniac was strong enough that the thing actually teetered a little to the side at the shove.
"I'm just saying, if you're not flying air support, what's the point of bringing you along," said the quarian, moving his arms, huge missile firing cannons, in a bring it on gesture. Maniac roared like a wild animal at the reminder of his clipped wings, and began to charge, at least until Shepard stepped between the two. With one punch he laid Maniac on the ground, but then followed it up with a shoulder smash into the Monster, causing it to topple over as well, falling onto its side with a huge bang.
"Is there an issue I should know about here, soldiers?" asked Shepard as he stared at the two. Maniac, scrambling to his feet, bared his teeth in a rather animalistic manner, but said nothing. Meanwhile the Monster was helped back to its feet by Vagabond and Gash.
"Sir, no, sir. I was just questioning why a pilot would be assigned ground combat duty, and we let our discussion grow a little too heated, sir," said Boom-Boom as he stood back up. Shepard, looking over the Monster for any real damage, nodded.
"Is this true, Maniac?" he asked, and the Terran man's green skin seemed to take a shine as he suppressed an urge to scream, but then nodded.
"Just a discussion, yes, sir," he said.
"Good, well then, let me settle this discussion for the both of you. Maniac's record as a flier is very good, and he's got a kill count on pirate ships that is the equal of anyone else on this ship. His particular talents in that arena transfer quite well to ground combat duty, and we'll be making full use of his skills, just the same as yours, Boom-Boom, do I make myself clear?" asked Shepard, and the Terran stood at attention, while one could see the quarian do much the same in his cockpit.
"Sir, yes, sir," they said almost in perfect unison, as their training kicked in.
"Good, now, I want everyone here prepped and ready in ten for a drop. We're going down to take out a pirate base, and I want our boots on the ground as soon as we get there," ordered Shepard, putting on his best command voice.
"Ten minutes, sir? I thought we were closer than that," asked Headlong, and Shepard shook his head.
"Ten seconds, Private Jenkins. Ten, nine, eight…" Shepard let the numbers trail off as the six in his squad quickly began to run to their assigned tasks. Gash got a gatling gun from one of the lockers, and quickly ran through his weapon check, clearing each barrel, and getting the thing spinning for a second just to make sure it was clear. Catscratch, meanwhile, pulled a small set of handles from his locker, pushing a latch on them to unfold a sets of blades that came out between his fingers, giving him three, thirty foot claws, on each of his hands, which he quickly went through a kata or two with, before sheathing them and sticking the handles on his belt. Vagabond merely pulled out his rifle, a longer sniper model, that he took only a moment to check, before standing at attention with the first two in front of Shepard.
Headlong was far more disorganized, his locker literally a treasure trove of weapons that spilled out onto the bay floor as he opened the thing. Luckily, he kept most of them in such a state that they didn't fire on purpose, let alone on accident, and so he was able to safely let them clatter to the floor, before digging out an old looking pair of pistols, the kind that fire protoculture canisters. He then dug a little deeper into the pile, pulling several sets of clip for the things, that he put in his armor's hip deployers, before snapping a pair home into the pistols, and then rushing to his position.
Boom-Boom walked over to the nearby AIs, who finished outfitting the Monster he drove for battle. Affixing the set of four heavy reflex guns to the overhead, and loading solid state slugs into the triple barreled arm cannons, each slug loaded with a variety of explosives and compounds for any situations the reflex guns couldn't handle. The mechanics then ran through the Monster's check, one that the quarian interrupted twice by moving just slightly, forcing them to start the diagnostic over, before he was finally deemed ready and able, taking his place in the lineup with a heavy thud of metal feet on the deck plates.
Maniac, living up to his own name, kept an arsenal in his locker, but one that was much better maintained than Headlong's. This was a place of near worship for these tools of war, with each gleaming like he polished them every day(which Tali had once said she saw him do). A reflex assault rifle, a shotgun that fired shells like Jenkin's pistols, but larger, and at last a thing that could only be called a bazooka. All were soon snapped in place on Maniac's back, slowing the man down, as he ponderously took his position at the end of the line.
"Three, two, one," Shepard finished, almost two minutes after the last count. Still, it was pleasing to see the lineup with their arms and armor ready for combat, helmets closed up around their faces. Motioning with one hand, he had Tali step behind him, and heard the whirring noise as her holo shut down, and her pod then floated into his back, connecting with a buzzing noise as the barrier field surrounded him, making him the most well defended man of the squad. Shepard then ran through his own combat arsenal quickly, creating and dismissing a dozen hand weapons made of ME fields, before standing at attention before his troops.
"Good to see everyone ready. We should be coming up on the planet in a moment, so I want you all to-HOLY MASTERS!" the last was said as the ship exited FTL, the sensation of the vessel sliding gently to a stop, just before the world exploded. All of seven of the ground troops, standing near the bay door, their transport by their side, were tossed forward as the bay behind them was torn straight through by some red lance of light. Before they could even adapt to that, another came, this one ripping apart the space above their heads, as alarms tried to warn of a breach, the bay door having been sundered by the second strike, a rush of air blowing everything in the bay out into space.
Seven forms tumbled into the inky blackness, and Shepard took a moment to look back behind them. The ship, the Intrepid that had been his home for almost a year, was exploding outward. Forms could be seen in the flames as tongues of it bored through way through the hull. Briefly, those forms writhed in space, but even the Terran's hardy bodies need some air to survive, and worse the flames consumed their flesh. Watching the horror, Shepard's thoughts were grim as he saw not a single man or woman survive their exit.
"Tali, report!" he ordered.
"An attack from the planet. It's some kind of heavy thanix cannon, liquid metal in a mass effect field. It must have hit the instant we exited FTL, before the barriers could raised," she said, and Shepard could hear her three fingered hand flying over her console as she ran every sort of scan she could on the ship, and towards the planet below them.
"How many survivors?" asked Shepard, looking desperately towards the bridge, which was currently a smoking hole, with many similar wounds dotting the hull of the warship.
"I'm checking...computer systems onboard are dead, AIs stored there are just gone. Biological signs are zero. I don't think….wait, ME signals, some of the mechanics are nearby. They've shut down to save power, but they're floating close to us. I'm counting at least thirty," she said at last, and Shepard nodded gravely.
"No one else?" he said rather dejectedly, as he and his small group tumbled away from the ship, beams of red light finally stopping their assault on the vessel.
"I'm afraid not," she told him sadly, knowing how many of their friends were now just so much space dust on the hulking wreck, which was falling ponderously towards the nearby planet.
"Those bastards! I'll kill them!" shouted, of all people, Boom-Boom, aiming his cannons down at the planet below. Shepard, reacting with trained speed, shot his heel jets and stood right in front of the Monster, his helmet filling the view of the quarian inside the cockpit.
"You will, I promise you, you'll get a chance to hurt them bad, but right now, we're not in a position to be firing on a planet with an unknown weapon, so you will stand down, now," he said, placing his hands over the large reflex guns, so that if they did fire, Boom-Boom would be shooting through him. The message, luckily came through clear, and the Monster's guns went cold again, as Shepard pulled him, and everyone else together.
"Alright, we've still got out mission on that planet, and now we have to capture that base to get a comm out of this system. Tali, can you extend your field out to give us a soft landing, while still making it look like we're just another piece of debris from the ship?" asked Shepard.
"I can, but I'll have drain half my power doing that," she warned, and Shepard nodded.
"A cost, but a good one. Okay, let's gather up all the holos of the AIs that got blown out with us. We're going to need as many hands as we can get down there," he instructed, and his men fanned out, quickly grabbing the micronian palm sized emitters, handing them off to Boom-Boom, who stored them in his own computer system for now. That task took just long enough for Tali to calculate a fall angle that would carry them near, but not right to, the firing point on the planet, which was interestingly enough near where the bulk of the ship would strike down.
"This was too well planned to be a coincidence," said Shepard on a personal comm to Tali, as everyone gathered around them, his suit just starting to feel the friction of air moving past as they entered the thin atmosphere of Torfan.
"They knew our route, the exact point we would emerge from FTL, and when we would arrive to the moment. That information is deep. Worse, they knew the ship design well enough to target it to kill the crew, without breaching any of the protoculture engines. This speaks of a breach at a high level," she agreed, while still calculating descent vectors and other such things. Trying her best to make them appear like just another set of debris, she slowly extended her ME field around the whole squad, gathering them all close to Shepard as air outside began to spark a bit with their passing.
"Hopefully, the others haven't realized that yet. Keep this between us. We need them focused on this mission, not what we'll do when we get home," ordered Shepard, wrapping his arms around Headlong and Vagabond, while the two of them soon did the same to those beside them, with the Monster pressing itself tight behind them. About them a few pieces of hull from their ship burned to dust, while above and behind, the greatest mass of the wreck was slowly angling away from them, its impact zone likely to be a few miles from the base Tali was aiming for.
"All hands, brace!" shouted Tali, and Shepard felt his muscles tense, as Tali's signal took control of his armor, and likely those of the other troops, locking limbs in place, and filling the space between the armor plate layers with impact gel. When they finally slammed home, hard, onto the ice, it melted as the hot air touched them, creating a small pool, which they then splashed through, before the field pushed them all away from each other, letting the momentum of their fall out as they rolled around on the ground, the liquid about them freezing quickly around their bodies.
"Report!" shouted Shepard as he broke out of his thin layer, with a bit of an assit from Tali, and then proceeded towards the nearest ice block, Gash, whom he had to punch in the arm to start the ice breaking.
"Sir, unharmed, sir," came a quick snap off reply from everyone in the unit. Nodding, thankful for Tali's skill with her pod, Shepard and the rest soon get each other going, with only a bit of trouble with Boom-Boom's Monster that required them to adjust Gash's palm blasters to a high heat, low density setting to melt some of the offending ice.
"Tali, did you get an overhead view of the area for us?" asked Shepard as he and the team finally all stood up.
"What kind of girl do you take me for, Shepard? Of course I did. But I don't think it'll be necessary. If you'll look to your left, and position yourselves carefully, you'll be able to see the enemy base about a mile and half off," she instructed him, and he proceeded to the rise she spoke of. Over it, Shepard spotted the base she was speaking of, settled into the ice like some kind fortress, along with a literally army of enemy units ranging from ground troops, to wanzers, to far too many tanks to count.
"Vagabond, I need a spot check," said Shepard, and the aforementioned man joined him at the edge of the cliff they were on. Whipping out his rifle, he set it up with a single motion, and then began to adjust the view through his scope, a few that Tali soon linked with, so she could project a holo for everyone to look at.
"Would you look at all those guys, there's got to be a thousand wanzers down there," said Headlong, looking down at his pistols, obviously feeling a little inadequate to the task at hand.
"I count almost twice as many heavy vehicles, mostly tanks, but with a few heavy transports as well," added Catscratch, and Shepard nodded, while pointing towards the structure they were all gathered in front of.
"They seem to be rather well defended even without the troops. See here, four anti-fighter turrets, and whatever this thing is," he said, pointing to something that, at first, appeared to be some kind of crown decoration for the base, but a quick motion to the thermographic version of the scene showed the thing was red hot on three of the six spikes coming out from the dome that was at the center.
"Hmm, it looks to be something like a thanix cannon, but the rotating structure allows them to swap the exit barrel. Not a bad design. You lose a bit of punch like that, but you make up for it in being able to fire continuously," commented Maniac, and everyone agreed with his assessment.
"So, why do you think they have this many guys here? I mean, this is way more than a pirate base would have. This is like a whole army," commented Headlong, which got Shepard to thinking, before he shook his head.
"It doesn't matter. Our mission is to take this base down, and capture as many of the personnel here as possible," he finally declared, and this got a laugh from Boom-Boom.
"Yeah, seven of us, versus all that. Totally a fight we can win," said the quarian sarcastically, a sentiment you could see even the veteran soldiers seemed to agree with. Before Shepard could chide them for being defeatists before the battle had even begun though, the troops just outside the base began to march. Wanzers flanking a load of tanks and cargo haulers, all marching off towards some unknown destination across the frozen waves of the ice.
"Where are you all going? Tali, can you give me a sky eye view?" asked Shepard, holding up his left arm so that she could launch a small drone orb from the omnitool. When that was done, the holo shifted to a larger view map of the area, eventually revealing that the course the troops were on would carry them straight towards the largest section of the crashed Intrepid, which sat in a divot the great ship had carved into the ice on impact, a line leading down into a depression, rather than a circular crater due to the angle of descent.
"Hmm, interesting," said Shepard, and then began to type things into his omnitool. Over the next few minutes, as the enemy force pulled away, he ran a dozen or more sims, showing everyone what he thought would be a good plan, and asking for input from each soldier, detailing what they would need to do, and getting their assessment on whether their skills were up to the challenge. About a half hour later, everyone seemed prepared, and Shepard turned to the team that would follow the enemy.
"I know this is asking a lot of you four, but with your tools and talents, I think you'll be able to do it," he assured his men, looking over the force he would send against almost a thousand enemies, while he and the remaining two would assault the much smaller force that was left behind at the base, numbering maybe fifty wanzers, and half as many tanks, though backed up by the turrets that were built onto the base itself.
"Commander, we've got the easy job here. That big turret's gonna be tougher to beat than these small fries," said Maniac reassuringly.
"Agreed. My Monster is worth a thousand of those wanzers," declared Boom-Boom.
"And each one of us is worth five hundred of their troops, so that means we've got them outnumbered at least two to one," added Headlong. Shepard then turned to the one who would be in charge of the force he was sending out.
"Do you think you can lead them to victory?" he asked Vagabond, who nodded, hefting his sniper rifle high.
"Shepard, you plan sounds flawless, and with us to execute it, I see nothing that they could throw at us which could cost us victory," said the second in command, who then motioned, and the four troops began to run along the ridgeline they had been standing on. The enemy force had a half hour head start, but their number and their units would delay them much longer, as even the Monster was faster than the typical wanzer, and so they would arrive there. At the same time, Catscratch and Gash made ready to take the camp below.
OoOoO
"Ah, finally," said the turian from his personal wanzer, painted in his family colors, and with decorations of several sets of old krogan armor set about the thing, making it look like a hodgepodge of pieces, rather than the sleek machine it was underneath all the random bits.
"This is Tonn Actus to all troops. Remember, our goal here is whatever weapons or stores might have survived the assault and crash. That plunder belong to Haliat. Anyone caught trying to line their own pockets will be dealt with, harshly," he informed the troops, who gave him a grudging aye, before descending on the great hulk like ants on a corpse. Some instantly climbed inside, ready to find whatever they could, hoping to be rewarded for the valour, while others hung back, keeping an eye open for any automated defenses that might decide now to activate.
Tonn himself was amongst the latter group, slowly making his way down the ramp like depression and then stopping just in front of the ship. It was huge, he had to give the Terrans that. It was as large as a dreadnaught, a command ship he believed they called it, and had it been allowed, the things guns probably would have torn their base to pieces from orbit. Elanos had somehow known exactly when they would arrive, however, and so they'd been shot to pieces, the crew killed even before they could launch a single veritech, or get off some warning to the next ship that would be coming.
"This is team one, we're inside, and there doesn't appear to be much left," said an asari voice over his comm.
"Ignore the rest for now, secure the protoculture engines first. We need more of that goop to make Haliat's plan work," said the turian, and got a confirmation click over his comm. Looking around, he saw a few nervous spins among the ground troops, who obviously had the most trouble maneuvering around the wreck compared to his units inside their mechs. He just scoffed aside their concerns though. No one could have survived this type of crash, and even if they did, how would anyone stand up to the three thousand men they had? Even the giants weren't strong enough to fight those sorts of odds…
"Commander Actus! Look!" shouted one of the ground troops, pointing, and Tonn ponderously turned his wanzer to face where he was indicating, and saw something shocking. It was a mech, obviously, something like his own, but by far larger in width, if a bit shorter in height. It had an array of four massive cannons on its back, and one couldn't help but notice the arms were also guns, thick things, which seemed to be glowing.
"Troops, turn and fire!" commanded Tonn, and his troops moved like the ill trained mass of sentients that they were. Not a one seemed to remember their training, but still, ragtag as they were, he could only see one enemy unit standing at the lip of the depressing the crashing Terran ship had made. Probably some survivor planning on going out in a blaze of glory, nothing to worry about there.
"On the rise!" shouted another voice, this one batarian, and Tonn again turned, finding himself staring up the almost sheer ice cliff that the crashed ship abutted. On that rise one could see three shapes, Terrans obviously, all holding weapons that were aimed downward, and before he could shout at his troops to fire on them, a woosh sound echoed over the area. Turning, he saw flames, huge sheets of them, falling from the sky onto the ice seeming to originate from the mech on the rise.
"By the Ancestors, what are they doing?" he demanded to know, finally holding up his wanzer's arm. The thing was a hand model, and carried a small, for a wanzer, auto pistol, that he aimed at the mech unit, figuring that since it was the one firing, it was the threat. Before he could squeeze off even a single volley, however, a shot from above neatly sniped his weapon from his hand, leaving the wanzer's arm a smouldering wreck.
"Pick your targets and fire!" he demanded, and suddenly the little crash depression was a wild melee of bullets, blasts, and flames, as the mech at the lip continued to fire out canisters from its arms, things that would burst open in the air, and then spread out this odd gel that seemed to catch fire the instant it was thin enough. It would then land seemingly harmlessly on the ice, and finally caused Tonn to change tactics. The mech, despite being armed with several more guns, wasn't doing more than trying to pin them into the depression, obviously allowing his three friends to turn this into a kill box.
"Ignore the mech, kill those Terrans! Bring the wall down!" he demanded, and they began to move closer to the wall, to get an angle where they could fire straight at the Terrans, while using their own crashed ship for cover. Tonn heard a few shouts as he shifted position, using his only functioning arm, one that was just a cannon, to try and collapse the cliff beneath the feet of one of the Terrans above, one who was firing down pistol shots. Oddly, other than the one with the sniper rifle, the other two seemed to be laying down suppressing fire, keeping them pinned, never going for the kill.
He kept his eye on the scanners, looking into space and trying to see if maybe Elanos had been wrong, and maybe there was another ship in orbit, and they were being bunched up to be killed in one blast from the sky. It was after a few seconds of this that one of the shouts for help below his feet got his attention, namely because as he tried to move, his mech's servos protested loudly. Looking down, he found his feet were covered up to their ankles in water, water that was swiftly freezing over, and had already frozen the ground troops solid before they could warn the mechs or tanks.
"What the?!" demanded Tonn, trying in vain to tear his unit out of the ice, but even as it cracked, more of the water from the fires above poured into the fissures, refreezing them the instant the liquid stopped moving. Around him, he watched as some of the wanzers and mechs stupidly opened themselves up, their pilots trying to swim to safety as their units were submerged and frozen, only for the fools to end up pushed backwards by the tide, becoming frozen themselves. Looking up one last time, he could see the Terrans clapping their hands together, mocking him and his unit, but before he could shoot at them defiantly, the water reached his arms, and froze them in place, leaving him trapped within his wanzer.
OoOoO
"This is away team to base team, do you read me?" asked Vagabond as he watched the water rise to cover the last of the wanzers, leaving the whole force trapped in the ice, all without having to kill a single one of them.
"This is base team, Vagabond, do you have some good news for us?" asked Shepard.
"I do indeed. I am happy to report that the enemy force is frozen solid here. We've had to waste most of our ammo to keep them pinned, but not a single one of them is dead by our hands. I think command's gonna be happy about that," he told Shepard, who smirked into his comm.
"Excellent. You four get back here. Hopefully, we'll have the base secure by the time you get back," said Shepard, before closing the connection.
"Away team did their business, now we do ours' gentlemen," he said, and Gash and Catscratch nodded, the former starting his gatling gun spinning, while the latter brought out his claws. Across from them, over an open plain of ice stood the enemy base, squat and imposing with its turrets and smattering of tanks and wanzers. They seemed to be none the wiser about their comrades status, just milling about. Making note of positions, Shepard made a single motion with his hand, and his three troops charged off the icy rise.
"For the INTREPID!" shouted Gash, slowed by his gatling, but able to hit them from farther away than the other two. The instant he had line of sight, bolts of blue light flew across the intervening space, small drops of reflex energy which slammed hard into the enemies. The first few to taste the weapons power barely seemed to realize what was going on. Surprisingly, despite a gatling gun's seemingly wild firing pattern, each shot was precise, with wazners finding their joints exploding as the shots landed, and tanks having their turrets and other weapons blown off, leaving them little more than tin cans on wheels.
"The turrets are mine, you two take out the rest," ordered Shepard as he whipped out his arms. Tali, behind him, quickly ran her fingers to the bone, calculating and recalibrating the ME field her pod generated, finally creating the short sword and buckler combo that was Shepard's favorite for close in fighting. Beside him, Catscratch ran, the two Terran churning the ice beneath their feet to just loose frost with every powerful tread, and Gash taking up the rear, moving much slower forward, but laying down covering fire all the while.
Their foes weren't completely still all this time. Ten seconds after the assault began, and twelve tanks and seven wanzers were laid out by the fire, the purple sheen of harden barriers covered the remaining vehicles, while what few foot troops began to rush back into the base for protection. The harden barriers were like thick skins over the things they were guarding, and as Gash continued to fire, taking one step at a time, his shots impacted, and were absorbed by the barriers themselves, turning his fight into a battle of attrition.
The harden barriers had become the norm over the past decade or so of combat. More energy hungry than the supposed 'soft' barrier of the time before the Terrans arrival, they couldn't be kept on at all times, necessitating that they be activated only when battle started. However, unlike their soft counterparts, harden barriers provided protection from the protoculture based reflex weapons of the Terrans, not popping as that generation had done. At the same time, they were far more protected from kinetic impacts, a flaw in the previous layered barriers that had proven so effective at blocking protoculture weapons. Harden barriers had essentially brought combat to an equilibrium, as defense and offense balanced out, making battles a more tactical affair again.
Still, the Terrans had first move advantage, and as the pirates tried to bring their weapons to bare, turrets slowly turning to face them, and wanzers pounding their feet into the ice as they changed their direction, the Terrans came on. Three miles of open ice lay between where Shepard and Catscratch had started, and the giant covered almost a third of that distance in the ten seconds it took for the enemy to finally begin counter firing. The tanks blasted out, sending shells with enough kinetic force to shatter the ice, while the smaller pellets of the wanzers' guns tore through the air.
Shepard caught every shot on his buckler, ducking and weaving through the fire so that not a single shell could get through his guard, while always maintaining that forward motion. Catscratch meanwhile, danced into the fire. He never took it head on, always moving to the side, or leaping over it, and even ducking and rolling a few times. This made his progress slower, but also far more distracting, as more fire was shot towards him, the pilots of the tanks and mechs getting more and more frustrated as the Terran seemed to be mocking them with how agiley he moved through their lines of fire.
Thirty seconds after the attack had begun, the turrets on the base finally opened up on the approaching attackers. Huge balls of flaming metal came screaming from the four heavy turrets. Each orb had enough power behind it, that if it had been allowed to hit even Shepard's buckler head on, it would have torn through the thing in a second. The first shots were wild, however, fired the instant the computers inside the base gave the gunners any kind of targeting lock. This meant that the shots were not well calculated, and the Terrans were easily able to dodge them, the huge balls impacting the ice, and creating showers of steam and rain, obscuring the giants for moments, before they burst from the clouds, even closer than before.
A full minute, with the Terrans one mile from the base, saw the massive six barreled dome turret that had shot down the Intrepid finally take aim at the oncoming warriors. Taking their aim towards the closest of the three, one could hear the whine across the plain of ice and frost as the thing spun itself to power, and then let loose a titanic blast. A stream of red and black power, liquid metal in a sheath made of a mass effect field, came pouring from within the barrel. Aimed well, the thing would have struck the Terran leader center of mass, had not Shepard leapt far higher than his size said he should be able to, Tali lightening his body so he could clear the attack, which bored into the ice where he'd been.
The shot was impossible to move, the mass effect field wouldn't allow them to shift the firing angle while it was being fired, and so they had to exhaust the shot. This resulted in not only a deep wound in the landscape in front of the base, but a massive steam bank which interfered with sensors, as the hot liquid in the air obscured everything. Not that anyone stopped firing, just that now they fired wildly into the fog, hoping to hit something in their desperation, even as more of the gatling fire came streaming from within the mist, knocking more of them down.
A scene like a horror holo then played itself out in the lives of the pirates. Silhouettes of the Terrans, even more massive than their normal bodies, were seen in the mist, before the titans themselves emerged like wild beasts, tendrils of the fog sticking to them as they burst forth. In one motion, the one with claws struck. His blades were designed for close range combat, the barriers of the wanzers and tanks, not so much. The barriers, designed to stop speedy projectiles, were almost worthless against the slower, but far more persistent, impacts of those sharp claws, which tore through the metal beneath the barriers as well, laying three wanzers out even as the Terran skidded to a halt and search for more targets.
The Terran with his sword and shield didn't even bother with the tanks and mechs, instead leaping off the head of one of the mechs, to leap skyward. He landed hard on the base, the turret gunners quickly realizing they were vulnerable, even as the shining blue blade of the Terran struck fast and hard, cutting one of the turrets off from the base, and then kicking it hard enough to slam into its sister beside it, taking both out in a single motion. The Terran then ran around the base of the large central turret, seemingly ignoring it as he dashed to the other two, smaller ones, and in a single spinning motion, slashed both clean in half.
"Tali, bomb blade, five seconds!" shouted Shepard as he leapt again, this time his arc carrying him to the center of the huge turret, his feet landing heavily on the dome of metal, which tried in vain to shake him off by spinning, and bringing the barrels of the great weapon up like some kind of cage. The Terran wasn't tossed aside so easily, however, and instead gripped his sword tightly in his left hand, before somehow releasing it for a moment, reversing his grip on it, so the blade was pointed downward.
"Clear the deck!" he shouted, and suddenly, below, the clawed Terran dashed away, back into the fog, with only two tanks and four wanzers continuing to fire at his retreat, thinking that they had somehow won the day. What they were ignorant of was Shepard atop their greatest weapon, which he stabbed his blade into, the field around the protoculture energy within it sheering into the metal. He didn't stop stabbing until his palm was flat against the surface of the dome, before he then went straight upwards into the sky, his buckler fading, the mass effect field focused upward, allowing the jets on his palms and heels to carrying him skyward.
The reason for the quick retreat of the Terrans was soon laid bare, as the turret suddenly found a shaft of blue energy coming from an odd angle in its dome. Then a second, and finally a third, before the ME field of the blade failed completely, and a sphere of destruction rocked the whole of the plain, knocking the sky bound Terran into a nearby cliff face that abutted the base, while also scattering the fog, revealing the other two Terrans ducked down, riding out the shockwave of the blast. The few standing ground forces were knocked to the ice, and they did not rise as the shining sphere of light finally faded, their base's defenses totally destroyed in four minutes, sixteen seconds, by three Terrans on foot.
"Base team to away team, do you have an ETA on your return?" asked Shepard as he peeled himself out of the hole he'd made during his impact on the cliff.
"We'll be there in about an hour, Lieutenant Commander," came Vagabond's voice over the comm, as Shepard began to make his way slowly down the cliff, not trusting Tali to have enough power to bring him down on her own, so he did it one foot smashed into the ice at a time, only letting go when he was only a hundred feet from the roof of the base, and then slamming down onto it.
"Base is externally secure. By the time you get back, we should have the internal structure secure as well. After that, Boom-Boom, you, Tali, and the mechanic AI's should be able to get inside the base proper and get us a comm line out of the system," said Shepard, leaping down onto the ice below, just as Catscratch walked up to him, Gash only a few steps behind.
"Begin rounding up the prisoners out here. I'll see about those inside," he ordered, getting a set of nods from them, before they started going around, ripping tanks and mechs apart with their bare hands, and grabbing the pilots in their hands and tossing them onto the ice.
"This is an open channel to all pirate forces. We've won this, it's over. You know how we operate. This is your one chance to surrender, otherwise, I get to stain my boots," said Shepard simply, placing his hand on the base, standing right at the door.
"If you're willing to surrender, come out now," he told them on the open channel. As if they had been waiting for that, the massive doors to the base swung aside, and a line of armored micronians began to come out. They appeared to be a good mixture of the various galactic races. Most obvious were the krogans, their hunch backed forms easy to spot from above, though they seemed to be the least numerous. The others were quickly identified as turians, asari, salarians, and vorcha, with a smattering of quarians, and even three volus mixed in.
"An excellent decision," he told them, letting Tali give him the numbers, even as she used his hand on the base to send a pulse through the thing, registering every movement inside to see if there were any holdouts. While she processed that, the ground troops were slowly moved just outside the base, the two massive Terrans standing guard over them. After a few minutes, Shepard got a list on his display that showed the breakdown of the enemy forces by species, mostly showing it to be an eclectic mixture from across the galaxy.
"Well now, this is odd," said Tali's voice in his ear, and he moved a finger to switch to a private channel between the two of them.
"What have you got, holdouts in the base?" he asked.
"No. Well, maybe not," she said, and replaced the list with a schematic of the base, which rotated in his view as it labeled the various chambers inside, including four separate docks where they must have been keeping their mechs and tanks when not in use. The big surprise though was a shaft set into the back of the base, one that descended into the ice, and just kept going and going until the scanner couldn't show anymore.
"Hmm, reactor core, or possibly some kind of high security storage chamber?" asked Tali, and Shepard shrugged, before turning to the group of prisoners on the ground.
"Alright, I need to talk with someone in charge. Who's got the highest rank here?" he asked on an open channel, and got a dozen arguing voices, as various pirate 'captains' declared themselves in charge. Listening to them bicker for less than ten seconds, Shepard finally pointed a finger towards one, a female turian by the look of her armor, and then Tali quickly isolated her comm channel, allowing them to speak.
"I'll be brief. There's a shaft at the rear of the base that goes down farther than we can see. Is there anything down there we should be aware of?" he asked her in a calm voice.
"Ha, your vaunted Terran technology can't see our whole base? It's only three miles deep, what's the issue?" she asked, and Shepard sighed. Holding his palm out, he fired a small blast so that it struck the ice just at her feet, causing her to stagger back as the solid turned into an explosion of steam.
"Cooperation would be in your best interest at this time," he said calmly again, and something about the way he said it seemed to cause her to tremble even more than the shot itself.
"Y-y-yes, I see. Well, that's Elanos Haliat's personal storage, he's the big boss of this base. He's a turian, former SPECTRE some think, no idea myself. He's the one who provided the specs for that big turret you trashed, and he's the one who plans our raids. He has big containers sent down there sometimes. Most of us think that he keeps the choicest plunder to himself and puts it all down there, but no one who's gone down has come back up to talk about it," she explained, and Shepard nodded.
"I will note your cooperation in my file," said the Terran simply, turning his head towards the others.
"There's an unknown space below the base. Tali and I are going to check it out. Keep these prisoners out here, and get Boom-Boom and the mechanics to work on the comms the moment they get here. If we need backup, it would be best to get it here on the double," he ordered, and the two men nodded, before Shepard went into the base. The route was easy enough to follow, at least to his destination, as it was at the rear of one of the open bays. All around him, however, were small paths that someone of his scale couldn't enter, making him a little nervous as he stared down at them.
"You're certain the base is clean?" he asked Tali as they entered the rear bay, walking into an open, and deathly quiet room.
"As much this suit allows. I will warn you, though, I have less than five percent power left. I can provide logistical support, but that's about it," she told him, and Shepard nodded, taking a slight detour towards a large rack near the rear of the bay. A quick elbow to the lock, and he opened the thing to reveal a set of wanzer weapons, probably belonging to one of the pirates. Sadly, most projectile weapons required a link with the wanzer's power grid to work, but there was a knife just large enough for Shepard's grip that he took out of the thing, testing the weight with a few swings. Satisfied with the weapon, he proceeded towards the only lift that went down the shaft.
"Going down, bottom floor, unknown pirate booty and possible weapons," he said, pushing the button. Over the next few minutes, the lift slowly made its way down, and Shepard already regretted his choice, missing the gravtubes that made getting between decks on a Terran ship so easy.
"wrzh-buzz-static-kush-perd, w-buzz-kush-am arriv-kush-click," went the Terran's radio suddenly, startling him and the quarian for a moment, before the two shared a nervous laugh. Looking upwards, Jon scanned the roof of the lift with his eyes, before pointing his palm upwards, and using a small jet set mostly for heat to burn a hole in it. Thankfully, the lift was made of the same material as the shaft, and melted easily, the small hole allowing the signal through a lot more clearly.
"This is Shepard, can you repeat that last transmission?" he asked.
"Yes, Sir. Away team has just made it back, and the mechanics are already going through the base. The computers up here are trashed sir, and according to the pirates they weren't like that when they left them. No data at all on anything up here. Comm systems will take a while to reprogram, but they say we should have a line out by the end of the hour," came Vagabond's voice, and Shepard grimaced under his helmet at the news. They were here for information after all, and computers being wiped tended to mean someone had even more to hide than you thought they did.
"Acknowledged. We're two and a half miles down now, probably hit bottom of the shaft in a few minutes. Get those comms up as soon as you can, and make sure they bring some heavy artillery when reinforcements come, because I'm thinking this won't be just money we find down here," he ordered.
"Acknowledged, Lieutenant Commander. Good hunting," came the reply, Shepard and Tali waiting in silence again for the next ten minutes, before the lift finally came to a stop at the bottom of the shaft.
"Full suite scanners," order Shepard, as he stepped out into a space larger even than the hanger above. This one, however, was completely dark, and the only lights were Shepard's armor, his palms projecting shafts of light out of their apertures as he spun around, trying to minimize his profile as best he could.
"Data feed incoming. Most of the space is empty down here. Weird, you'd think with a place this large….Shepard, turn your left hand four degrees left," said Tali, and Shepard did as instructed. What he revealed was odd looking to say the least. At first, they thought maybe it was some kind of trick of the light, making a veritech appear smaller than it really was, but as Shepard walked up to it, it became quickly obvious that this wasn't the case, as the unit in plane mode barely came up to Shepard's hip.
"What in the world, I thought that veritechs required protoculture," commented Tali, remembering how the transformation between the various modes used more power than eezo tech civilizations could generate in such a small space as the fighter. Scanning the thing as Shepard put a hand on it. The scans showed exactly what she thought she would see, a scaled down version of the veritechs that made up a good portion of the Terrans' military might.
"Weird, it's got an protoculture engine, but it doesn't look like a model I recognize. Heck, most of this thing looks ancient," she said, projecting the specs on Shepard's view. Shepard barely saw them though, as his light focused on an image on the unit's side. It was a red circle, cut with a white arrow in the middle.
"It is ancient, Tali. This thing was part of the RDF," said Shepard breathlessly, moving his finger gently over the symbol, and then looking towards the rear of the craft to see the words, U.N. Spacey stamped on what would be the leg when the unit transformed out of jet mode.
"Robotech Defense Force? You mean this thing is from the Robotech Wars?" she said, realizing they were looking at a museum piece, one that had no business being away from Earth, let alone out here inside the vault of some pirate lord.
"So, do you like what you see?" said a voice from the darkness suddenly, and Shepard instantly killed his palm lights, while his sensors began to fill his view with what they saw in the darkness. Before he could find the source of the voice, however, a staccato of shots flew from the side, the distinctive sound of a veritech gunpod echoing over the chamber. Little drops of yellow light, specially processed protoculture, shone in the dark, and Shepard jumped to the side, his reflexes just that heartbeat too slow as one of the shots struck his shoulder.
"Argh!" he shouted in surprise and pain. His armor, designed a century after the Robotech War, should have been more than capable of blocking the shot, but somehow it punched straight through his guard, burning a hole into his bone and flesh, and leaving his right arm a limp hunk of metal at his side as he fell to the ground. Less than a second after, he felt the cool, numbing touch of medigel in his wound, as Tali pumped the healing goo to the area, and he scrambled behind the line of veritechs, staring into the darkness.
"Not bad, Terran. That should have pierced your heart," said the voice, and then with a dull thunk, a flood light activated in the chamber's ceiling. This was followed by the things turning on in series, each coming to life with a dull thunk, and revealing that the chamber was filled with various containers, lining the walls, with a few placed here and there seemingly haphazardly around the floor. The biggest surprise were still the veritechs, in jet mode, a full flight of twenty, ready and waiting for battle, while a battloid mode veritech with some additional armor and a booster pack, stood in a distant corner, his gunpod smoking as he aimed it towards the prone Shepard.
"Elanos Haliat, I presume," said Shepard, flexing the fingers in his arm, finding while he couldn't lift it, they still worked, so he passed the wanzer knife to his right hand, leaving his left free.
"Hmm, obviously one of my men up top said something they shouldn't have. I'll have to find out which one and punish them once I deal with all of you," he said, beginning a slow, deliberate walk towards the veritechs.
"You sure about that? I've got a squad of one hundred soldiers already up there, waiting for me. If you come peacefully, we'll take you into custody without harming you," advised Shepard, crawling his way to keep the units between him and the pilot of the veritech, figuring he wouldn't fire at the machines, as he hadn't yet.
"A bad bluff, my Terran friend. You must have been on the Intrepid, probably working in the bay or some such. You probably have only about twenty troops up there, and I assure you, they're not going to be there long," as he spoke, Elanos transformed the veritech to guardian mode, letting the jets in the heels of the unit carry him upward, and then pointing his gunpod towards Shepard. The Terran, seeing his cover evaporate due to the enemy's elevation advantage, fired towards him, palm blasts shooting wildly from his left hand even as he rushed towards the cover of one of the crates.
"Heh, a futile effort," said the pilot, the shots being absorbed by the purple sheen of a hardened barrier, even as he blasted out several shots from the gunpod, and fired four missiles, which exploded hard on the ground around Shepard. The shots were dodged with skill and grace, the feet somehow moving the massive humanoid around them in a desperate dance. The explosions, however, were far harder to dodge, and the shockwave from them sent him flying, landing with a roll and a pain filled grunt as he smacked his shoulder into the hard ground, but getting him just behind the crate he'd been aiming for.
"Barriers, how did he manage that. Protoculture and eezo don't mix," complained Shepard, wishing he was fighting an actual veritech from the old days. His palm blasters were, after all, designed off the old Zentraedi battlepod weapons, and would have been able to tear through the unit without them.
"The field is coming from that backpack his mech is wearing," Tali advised him, even as her heard her fingers frantically flying over her controls, probably searching for some way out of this situation.
"That would do it," said Shepard, and then, just as the veritech flew over the crate, Shepard leapt upwards, kicking out with his foot, and nailing the unit's arm. The gunpod, griped tightly in the fingers, swung wide, even as Shepard tried to grab the thing. Of course, the pilot was good enough to pull away, the mech flying fast in the opposite direction, and giving ground, before bring the gunpod to bare again, just as the Terran rushed away himself, diving behind another crate as shots from the gunpod tore up the ground behind him.
Looking over his options, Shepard found he had little to work with. The chamber was four times the height of himself and the veritech, which did limit the enemy's verticality, but even with that small handicap, the mech was resistant to his weapons, and its weapons were able to punch right through his own defenses. If Tali's pod had more charge, it would probably go the other way, but without that he simply had too few paths to victory, and far more roads that led to a swift and violent end.
"Shepard, I've got a plan. See the puddle on the floor?" said Tali suddenly, and Jon looked down, finding what she was talking about easily, the sparkling pool, already a hundred feet across.
"Ah. Do we still have enough power for that?" he asked, looking around, spotting the veritech slowly moving closer to him.
"Your suit's engine is at fifty-six percent, that should be enough," she told him, and the overlaid a display of her plan on his view. Watching the models of himself and the veritech moving around the room. Studying what was expected of him, Shepard passed the knife from his right to his left hand, and then dashed out of cover, causing the veritech to stop for a moment, as the pilot was caught flat footed by the aggressive move. Taking advantage of his moment of indecision, the Terran tossed his weapon with all his might, letting Tali's aim assist guide his throw so the weapon struck at the gunpod in his enemy's hand.
The angle was perfect, and the blade hit home so hard that it buried itself up to the hilt in the gunpod, the barrier, designed to deal with high velocity fire, not registering the slow moving projectile as a threat until it was too late. The pilot swore as he tried to let go of the weapon, but the unit's fingers were damaged by the force of the impact, and so when the gunpod overloaded into a hail of shrapnel and fire, it took the veritech's arm with it, blowing it off nearly back to the shoulder, while leaving wounds all along the mech's side.
"Tricky little bastard!" shouted the pilot, firing salvos of missiles towards Shepard as he dashed across the chamber floor. This was either something Jon had been waiting for, or was just good timing, as Shepard spun on his heels, and then pointed his left hand back into the chamber as he continued his rush towards the lift. Instead of firing a single beam, however, the palm of his hand glowed red hot, and waves of heat emanated from it. The heat was nowhere near enough to do real damage to war machine like the veritech, even damaged as it was, but the missiles were a bit more sensitive, and went off in the air, causing the unit to shudder, and finally fall to the floor of the chamber.
"Gah!" cried out the veritech pilot, as his unit slammed against the floor. Looking back towards him, Shepard's own mind came up short as he finally got a good look at the pilot. His voice, his name, and his position in charge of these pilots spoke of a turian, but the one he saw at the veritech's controls wasn't a turian, it was a micronized Terran. Despite not understanding, Shepard never broke stride, instead finally getting to the lift and then hitting the controls, causing the doors to heavily shut behind him, while the lift itself slowly began to rise.
"Foolish, all I have to do is…," began Elanos, planning his next move, which would involve blowing the lift away from below. He stopped his rant when two sounds began to echo over the chamber. The first was a high pitched whistle, which he easily located above him, where a small hole in the ceiling had steam pouring out of it. The hole was likely caused by a missed shot when Shepard had first fired at him. The other sound was the far more disturbing one, a low groan, like some great beast beginning to wake after a thousand years of slumber, and it's source was far harder to pinpoint, till one looked at the far wall.
"Well, shit," was the last word Elanos Haliat said, as the walls, floor, and ceiling of the chamber crumpled under the pressure from behind them. Weakened by the heat of Shepard's blast, they were being pressed against by the ice outside, expanding into steam and water. With a groaning crash like an explosion, they gave under the pressure, and a veritable flood of steam slammed the veritech into the far wall, hard enough that one of the wings broke off the side, and then buried itself into the center of the unit.
That was when another sound deafened the room, and Elanos had no time to speak. His last thought was on how much he felt lucky to die like this, before his backer, the one who'd given him the veritechs, could get his hands on him. That thought ended in blue light shooting up from beneath him, as the protoculture engine deep inside the veritech was punctured, releasing all of that power at once, creating a sphere of destruction that shook not only the shaft in which the lift was slowly rising, but could be felt three miles above.
"Shepard! Are you there sir?!" demanded Catscratch's voice over Tali's comm.
"We're here, Troy. Shepard is not going to be able to answer you, I'm afraid. We just used every joule his suit had to beat the bad guy. Sadly, it sounds like we won't be able to question him," said the quarian, looking at her own readout and finding she was going to run out of power soon herself.
"Acknowledged. We'll have a reentry pod waiting by the time you guys get back up here. The mechanics were able to get the communications array here working, and we've already got a ship in orbit," sent the Terran.
"Excellent. We've got a lot of info for our debrief," she responded, filing everything they'd seen away on her board, and then sitting back, waiting as they very slowly made their way to the surface. By the time they got there, they were already extracting prisoners and soldiers, with Shepard and Tali quickly rushed into a pod and sent spaceward. By the end of that day, both would receive promotions, before bidding the intrepid survivors farewell as the two were shipped off to some secret assignment. Stories would later be told by the soldiers at their new posts, and the prisoners themselves of Jon Shepard, Champion of Torfan.