Six massive figures walk along the bluffs. Behind them, fires, squirming body parts, and just general mayhem are only the barest of the horrors. The worst of those remains those that walk, the creatures with blue skin, which charge forward now enmass, a hundred at a time. Still, the figures fight on, their weapons singing a symphony of destruction as they lay into their foes. None of their shots are wasted, none of the fire seems to miss its mark, and yet, despite this, they are being pushed back, and overwhelmed.
"To the right!" Shouts Tali, and Garrus whips his Gundam to the side, firing a shot from his beam rifle, and watching the blast tear through yet another enemy giant, which falls to the earth with a heavy thud. His sensors tell him his weapon's pack is depleted, and he quickly moves the mech's hand. The things fingers would never be able to operate a latch or the lack, but luckily he can undo the bindings from his cockpit, quickly popping out the spent clip, which he then pushes into his hip to refill with charge particles, while another stands up just below it, which he grabs and slams home, before firing again into the enemy horde.
To his left, Nirali Bhatia is wielding a gallant with shotgun stock in one hand, and her palm shoots out with the other. Green and blue streaks tear into the crowd, and she grunts only slightly when she recognizes a face here and there. These people, a day ago, had been her friends and neighbors, the ones that had trusted her to protect them. Now they were tools of an enemy she hated with all her heart, a hate that her teachers in the way of the Buddha would have been ashamed of, but still, it held true as she fired again and again.
Jane and Jon were much the same as Nirali, gallant in one hand, palm open with the other. The differences in their styles to her's were clear when one looked closely, however. Jon had a gallant without a stock, the base weapon powerful in his hand, as every shot seemed to find an enemy eye, burning their brains away, while Tali kept calculating, trying her best to stay ahead of the fight in terms of her plans. Jane beside him was less subtle, the sharp retorts of her gallant, with its rifle stock, tearing through their foes with sheer power rather than finesse, blowing away a dozen enemies with a single sweep.
Behind the group, Liara T'Soni stood transfixed, knowing she should be running, that this was no place for an archeologist like herself. This was a place of soldiers and death, a place for warriors. She had forgone that life for quieter pursuits, things that challenged her mind, not her body. Still, running now would do her little good. She might live another few minutes, but that would be all, and that was not nearly enough for her. She would stand or fall with those she watched fight, waiting for her moment to aid in the battle.
"Red one! Incoming!" Shouted Tali, as the crowd of enemies slowly parted in front of them in a familiar way. Out of the horde of blue came a giant of red metallic skin, the form bloating in ways the others didn't, while black smoke seemed to exude from every exposed bit of its insides. The first time this had happened, Garrus had reacted the fastest, and they knew now what this meant, as Liara stepped forward, the palms of her wanzer irising open to reveal the eezo cores in them.
"I've got it!" She responded, and the asari stretched out her biotic field, using her unique bit of biology to join her field to that of the mech's own cores, amplifying and echoing what she wanted through them. With a grunt of prodigious effort, she threw a blue colored bolt of light out, the energy of it slammed into the crimson foe, and tossing it into the air. It flipped and spun as it flew off, and just as it hit the center of the largest concentration of blue foes, Jon fired, his shot finding its mark easily, as the giants and pilots all threw themselves to the ground.
A deafening blast blew over the area, as the red tinged enemy exploded with the force of a few megatons. The violence of the blast ripped into the enemies, those closest to it vaporized by the force, while those farther away were torn apart. Wounds that would have been debilitating if they had been normal scarred their blue skin, and most of the micronians that had been mixed in were just gone. Still, the giants were tenacious, and the moment the blast subsided, they began to drag themselves along, while others still whole, began to charge over their comrades, trampling those that were caught underfoot as they made a mad dash towards the survivors.
"This isn't going to work," said Jon finally, as the group resumed their shooting, Legion's only contribution lobbing the occasional boulder, or smashing a micronian that got too close under his foot.
"We're all well aware of that little brother!" Cried out Jane beside him as she tore a tree from the ground, roots and all, before hurling it with enough force to spear one of those closest to her with it. It fell dead to the ground, but as had become common, five more just stepped over it, running towards them.
"I'm giving us a few more minutes of this before we're out of power, or just exhausted. Their forces will take several hours to deplete at this rate. We need another plan," he said, as if ignoring Jane's reply, showing them all some sims of their current strategy. The best said they'd last about another hour, before Garrus ran out of charged particles, the Terrans ran out of protoculture, and Liara just died of an aneurysm from trying to move too much with her biotics. The enemy would last another sixteen hours if they continued to be destroyed in the same numbers as they were now.
"Heh, not bad. Looks like I'm going to kill the most," commented the turian, and then, as if to prove his skills, shot three blasts in rapid succession, the pink energy blowing away the heads of three of the giants, before sharp retorts of his head gatlings sang to the tune of a dozen charging micronians.
"You seem rather flippant about the prospect of dying," responded Liara as she spotted a Terran opening its mouth, and with a throwing motion, tossed a bolt of biotic force into the horrid thing's face, causing the mouth to close sharply, before the entire thing exploded, the blast toppling for a moment, a few of its fellows, though not injuring them enough to keep them down.
"That's just my way of dealing with stress. Inside, I'm just tearing up," he told her, the tone of his voice sounding jokey, even as he easily took out the ones she'd knocked down with another quick series of shots.
"Well, I plan on living through this, even if the rest of you don't, so why don't-," Jon began to say, a few diagrams appearing on their HUDs as he started to lay out a plan, one involving Garrus and himself charging into the horde. He barely got a few seconds into it when everything in their vision went red, and Tali began to scream.
"Everyone down! Charn, Liara, Garrus! Slave your eezo cores to mine!" She cried, and without a dissent, everyone acted on her orders, falling to the dirt, even as their enemies continued to charge. Over them, a small dome of blue light started to spread out, and the comms seemed to fill with static, until one listened close and realized the clicks were the quarian's fingers rapidly pressing buttons. Soon, the domes of light from Tali, Charn, Garrus, and Liara joined together, becoming a single barrier, that shifted from blue, to purple, just as the world ended.
Outside their barrier, one saw the flash of something in the sky, something as large as a city falling from the heavens and covered in light. Through their sensors, the ground team watched as that object projected a wave of force through the air, a visible ripple in the sky, that smashed into the ground so hard, you could probably have felt it from a thousand miles away. Around them, no tree was left standing, and none of the altered citizens of Eden Prime stood. Even the Terrans, who could take much damage, found their bodies shredded by raw kinetic force, and the team began to groan as the pressure of it pushed against their shield.
Then the fire came. A wash of flames that seemed like a tide of death. What trees had fallen were reduced to ash, and what few of their foes that had survived the initial blast were gone in an instant. Even the colony's buildings that had still been standing were reduced to rubble, while above, the shape in the sky resolved itself into that odd ship, the tendriled thing that was the same blue as the altered, which flew in an almost straight course, halting so abruptly that it seemed impossible.
"Look, it's damaged," said Garrus, zooming in on one of the protrusions from beneath it, which appeared to have been violently torn asunder. Little bits of itself seemed to leak out, small pieces of its hull that had stayed on through the rush towards the colony finally giving up as the gravity of the world pulled at them. This left a twinkling trail in its wake as it hung there, just above the spaceport. Shapes, less than ten of them, rose to greet the leviathan ship, latching onto the hull, or docking within, before it began to rise.
Straight up it flew, and everyone watched in awe as it did so, once again doing something that their physics said should not have been possible for a ship of its weight. It didn't leave without one final shot, however, as beams of red light came from the tendrils that were still whole, joining together beneath the great ship, and then firing downward. Below, the spaceport, the only structure that even with its apocalyptic entrance had not been touched, was reduced to ashes, and only when that was done, did it shoot away, a small star that was invisible a moment later.
The ground team continued to lay under the dome of the barrier for a few minutes, Tali's fingers continuing their dance and holding the rest down, until finally, mercifully, the ship left the range of her sensors, and she let them rise. Around them, nothing roared at them, or charged their position, nothing seemed to move at all, save a few fading flames that had found wood that was not ash to consume. The bluffs and hills that had been their source of protection for their retreat were now dunes of a desert, and they stood only at its edge.
"That, that wasn't good," said Liara at last, as she began to walk forward, her steps heavy and ponderous, before her unit finally wound itself down, a low whine of the mass effect core going swiftly to silence. Jon and Jane soon felt their own weights settle, as the pods on their backs were now without power, Jane having to quickly twirl around to grab the launcher and sniper stocks on her back before they fell to the ash at her feet, causing Charn to grunt as he was pressed into the side of the pod without the mass effect field to provide gravity.
"That ship must have been going almost at lightspeed when it hit the atmosphere to have caused that sort of pressure wave. No ship in the Federation or Council fleets can do that," said Tali, rubbing her hands to get feeling back in her sore digits, grateful for the small battery powering her pods other functions, which let her continue to observe things, even if she couldn't affect them herself.
"The spaceport, the beacon, and the pods are gone. The colony is a total loss," said Jon, breathlessly as he looked out over the devastation. The ash crunched under his foot, thick enough that even a being of his scale couldn't touch ground beneath it. Beside him, Gundam stood tall and stoic, but at its waist, a panel popped open, Garrus, coughing even through his helmet and armor, amid a plume of steam and smoke, emerged into the light of a sun that was beginning to fade behind a cloud of dust, and he just stared.
"Anyone got a read on the Normandy?" He asked, waving his hand before his face to clear as much smoke and dust as he could.
"I'm afraid not, Captain. We might need to assume the Normandy is a loss as well, even if it did damage the enemy at least," responded Tali, and Garrus, looking stern now, nodded, his mind going over charts and tables. It would only take them a few hours to realize the colony was completely dark, especially when the Normandy failed to make rendezvous with the Citadel. Still, it would be best if they found shelter, since his mech and Liara's were out of power, they'd probably have to-
"SCREECH!" An all too familiar sound echoed over the dust bowl, the winds seeming to pick up as it did so, and everyone in the group turned towards the source, finding a horrid form, burned and battered, but not broken, rising out of the ash. Its once blue skin was torn in places, and it was missing most of its left arm, but still, it was unmistakable.
"By the Masters," swore Jon, before whipping out his pistol. Without Tali's help, it took two shots to kill the thing, the first knocking it down to the ground, before he was able to blow its head away. Looking past it, one could hear a shriek in response coming over the hills, the clouds of dust slowly rising to obscure the shapes as they began to approach again.
"Tali, do you have eyes on them?" Shouted Garrus, pulling out a hand pistol, intending on going out fighting, even if he had to jam himself into one of the monster's mouths to get a good brain shot.
"Captain, I barely have comms, let alone sensors, but I can tell you right now, we were at the center of that blast, if one that close survived this, even as torn up as it was, you can bet a lot more are out there," said the quarian, a hint of fear entering her voice as she considered their position. Before she could think too hard about it though, a giant hand reached around her, covering the pod, and then pulling it away from Jon's back, to bring her right up to his face.
"I'm going to get you out of this, trust me," he said over a private channel, before turning towards the others.
"Okay, combat assets are the three Terrans, and nobody else. That means you're getting out of here. Ms. T'soni, please open your wanzer. Jane, put Garrus in Charn's pod," ordered Jon, and Jane nodded, being quite a bit rougher than he was with the pod on her back, causing Charn's grunts to come over the comm, and then Garrus' own as she grabbed him, wrapping her fingers around his armor. With a flick of her wrist, she opened the pod in her hand, dumping the turian almost right on top of the batarian.
Jon was quite a bit more gentle with Liara, letting her climb onto his hand, looking like a grown man with a doll in his hand, and then gently bringing the pod to her. Inside, Tali pushed at the hatch in the side, letting her climb in, before he turned on one foot. Jane and Jon then walked right up to Legion, who held out his arms and took the two pods from them without a word, looking to the tiny lives in his hands, and then back at them.
"Alright, I know your land speeds not great right now, but you're still faster than a walking micronian, especially in this. Get them out of here. We'll slow down the horde," ordered the Commander.
"I would like it noted, for the record, that I'm still the Captain of this unit, and I don't want to divide this party up if we can help it," said Garrus, having taken off his helmet so he could use Charn's comm instead of draining his own suit's power.
"Objection noted, but right now, you're far more valuable than three more Terrans. You're the Captain of the ship that responded, and the only one the Council might believe when you tell them one of their agents attacked and killed my home," commented Narlia surprisingly, and then pulled her gallant up, blasting seemingly blindly into the cloud, and getting a satisfying cry of pain out of it as she did so.
"What she said. Legion, I'm ordering you to take that warframe and run. We'll hold the line here. Masters willing, we'll see you on the other side of this thing," said Jane, picking up the gallant and stocks she'd dropped, popping off the rifle stock, and adding the launcher in its place.
"This unit would remind you, you are the lowest ranked member of the military present. However, the sentiment is repeated," said the geth in his electronic voice, looking from the weapon, to the warrior wielding it, before starting off, his ponderous steps fading into the distance, as the three armored Terrans looked after him. When he vanished into the swirling dust clouds, his steps no longer heard as the gale began to pick up, they turned towards the oncoming horde they knew was hidden behind it all, ready to face death once more.