THOMASPENZHORN11: I happen to use Bard to make your review readable, so it's not that bad, per se.

So lemme split things up and explain them rq, lol

1. The Maginot line worked wonders, lol. Imagine the reaction on their faces when a set of fixed defenses looking like something straight out of the stone age (to them) repel an assault despite outnumbered 8:1.

2. Which in effect makes the Alliance + Empire the de facto superpower in the entire galaxy as well, since their industrial output, while smaller than that of the Council is still much better optimized, and their military is one prepared for total war and an inevitable Abyssal invasion rather than COIN and counter-piracy

3. Yes, this will completely turn the balance of power within the galaxy on it's head. Mulch it, even

4. I'll go for weekly updates on Monday/Tuesday/whatever, which gives me plenty of slack time since I can crank out up to 3,000 words a day. I'm a pretty fast typist, fast enough that my MacBook could barely keep up with me, lol. It's 'P' key is coming loose and I'm at a total loss as to how to fix this

maxtwice27902: Well, I could just handwave it away as energy fields disspitating most of the kinetic energy (shield-reinforced armor and mitigation?), lol, but really it could just be boiled to magic bc this fic hs wierd quantum physics that turns ships into girls lol

From an in-universe perspective, they use adapting shields to mitigate a good portion of the damage, before using shield-reinforced armor to allow their plating to withstand the damage. Also, if my memory of Halo that's not tainted by fanfics and Halo/KC crossovers serves me right, a SMAC (like the Erőd-class ODP around Reach) fires a 3,000 ton projectile at ~0.4c (figures from page 251 of the Halo Encyclopedia, 2009 edition, since I'm broke asfck and don't have the 2022 one), impacting at ~5,585 gigatons per hit, and it could shred an assault carrier into a million pieces, but not a supercarrier, since there was no documented instance of a supercarrier being destroyed in a traditional pitched battle (IIRC, the Long Night of Solace went down to an improvised slipspace warhead), coupled with the fact that a CSO-class supercarrier is literally five times the size of a CAS-class assault carrier (29,000m vs 5,600m). Some unconfirmed sources say that the rounds could, theoratically, presuming that all three ships are in single file perfectly completely gut a CCS-class cruiser, end to end, do the same to the ship behind it, and still pack enough punch to kill a third. So making SA/Kaiserreich guns fire at over twice the muzzle velocity, while pushing it by a signifncant deal, should still be good and fit within the requirements for at least some degree of realisim. Probably.

And how do I turn on dark mode on FFN web again?

Wir haben die Hölle und zurück durchgemacht, wir haben den Krieg und zurück durchgemacht.

Jetzt werden wir zur Wolfshöhle reisen und zurückkommen.

Shanxi, exact location unknown, July 22nd 2257 2100HRS local time

Shigure peered downrange through the SmartScope of her SA42 assault rifle, the feed being projected onto her HUD as her companion, Fubuki, was more or less doing the same, eyes locked onto what seemed to be the enemy's forward operating base. Using the rifle's SmartScope as a replacement for a telescope or a pair of binoculars, she carefully searched the entrances and exits available to the base that wasn't, or at least, minimally, guarded, watching intently as the dropships landing to disembark their cargo took off again, presumably headed towards the fleet in orbit to bring more supplies to the planet below. The five-man, or rather, fleetgirl, fireteam had snuck in undetected via Hellcat through the woods in between Qinghai and the enemy FOB, stopping just short of the edge of the forest at around noon and, using the forest as conveniently placed cover and concealment, had proceeded to put quite literally every corner of the entire base under their prying eyes.

The other three fireteam members, Shepard, Erin, and Javelin, on the other hand, were monitoring the docks within the base, analyzing every possible vessel present that was either docked, docking, or taking off, two of them looking downrange via SA43 battle rifles and marksman-SmartScope sights whilist Javelin hefted an SRS85 sniper rifle, the oversized sniping weapon making her look almost comical in handling a weapon nearly as long as she was tall. Night had already fallen by this point, but the base was lit up with more than enough lights for Szurdok's members to see, in fact, it was about stupidly bright in the sheer amount of lumens literally begging for a drone strike to hit them. It even made night vision useless, which was one thing going for them, but then, the sheer amount of light was enough for Szurdok's members to just simply use their Mk. I eyeballs and sight their way in. It also removed the possibility of them getting blinded via searchlights trained on their night vision goggles, as well. If that happened, things wouldn't go well.

After a while, Shigure lifted up the visor of her military-standard helmet and rubbed her eyes with her left hand. "You see anything of note? Because besides their wierd hovertanks and hovertransport thingies here the only thing of note is those fuckoff-stuid mechs of theirs."

"Visual comfirmation of whatever the hell I figured out earlier," Shepard answered, glancing down at the notes jotted down in her pocketbook. "The guards change shifts every three hours, roughly, coming out to be exactly two hundred and fifty minutes and a second per shift. They also use a three-watch system, apparently, based on the appearance of each individual and how many times they appear per shift change. A lot, actually. We could sneak in under cloak when they're changing shifts and the second watch comes to relieve the first, that's our easiest shot."

"Uh huh...so when, exactly? We don't have forever for this, y'know."

"Shift change will be in roughly two and a half hours," Shepard said, her pocketbook now closed and placed inside her pocket. "Getting there takes half an hour...call it an hour to be safe. If we get our asses in order and gear by the time an hour and a half rolls off the clock, we'll be in close enough to get done what we need to get done easily enough."

"Fair point," Fubuki nodded, "But thing is, we'll have to keep all movement to an absolute minimum and that also means no verbal contact. We might know a bit about their lingo from the tech eggheads screaming their heads off over piecing together intercepted transmissions, enough to jabber a little bit around or read some signs, but that's pretty much it. We've no idea if the place's bugged with cameras or not, and with no way yet to hack our way into their computer systems, that effectively leaves us with only one approach: stealth, speed, and cover."

"Exactly," Shepard agreed, hefting her battle rifle to hold it at the ready. "There's only one way to find out, eh?"

The base guards changed shifts almost exactly to scedule, the second watch showing up to relieve the first at roughly half-past eleven local time to the humans, the first watch doing what was presumably their equivalent to a yawn before heading back inside, presumably to sleep. The second watch of guards assumed sentry duty soon enough, four eyes on each alien staring out into the darkness beyond, but unbeknownst to them, a fireteam of human special forces operatives had sneaked in right beneath their noses, their cloaking equipment more or less bending light around them, effectively removing them from sight of anyone, even with specialized equipment, preventing anything short of bumping into someone (or something) from revealing them to sensors or the naked eye. Skillfully avoiding contact with anyone or anything as they made their way in, they maneuvered past industrial-gray walls and unsuspecting personnel, before their leader stopped at a T-intersection. All of them could see each other well enough as each team member was highlighted with a green outline on their HUDs against the dimly lit hallways, but to the aliens present, they were anything but there—a testament to the skill and ingenguity of the engineers at Kalingrad Heavy Industries. Blame the Russians all they wanted, they could, but if there was one thing that they all agreed upon, it was that the Russians most certainly could make a cloaker. And a good one at it.

Fubuki poked her head around the corner, scanning everything that lay down the corner just in time to see two four-eyed aliens walking up the hallway headed straight in their direction, completely oblivious to the five cloaked special forces operatives right in front of them. She quickly moved back inside the intersection when they got too close for comfort, hands on her rifle just in case things went downhill and they found themselves in need of some handy firepower. They both passed by, however, to her relief, jabbering around in their queer language that she couldn't quite understand, yet, but the audio data most certainly could be compiled into something understandable by ONI's Nerd Brigade once she got them back to base. She motioned for the rest of the fireteam to head out once the coast was clear, and as quickly as they arrived, all five members all proceeded even deeper into the enemy base, their cloaking fields rendering their existence completely unknown to anyone within a few thousand kilometers square, save perhaps Colonel Prevlov. No words were exchanged, only signals, for the least and slightest sound and radio transmission could give them away. And besides, it wasn't like they needed verbal communications, either; seasoned, battle-hardened veterans they were, they would be experts when it came to this type of engagement, hands down. They were N7, after all.

Another right turn brought them to a set of closed doors guarded by two aliens each, presumaby armed with those wierd folding rifles of theirs as they stared down the hallway with all eight eyes, completely oblivious to the fact that a strike team of special forces was about to gang up on them and ruin their day, and with the cloaking devices on the fleetgirls active, they wouldn't be able to see the attack coming, either. Fubuki cast her eyes around in search of anything resembling a security camera or an audio bug, scanning the place with both her agumented vision and dumb-AI assisted optical cameras, logging even the smallest crack, nook, and cranny within the walls around the place. A few audio sensors were present, but no optics, which was a good thing, she logged to herself. Either way, if they did this quickly and silently enough, they would get the job done easily enough.

No words were exchanged, but everyone got the point nonetheless. Fubuki slipped silently into position beside the guard on the left while Shigure slipped into position beside the guard on the right, Shepard, Erin, and Javelin fixing bayonets onto their rifles and pointed them at the guards while Fubuki and Shigure drew a combat knife each and levelled them at the guards' throats, holding them as close to contact zero as the cloaking fields could allow. Fubuki jabbed her thumb downwards and raised three fingers in parallel, and of course, nobody present needed a genius to tell them that she meant for them to all drop their cloak and surprise the guards in front of them into opening the doors on the count of three. Three, two, one, each finger counted down in sucession, before the last finger folded down as well. Go.

The sudden appearance of three fully armed and armored fleetgirls with rifles trained upon them caught both guards by complete silence, both reaching for their folded-up weapons before realizing that two combat knives were levelled at their respective throats, a pair of special forces operatives holding them in a way that would allow them to slice apart their throats at any moment should they dare to even move the slightest muscle. Their hands stopped halfway through as if time had ground to a halt, before Fubuki motioned towards the door and the security keypad. She did it twice, in case they didn't understand, but they still got it nonetheless. Their lives were on the line, after all.

The doors opened sideways shortly afterwards easily enough, Fubuki and Shigure still keeping their blades drawn on the aliens' throats as Javelin, Shepard, and Erin entered the place, weapons drawn and ready to fire in case of resistance. Surprisingly enough, though, the place turned out to be mostly empty, rows of shelves and and even more shelves littered with what seemed to be the enemy's equivalent to a crate, some open, some half-empty, others, not so. She gave Fubuki a thumbs-up shortly after before engaging her cloak and disappearing in a cloud of mist into invisibility, just as the two fleetgirls guarding the entrance both used their free hands to violently snap the necks of the guards in one fell swoop, leaving both of them to collapse in a heap on the ground and giving the appearance of them slacking on duty as Fubuki turned her attention to the security keypad, rerouting her neural uplinks to interface with the system via the usage of her extensive electronic warfare suite, allowing her to hack into the keypad with ease.

The doors shut behind them soon afterwards, Fubuki using the same trickery to lock the doors shut and seal off access to the room, allowing them to operate freely without worrying about any potential patrols happening to walk by and seeing them, leaving behind two very dead guards with two very broken necks. With the objective complete, she finally holstered her knife back in its sheath and reached for her weapon, checking it over briefly before turning to face Shepard.

No words were spoken, as there was no need to, for everyone knew exactly what they were doing and what they were supposed to do. Fubuki nodded her head once before turning to face the crates around the place, checking each of them in detail for their contents, noting to herself that each one of them carried various pieces of ordnance, ranging from ammunition blocks for those weird folding rifles to energy cells more or less the same weaponry. However, among all of them, there were a few that stood out from the rest, namely because it was a small crate filled with...

Fubuki gave Erin an index finger as the latter saw her green outline on her HUD, indicating that she wanted her to take a look at this. Erin walked up to her shortly afterwards, looking into the crate as well before nodding her head and logging it mentally.

Workpads. Or to be more exact, the aliens' equivalent to one.

As far as she was concerned, the workpads themselves weren't a thousandth as valuable as the data they would be holding, especially for Alliance planners and commanding officers, as a single workpad getting hacked into would reveal a wealth of information regarding enemy plans and operations, ranging from intel on potential future targets to the names of planets and bases held by the enemy. Granted, it was as limited as any civilian-grade device in terms of intelligence potential, but if ONI's Nerd Brigade could figure out how it worked as well as delving even further into it's data, the workpad would become of massive intelligence potential. They figured out at least a few dozen orders made in the aliens' language(s) and deciphered their communications signals enough that they could actually tap into them, albiet with limited effectiveness, already, using nothing but wireless data gained from the events of the previous battle, so who knows what else ONI could extract from it?

Shepard and Javelin joined them soon afterwards, nodding their heads once before reaching into the crate and pulling out a workpad each, stuffing them into their rucksacks and proceeding to check every crate they could find for additional intelligence potential, hoping that ONI's Nerd Brigade could use whatever data they could bring back to Earth with them. Of course, they had to ensure that they wouldn't have to drag along a hundred tons worth of metal and weight with them all the way back to base, there was only so much they could carry after all, so they settled on taking only the ones that ONI's Nerd Brigade could potentially use.

They spent the next minute or so searching crates and boxes alike, Fubuki and Shigure occasionally stopping to take pictures of certain labels on the crates in order to log the data for later analysis, Erin and Shepard rummaging through every crate they could find while Javelin kept watch on the door, watching for any signs of movement outside. Fortunately for them, none seemed to have noticed, nor did anybody seem to have cared for the now dead guards lying right outside the door, leaving the fireteam to continue operating undetected as they searched through crate after crate, picking out workpads and stashing them into their rucksacks. Fubuki natrually scoured the place completely top to bottom and loaded up her rucksack with anything that could be of value, and once it was confirmed that the place was completely clear, Javelin began her part of the operation—explosives. Hidden inside a small cardboard box that gave it the appearance of a typical Wan Hai delivery box was a six-pounder load of C-14 high explosives that could bring to bear the explosive potential equivalent to a thousand times an equivalent amount of TNT, more than enough to most certainly wreck a good chunk of the base when it went off. She armed the remote detonator and set a secondary timer for ninety minutes before decloaking, as her cloaking fields won't allow her to get that near to a shelf, and pushed in the box of explosives into the shelf as far as it can go, hidden well out of sight by two empty crates that nobody would even think of caring about. Cloaking once again after she was done with all that just as the rest finished up with their roundabouts, they all headed out the way they came, leaving a hacked door with an electronic warfare subroutine that was now tasked with monitoring the base's computer systems and giving them a convenient backdoor access as well, and of course, two very dead guards with very broken necks.

All five proceed in deeper into the base under cloak afterwards, weaving past exits and doors as they moved closer into the confines of the base under cloak, weaving past patrols with skill and precision, eyes tracking and logging everything that could be of interest before moving on, making sure not to bump into anything or anyone while they did so. Fubuki noted a couple of guards stationed here and there, maneuvered around them with relative ease, and then continued onwards, eventually coming to a stop at the edge of a catwalk overlooking a rather large open space. The area below them was a garage of sorts, as far as she was concerned, aliens hunched over a multitude of vehicles all featuring varying levels of battle damage ranging from holes in the armor to half molten and slagged. Judging from visuals alone, they were most likely part of the failed assault on Overage Hackenburg only half a day prior, or to be more exact, the ones that somehow survived and managed to limp back to base. Whatever the case was, it was safe to say that the aliens were most certainly busy patching them up and repairing them, judging from the amount of tools present on the scene below alongside numerous spare parts littering the floor, and of course, a number of technicians working on said vehicles. It was safe to assume that the area below them would most likely be packed with enemy troops and workers, all working hard to patch up their wounded and salvage whatever they could from the remains of the failed assault, meaning that the fireteam would most certainly be detected if they stepped into the place.

Glancing around the place, Shigure motioned for them all to leave, only for fate to play on them a rather cruel and unusual practical joke on them, to say the least, when what seemed to be the alien's equivalent to a wrench got dropped down from above, a fairly common occurrence in such a workplace, but as fate would have it, the metal tool struck Javelin in the head, the helmet she wore and her shields taking the brunt of the impact and leaving the foot-long piece of metal to ping harmlessly onto the ground below, but it also had the rather unpleasant side effect of causing her cloaking field to collapse, effectively blowing their cover to smithereens.

Silence.

Fubuki, finding that with Javelin's cloak gone essentially meant that their cover was now compromised, had decided to take the initiative before the enemy could, decloaking in an instant with her rifle raised before firing off three quick shots in rapid succession, nailing two aliens and painting the vehicles they were working on in alien gore and causing a tower of stacked crates to fall over, crushing at least two more. Erin and Shepard joined the fights moments later with battle rifles raised and ready, a pair of 7.62x64mm rounds sending another alien off to meet his gods early as well as piercing a neat little hole in a fuel tank on the far end of the place, sending leaking pressurized hydrogen from the tank spraying out in a mist that ignited itself on the .300 Arisaka round's TBX filler, engulfing the far end of the place in flames from the hydrogen igniting. Shigure decloaked shortly afterwards, joining the fray as she fired off a burst of 7.62x40m rounds from her own assault rifle, nailing another technician on the head and painting the vehicle he was working on gore. Javelin decloaked herself moments later, readying her sniper rifle and lining up a shot before pulling the trigger, sending a 14.5x115mm round across the place at hypersonic speeds into the center mass of another mechanic and turned him into a gory mist.

The fight devolved into chaos almost immediately afterwards, alien mechanics raising whatever firearms they had available to them and firing wildly into the catwalk above, Fubuki and Javelin both ducking for cover behind a crate nearby while Erin and Shepard took cover behind a pillar on the opposite side, Shigure taking cover behind a wall as rounds from coil-pistols bounced off the wall around her, splinters of metal propelled to hypervelocity peppering walls and cover, but as far as she knew, they still had the hugh ground advantage. Single, accurate shots laced out in return, the silencers doing their job well enough, creating a 'tunnel' of anti-gravity fields that suppressed and muffled any sonic boom generated by the projectiles going several orders of magnitude beyond the sonic barrier, allowing the rifles to make the noise equivalent of a handclap as they spat flame and projectiles to paint the place below in alien gore and flesh. The aliens' coil-pistols did make a fairly loud report, however, which meant that anyone hearing gunshots inside a workshot would be bound to head over to investigate, which meant that they had to get moving, and get moving fast. Which, obviously, was what they were doing.

Fubuki opened a side exit with the rest of the fireteam following suit and laying down suppressing fire as they did so, leaving behind the cowering mechanics struggling to return fire in any meaningful way and the dead bodies of their compatriots lying around the place. They piled out the door as soon as it opened, Fubuki sealing the door shut as soon as Erin and Shepard got out, Javelin taking up the rear as Shigure covered the rest with bursts of 7.62x40m rounds before falling back as well. Nobody pursued them, thankfully, allowing them to continue onwards as they weaved past more corridors and hallways, dodged more patrols and narrowly avoided detection, and of course, encountered more security checkpoints. Fortunately for them, Fubuki had hacked into the keypads beforehand, allowing them to gain easy access to areas that they otherwise would not, circumventing the need for them to resort to lethal methods of gaining access, which was always a good thing in Shepard's opinion, anyways.

Fubuki brought up the lead as they chanced across a partially open door, the security cameras in the area put on loop courstey of her electronic warfare capabilities and thus rendering their need to cloak moot (the did, however), allowing them to proceed forward without having to worry about being seen, although it was always better safe than sorry, anyways. She peeked in through the partially open door, scanning everything inside before turning around and waving her hand once, signaling for the rest to enter, which they did, albeit carefully. The place was infernally dark, leaving NVR as the only practical mode of sight, but as Fubuki kept her eyes glued to the motion tracker at the corner of her HUD, she came to a sudden stop.

"...really..." she muttered, placing her rifle slung across her front.

"...what's going on here, Fubuki?" one of the oddly-equipped soldiers asked, peering in from the outside through her distinctly asari-like features , one of their oddly-shaped rifles cradled in her arms as she did so. "...oh..."

"...we can't leave her like this," the lead soldier replied, speaking in a language she couldn't understand, but she took a knee to her nonetheless. "Definitely not like this."

"...yeah...right..."

"...who are you...?" she asked.

They weren't hostile, apparently, but she wasn't letting her guard down just yet, for there was no telling if they would turn hostile and sell her to some other accursed random merchant in the Terminus later down the line, no. She wouldn't let them, definitely not, but then again, she doubted she could even put up a fight in the first place. Her biotics were all but sapped dry, she was tired, exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and most importantly, injured, and her limbs were shackled together by heavy chains, limiting her ability to do anything worthwhile, anyways. But then again, maybe they might help her...?

"Who are you?" she asked again, repeating her question. "What do you want?"

"Fubuki." The name was odd and spoken in another language she couldn't understand, but she still got it nonetheless. The stranger moved closer to her a little bit and extended her hand towards her, a gesture of greeting or friendship perhaps? She didn't know, but she responded in kind anyways, extending her hand out towards her as best as she could despite the chains binding her together and restricting her movements. She felt a hand grasp hers, and she shook it lightly, unsure of what to expect next, but as far as she knew, these strangers haven't shown any hostility towards her, and so far, they looked...oddly asari, but with a few distinct differences, mainly that of the helmets they wore.

"We've got a gang of fuckers trying to get the door outside here open, I've blocked it with a crate but it'll only be a matter of time before they break through. We'll have to get this done and over quick or else we'll have a dozen fat fuckers on our tails to deal with by the time I say twenty," another of Fubuki's companions, apparently, said as she poked in through the open doorway. "We have a minute, tops, to get out of here."

"Alright," the stranger who introduced herself as Fubuki answered as she got up, gently holding her hand as she motioned with her free one outside. "Come with us. We'll get you out of here."

"..." she found herself unable to respond, partly due to fatigue, exhaustion, and hunger, and partly due to the language barrier between them. But as far as she knew, Fubuki and her companions most certainly did not show any hostile intent towards her, and so far, they seemed friendly enough. So she decided to trust them, for now, anyways, and followed Fubuki and her companions out the door, chains clinking softly against the metallic floors as Fubuki cut them apart with relative ease using a strange tool that emitted light blue plasma and sliced the chains apart like butter. She rubbed her wrists once they fell off, sore and bruised from prolonged contact with cold steel and rough edges, but she was still thankful nonetheless, even if Fubuki and her companions seemed to be aliens that she've never seen before.

The fireteam snuck out of the place through another back door, Shigure bringing up the lead, Javelin following close behind, Erin and Shepard bringing up the rear while Fubuki wedged herself in the center alongside with the HVT that the fireteam now found them with. Hands clutched on her Heinrich & Wagner HW216 submachine gun for the sake of compactness in the cramped confines of the corridor, she scanned the sides and doors for anything that might look like an ambushcade as the live data from the bugged enemy security system sent back to her what essentially amounted to a live map of all enemy forces in the area who were beelining for the workshop or after them via the same side exit they took, all of them armed to the teeth with what certainly wasn't tea and crumpets. The data compiled still wasn't enough for a proper translation codex to be created, but still it could at least translate signs and other odds and ends around the place with a reasonable degree of accuracy, and still, it was better than having no translation matrix to rely on. The suppressed SMG was therefore carried in her dominant hand, it's stock folded up for the sake of compactness.

Shigure stopped short of a door and raised her hand to motion for all of them to stop, before poking her eyes a little up to window level and came back down again. "Door's slightly ajar, eight fuckers outside, all armed. We bust through this and knock them down all in one go, as our guns have silencers chances are we'll take them down in the first four volleys or so without anyone knowing. In three, two, one, go."

The door was opened in an instant, Shigure and Javelin opening the show with two 7.62x40mm rounds propelled to well above escape velocity encased in an antigravity 'tunnel' that massively deadened the sonic boom and muzzle audio to a mere handclap, taking out two hostiles from the fight before they could properly respond just as both destroyers shifted their aim within a thousandth of a second and took out two more before they could even do as much as register the sudden death of their comrades, let alone raise their weapons and return fire. Fubuki knocked out two with her submachine gun with ungodly levels of accuracy, her targeting solutions allowing her to sweep the suppressed SMG in an arc and knock out two aliens with two single rounds of ammunition, while Erin and Shepard, closely enough, turned the remaining two into cadavers with two silenced shots out of their battle rifles, leaving the 7.62x64mm brass casings to litter the floor as they got ejected out of the gas-operation long-stroke reverse-bolt bullpup. It was over as soon as it began, the unfortunate aliens didn't get as much of a chance to call for help, much less fight back. Eight corpses were left lying on the floor, blood and gore splattered against the walls leaving an unsightly mess to clean up, but that wasn't their job.

Glancing at the far end of the corridor, Javelin brought her head back in and gave Fubuki a thumbs-down and pulled out the remote detonator from her pocket and flipped it open. A quick transmission burst via neural uplink told her why easily enough—the far end of the corridor was littered with armored and armed personnel, while they hadn't heard them do their whoop-de-doo thingammajimmy at the back with eight corpses littering the floor, chances were that they would most certainly hear them should they attempt to breach and clear through the lot and risk alerting the entire base to their presence, which, obviously, would be a very bad idea.

Blow it, Fubuki ordered over neural uplinks, glancing at the corridor just outside the room they were in. If they take off running in the direction of that warehouse after we blow this thing—which is what they'd do anyways—we'll be able to sneak out largely unmolested. If they don't, well, just pop some frags downrange and full-auto the rest downhill. If firepower can't solve the problem, more firepower will.

Javelin nodded quietly as she thumbed down the button.

The wireless detonation signal reached the detonator wedged firmly within the six-pounder payload of C-14 high explosives encased in a rather sinister-looking cardboard box and triggered the TBX, igniting it and in an instant generating a concussive blast roughly equal to six thousand pounds of TNT within the cramped confines of the warehouse, bursting it open as if it was a Fourth of July cherry bomb and lit up the entire area with falling debris of all shapes and sizes more than enough to make the Chinese New Year seem like a joke in comparison. Fire and explosions lit up the darkness of the planet, plumes of black smoke rising skyward along with debris and chunks of metal, glass, and concrete as the inferno spread as if the entire warehouse had been torched. The chaos only intensified when the warehouse itself turned out to be a storage space for spare fuel cells and extra fuel, which all went off under the heat and explosions, engulfing the entire area in a scene straight from Reign of Fire.

Fubuki braced herself slightly as the shockwave from the detonation rocked the entire base, knocking things around and about, quite literally anything that wasn't nailed down to the ground, aliens included. And some things that were. Muffled voices could be heard from the outside, spoken in alien languages and tongues that Fubuki could neither make heads nor tails of and merely logged them for dissection by ONI's Nerd Brigade, alongside the sound of footsteps as aliens who were not injured, severely injured, or dying by shrapnel or the fallout scrambled to their feet and checked for things that didn't follow them in one piece, or multiple pieces in the case of their weapons. The explosions rocked the place from their hinges, shaking even the very foundation and walls of the facility as cracks appeared on the floors, walls, and ceilings, quite possibly collapsing the place into a pile of rubble and dirt from a single controlled explosion.

As expected, the place was completely deserted as anyone in the vicinity had taken to their heels and ran off to either investigate the cause of the explosion or to fight the raging fires that were now erupting all over the site of the former warehouse, leaving Fubuki and the fireteam more or less with a clear shot at the exit, not that the place would stand much longer, of course; in the end, all good things, save perhaps destruction, had to come to a natural end. Shigure was the first one out, making sure to have an eye out for any potential friendlies and for ambushes that could be lurking nearby as the sound of running footsteps and the yells of 'hämstervöräder!' and such and similar phrases was music to Fubuki's ears, even if she had no clue what they actually were. She trailed behind after that, still clasping the live HVT by the wrist and dragging her out to where the rest were as Erin, Shepard, and Javelin fell in behind and filed out through the door, with Javelin taking position at the rear while Shigure went up front, weapons raised and drawn at the ready. As soon as the last one was out, Fubuki activated the door locks on the way out, effectively denying anyone or anything from pursuing the fireteam from within for at least a few hours until a mop up crew arrives. The walk wasn't short and the sounds of utter and complete bedlam in the alien language was more than enough to convey their level of confusion.

Despite that, almost every corner of the base they came across as they beelined their way towards the exit was, so far as she was concerned, completely and utterly deserted—all of them had gone off to fight the fires and do some damage control, apparently. This trend persisted to the point where every corner they came across was barren, not a single soul present aside from their own and the increasingly audible racket the rest were making behind. She picked up the pace considerably as they walked through a long-and-wide corridor leading straight for an emergency exit, the fireteam hot on her heels, Shigure moving so fast she was almost at a brisk jogging pace as the racks of fire hose and security checkpoints zipped by past the edges of their NVR displays, barely noticeable, but still, at least it's something to log. Things went until they came up to the hallway close to where they just entered the base in the first place, and that was when they first encountered hostiles ever since setting off their payload of C-14 high explosives.

The enemy outnumbered them by a factor of four, evidently from the far end of the base and all rushing over towards the site of the explosion, running into them largely out of sheer coincidence and bad luck on their side, but this time, they actually had a chance to defend themselves, as there was plenty of cover to hide and duck behind fire with, but not before both sides exchanged a volley of fire each, the enemy almost instantaneously taking five casualties and causing Shigure's shields to flare. Not that they could do much damage, anyways, for her shields were outputting the scale of a typical space-borne destroyer and small arms was like a peashooter in comparison to the weapons fire they were made to tank, allowing them to take the punishment with relative ease. Still, the first volley hit, and with both sides now locked in a firefight, the aliens took to their rifles with renewed fervor.

The aliens still outnumbered them by a factor of three, odds to be taken seriously with despite their obvious technological and firepower advantage, one that was made obvious as Shigure's shields flared yet again as she ducked into cover while Shepard and Javelin's shields also flared golden as shots pinged off their repulsor barriers, causing them to curse slightly as they picked off the attackers with accurate battle rifle fire, the silent handclap of the rifles a stark contrast to the enemy's gunfire. Erin likewise returned fire with her rifle, Fubuki doing the same with her Heinrich & Wagner HW216 submachine gun, rounds spattering against surfaces as the exchange of fire continued. Fubuki took potshots from behind cover as Javelin popped a grenade over the edge of the barricade she was hiding behind, Shigure returning fire in bursts while Shepard lined up a shot and squeezed the trigger, knocking out a hostile and painting the walls and floors sickly with alien gore. In the meantime, Javelin chose to switch out her battle rifle for the SRS85 sniper rifle she carried on her back for reasons beyond Shigure for the moment, but the oversized sniper rifle still proved itself something to be reckoned with as a 14.5x115mm shield-and-armor-piercing high-explosive round got sent into the torso of some random unlucky alien with a thunderous boom made distinct by the unsuppressed sniper rifle as the round exploded his guts inside out and showered his comrades in alien gore, courtesy of the shot being sent to thirteen point seven kilometers a second bringing more than enough kinetic energy to make fully armored and shielded Alliance troopers drop instantly with one hit. The fireteam immediately took the initiative, Shigure's assault rifle dropping two hostiles at once while Fubuki's SMG dumped the remaining 42 rounds inside it's magazine into the enemy ranks in a withering amount of fire at near-point-blank distances, the suppressing fire offering enough seconds of reprieve for the fireteam to get up with their HVT in tow and start beelining for the exit before enemy reinforcements could arrive with malicious intent. Two aliens drew combat knives and tried to get things done up close and personal, but before they could get off a single stab, Erin had smashed the butt of her rifle into the first one, sending him sprawling flat in the crumpled mess of a corpse, while Javelin's oversize sniper rifle got used as an impromptu spear, the barrel flung in hard enough to kill him outright regardless of the lack of a bayonet and threw him against the far wall.

The other aliens all tried their best to pin the fireteam down behind fire, metal splinters accelerated to hypersonic speeds zinging past all five members of Szurdok as mass accelerator rounds and silenced hypersonic bullets exchanged paths at a frenzied rate, two more aliens falling victim to Erin's marksmanship while another ate a headshot clean through his shields and showering his buddies in gore, blood, and brain matter courtesy of Javelin's heavy-caliber round as Fubuki's HW216 submachine gun barked a hailstorm of 5.5x30mm rounds downrange on full-auto, downing two aliens at once and shredding another almost to bits to the sheer volume of fire. Another alien tried his luck at melee, charging forwards with a knife drawn and shields flared, but Fubuki simply responded by pumping half a mag worth of submachine gun fire into him before kicking him away, Erin finishing him off with a battle rifle shot, Shigure bringing the fight to a conclusion as she finished the last three off with bursts of 7.62x40mm rounds encased in antigravity tunnels, the sonic booms muffled and reduced to a mere handclap instead of a loud report, leaving three corpses bleeding and dead on the floor with holes the size of a fist punched into their armor plating. Another group of hostiles tried to get at the HVT as she was left out in the open in the chaos of the fighting, only to realize that the N7s escorting her were much more mobile than they thought, Shigure and Shepard moving themselves on intercept courses to beat them to the punch with Shepard catching one of them on the barrel of her rifle as if it had a bayonet (it didn't) before with one squeeze of the trigger sent him sprawling flat on the ground to drown on his own blood with a fist-sized hole punched in his armor and his lungs ripped almost to shreds. Shigure, meanwhile, had opted to use her rifle as a club, swinging it around in the arc and bashing the ribs of her closest attacker in before bringing the SA42 back to shoulder level and shot dead the next, Shepard on the other side of the corridor opting to switch weapons in the meantime and pulled out her Heinrich & Wagner HW317 eight-gauge pump-action shotgun over from her her shoulder, thumbing down the safety lock in one quick motion and with the other, gave the alien closest to her the business end of an eight-gauge buckshot payload in the torso and left it a mess of bloody gore sent flying backwards onto the floor, armor plating punctured and deformed by the explosive payload and painting the surroundings in alien gore in the process. She then cycled the action and sent a second shot into a group of three aliens, shredding two out of them almost immediately and left the third to bleed out with an entire chunk of him missing.

Erin, meanwhile, had also decided to switch weapons out for close combat, her HW317 shotgun propelling another unfortunate alien dumb enough to think he can take her on in a straight up mêlée courtesy of an eight-gauge shotgun payload as she racked the action and mutilated another with her second shot, racking the action a second time just in time to deal with an alien bum-rushing her with his folding coil-rifle in hand and spitting fire on full-auto, unfazed or perhaps incensed by the deaths of his comrades, apparently, three shots pinging off her shields before she sent him and another alien off to meet their gods early via an eight-gauge payload and left a third to bleed out with his guts spilled out all over the ground, limbs partially or totally mutilated by the shotgun pellets. Erin racked the action a third time, aimed her shotgun at a group of aliens pointing rifles at Fubuki who was using herself and her shields as a barrier of sorts to protect the HVT, the distance of twenty meters spreading out the pellets enough for them to not do as much damage as expected, but it was still enough to pop all of their shields nonetheless. A rack of the pump later, a fifth payload ended the fight decisively in their favor as whatever aliens still alive decided that it was best not to engage a fireteam of special forces operatives who had just wiped thirty-three of theirs off the map without taking even a single casualty, both the initial twenty plus thirteen out of twenty more sent as reinforcements. Two tried to gun them down, a futile effort that was quickly dealt with via Shigure, while the others simply turned tail and ran. Leaving them to do what they thought best, the fireteam walked past the rows of mutilated corpses and splattered gore and departed the base using more or less the same gate as the one they came in from, although this time, they took the time to seal the gate shut with the help of Fubuki hacking into the security systems and locking it down for the time being, at least until the mop up crew comes and takes care of it for them. Not before Javelin took off another six-pounder box of C-14, armed it, and placed it underneath a relatively intact corpse, however.

The fireteam took of running in the direction of the forest with the HVT in tow, Shigure taking the lead with her SA42 at the ready, the rest of the fireteam following suit with the HVT in tow, Shepard bringing up the rear, battle rifle at the ready now that there was no close-quarters combat to contend with. Fubuki kept her SMG as the HVT, a distinctly humanoid blue-skinned alien, was still being held rather gently by the hand and she would thus need something that could be shot one-handed and an assault rifle would be thus too unwieldy. Javelin was already monitoring the place of their last firefight via combination motion tracker and microphone she chucked in alongside the bomb she planted earlier, monitoring the place for the hostiles that would inevitably come through to get at them before they could beeline to the collective safety of cover and concealment in the dense vegetation a few hundred meters away and haul ass outta there the same way they arrived: Hellcat light multipurpose vehicle. The team ran through the three hundred meters of open ground as fast as they can before the enemy could properly bring reinforcements to bear, which as far as they knew, were drawing closer by the minute.

Moments later, the ground in front of them erupted as a mass accelerator shot slammed into the dirt, the source of the shot a hovertank that had just exited the confines of the base and was now raining down heavy-caliber fire downrange at the fireteam and their HVT, forcing Fubuki and the others to take cover behind a ditch as troops poured out from the gates, hell bent on hunting down to the last man, or in this case, girl, whomever dared to attack them so close to their base of operations, letting loose a rain of hypersonic metal splinters and hyper-compressed air downrange in a withering hailstorm of suppressing fire, but Javelin had another surprise in store for them. Pulling out from her back the other heavy-caliber weapon she carried and letting the SRS85 hanging on it's sling, she hefted the ATGM-48 Jackhammer anti-tank guided missile launcher and sighted the enemy hovertank within the launcher's targeting feed before with one quick motion of the trigger sent both 85mm tandem-charge HEAT warheads downrange, both missiles impacting square on the tank's frontal armor and boiled clean through it with the resulting plasma jet, leaving the tank a half slagged, half flaming wreck that came to crash onto the ground as it's mass effect drive core lost power and the fuel cells caught fire, engulfing it in a second wave of flames as the pressurized hydrogen inside leaked and caught fire as it did so. Shepard dropped a pair of aliens with her battle rifle via accurate, single shots while Shigure dumped the rest of her magazine into the enemy ranks before she dropped down to reload her weapon, Javelin meanwhile estimating the amount of enemy forces present, both through combination motion tracker and audio signal as well as the backdoor access to the enemy's security system, before setting a calculated thirteen-second countdown timer on the bomb hidden where the vast majority of enemy forces were clustered at and ducked back down behind cover.

"Bomb's 'bout to go off, cover you and the HVT's ears, since it'll be honestly dammed loud and flashy. Keep your head down, too, unless you want permanent vision damage."

"Got it," responded Fubuki as she knelt down and covered the alien's 'ears' with her hands and deployed her shields to envelop her on sound-silencing mode as well for good measure and used her body to shield her eyes from view, Shepard, Erin, Javelin, and Shigure polarizing their visors and HUDs and covering their ears with their hands while their shields went to sound-proof mode. Javelin kept her head low as tracers zinged overhead mere meters up from where she was, eyes glued to the countdown timer on her HUD as each second counted down in succession, before the clock hit zero.

The ground itself shook with the explosion, speaking volumes about the sheer order of magnitude of the explosion—an explosion equal to six thousand pounds of TNT made itself known directly at the very heart of the enemy forces clustered to keep the human strike team from escaping. Debris was flung sky high, flaming bits and pieces of polymer and synthetic wood, or rather, the aliens' equivalent to one, more than enough to light up the sky like a July 4th fireworks celebration, mangled bodies sent into the air with limbs and chunks missing or set afire and the chunk of the base where the bomb was set was reduced to naught but slag, the explosion spawning enough three-thousand-k-centigrade plasma to boil off entire sections of metal in an instant and completely slag or boil anything that wasn't flammable while setting afire anything that was. Whatever fire sent their way was no more, the troops putting them downrange either outright killed or dying, a body missing an arm and a leg landing next to Javelin in a crumpled heap, his armor half molten, half slagged, and he himself looked like something that came out of a hydraulic press. One thing remained true after the blast, though: There weren't any hostiles anywhere near them anymore. They had gotten lucky again.

Fubuki got up from behind her cover after a few seconds of tense, gut-feel quiet, her polarized HUD unpolarized now as there was no bright flash of light anymore to deal with. She glanced at the destruction as the fires began to burn like a thousand fuel depots had caught fire, before speaking out her thoughts out loud; "Poor fuckers, for once."

Javelin chuckled lightly under her breath as she checked her ammo count on her rifle. It read full.

"Welp, that means that we'll have bought ourselves at least another hour and a half to spend without fuckers being sent our way," Shigure mumured as she stowed her rifle away on her back. "Anyways, should we get going, no? Mitsubishi might've made those Hellcats tough as balls, but there's nothing to stop your average Joe Alien from taking to them with rockets or missiles, either."

"Yeah," replied Erin. "Let's move out. I don't wanna stick around here longer than necessary..."

Codex entry — Humans — Human infantry weapons

Human infantry weapons do not function like typical Citadel small arms do, as in the principle of a mass accelerator to accelerate splinters of metal and/or hypercompressed rammed air to hypervelocity through the use of mass effect fields, but rather, via more primintive usages of self-contained ammunition cartridges with projectiles and explosive propellants encased in a metal casing. Despite this, however, such weapons, commonly referred to in Citadel space as 'slugthrowers' and often thought of as primintive swords or crossbows, are commonly accepted within many Citadel tacticians as not just some antiquated slugthrowers on an offhanded backwater colony world, or the occasional bounty hunter's souvenir. The humans, in the same spirit of the human feat of 'engineering' had more or less developed their slugthrower technology to the point where it rivals, and in many cases, surpasses, Citadel mass accelerator weaponry. A classic example is the Relay 314 incident, where human slugthrower equipped soldiers picked apart batarian slaver troops without much trouble. While a case could be made that typical slavers and mercinaries would have worse equipment compared to full-on soldiers, even to the untrained observer, it was clear that these weapons could, if given the right operators, inflict horrendous injuries or even outright kill fully armored soldiers. Old models aquired through black market dealings have shown to inflict devastating injuries to even fully armored and shielded combatants, even from respectable distances away, their heavier models more so.

Even more concerning, is that humans often make use of specialized 'shield-piercing' ammunition within their projectile weaponry, which is a breed of specialized ammunition that is supposedly capable of piercing kinetic barriers with relative ease, to the point where a single bullet could potentially tear straight through shields and armor and injure or kill outright the wearer, even when fully equipped and with full-strength barriers. Even more disturbing, is that human infantry weapons can be manufactured with relative ease using standard civilian manufacturing techniques, as opposed to needing advanced fabrication facilities that are normally reserved for military usage. Such weapons can thus be manufactured en masse even by relatively primitive means, giving their infantry units the ability to equip their members with state-of-the-art weaponry in large numbers very quickly, as opposed to most Citadel militaries needing specialized equipment for the manufacture of more traditional mass accelerator firearms. This also has an added benefit of extreme ease in field repairs and maintainence, allowing human soldiers to repair their weapons even on the fly in the field with minimal tools.

They are not without their disadvantages, however. They do not fold up for compactness like Citadel weapons do, they require specialized, bulky ammunition inside of large, bulky magazines as opposed to stamped ammuition blocks inside typical Citadel small arms, they overheat, just like Citadel weaponry (though they have a far higher heat tolerance and ones designed for constant firing have replaceable barrels to mitigate this issue), and they have a slower rate of fire compared to Citadel weapons, due to the need to reload ammunition after every firing cycle. As such, while certainly not obsolete, human infantry weaponry must still be employed intelligently and tactically in order to maximize effectiveness, especially in regards to their shield piercing ammunition, which may be problematic to source, acquire, and manufacture. Still, despite these issues, human infantry weaponry remain a force to be reckoned with, and given the right hands and operators, they might as well be the largest threat any infantryman may have to face.

A/N:

my pc overheats on literally notepad lmaao

kek

why'd I get a MacBook in the first place