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3-20-2184
[ GEMINI SIGMA | PODA-D7-77 SYSTEM | PLANETARY BODY: PODA - S2 ]
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Niamo'Keena vas Hartmay was an exceptionally intelligent woman. Brilliant in many regards. A name that would forever remain documented within the annals of Thessia's academic lineage in its most revered centers of higher learning. It wasn't one, but two doctorates Niamo had earned. An exemplary feat for anyone, let alone a quarian pilgrim turned pupil. She'd weathered the prestigious and demanding hallways of Retinsha and did it without the privilege or entitlement that many alumni had been chanced with. Her pilgrimage was a journey of relentless pursuit and dedication. A balance of part-time jobs and an incredibly rigorous academic schedule. In lieu of the recognition gained from her first submitted dissertation, she'd earned a full-ride scholarship to forge herself a second doctorate in the last seven years of her pilgrimage.
Her accolades were numerous and plentiful. If they'd been worn like badges, she'd have been adorned from shoulder to shoulder. A walking pin cushion of achievements.
Fourteen years that woman had been gone from home. She'd come back from pilgrimage and offered herself as the gift to the Hartmay.
Yet, with that incredible brain of hers, the exposure she'd had to the galaxy had been pretty linear. Asari culture was plenty sophisticated, no doubt. It's not like she took her lessons from Tuchanka (Keelah, she wondered if any pilgrims had ever gone there), but it colored her a certain view of the galaxy. She'd essentially become one of them. A quarian body, an asari mind. Tali wanted to look at it with admiration but only had a stack of reservations instead.
Tali also wondered how many she'd shagged. Maybe it was all a farce. Maybe she was just the dean's plaything for 14 years. A fling for any asari given their lifetimes. The potential that she'd indulged in the asari's openness to relationships wasn't lost on her.
Tali glowered. Now that was just a bit mean. Maybe it was her who had a colored view of the galaxy. Or maybe it was just a harsh jest. Or maybe it was a plain ol' lick of jealousy. In comparison, Tali's credentials, while substantial, seemed modest. Sure, she had a PhD herself, yet in Niamo's shadow, it was like boasting about accolades earned in community college. Something something thief of joy, she'd hear John whisper somewhere in that head of hers.
And speaking of that Asari grace, Niamo'Keena's haughty stare and curled lip could be seen straight through the glass that separated her from the world when she saw Kal'Reeger.
"That is not necessary to bring, Kal'Reeger."
"Oh yes it is, ma'am."
"How could you say that? We're raiding plants and collecting dirt, you barbarian."
Tali's stare went kinda flat from the sidelines. See? Like an asari. Through and through.
Kal eyed the S80 in his hands and set it down. "Ma'am, do you even know what this thing's for?"
"Does it matter?" Her hand both pointed and shooed at the strip of round red things going into the comoobleminjober, "Look at that stupid thing."
Ah. The oh-so-familiar bite of dysrationalia. You'd think a woman of her stature, its effect wouldn't be one to elude her.
Tali knew what the S80 was for. It was the squad's primary issue automatic weapon. Best served by a crew of two, but often handled by only one. Of quarian design, the gun shared the same features to that of a human counterpart. A belt of sinks in a box magazine and hot-swappable barrels to maintain a sustainable base of fire at a default rate of 640 rounds per minute. Quick adjustments with the selector could steer the ROF up or down depending on what the situation would dictate.
She was suddenly glad to not have been marred by the halls of that Retinsha whatever school on Thessia. Niamo already sounded insufferable.
"Service model eight zero. That's its designation." Kal explained to the leading doctor of this expedition. "Made by a bunch of eggheads like yourself. Churns geth and fauna for breakfast."
"Weapon of war." She spat.
"Yeah. That's kinda the point."
He stared out the starboard window and saw that they were about ready to breach atmo.
"Listen up!" Reeger announced, "For all our newcomers: Take your seats and keep your back straight. We're on final."
The ship began rumbling. The bodies of the cabin did a light jostle and people began to situate themselves into their restraints.
"Decleration to descent. Vimpact inbound." The pilot announced over the PA, "Hold fast."
"What's up with the dampeners?" A scientist broke out.
"Broke about 80 years ago." Kal answered plainly.
"Why hasn't anyone fixed it?" Another scientist asked.
"To keep you humble." Kal answered, already sick of the questions.
The vibration turned to a violent jostle. Anyone who had anything else to say died with them. It was too loud to talk.
Tali tried to careen her head over to starboard. From what little she could make out in that small window beside her and Juel, was that the ground of PODA-S2 was covered in a canopy of green, a sky full of scattered showers and low-altitude mountains. It was beautiful from up here.
Here, deep inside the uncharted parts of Terminus space, the quarians searched. Searched for a garden world lost to all but the remotest reaches of space and far away from anyone that would do any harm to them.
It wasn't to be a homeworld. Simply a prospect that maybe they could settle and build and make themselves stronger for the foothold they'd need to reclaim Rannoch. Or so that's what the homeworlders wanted it to be represented as.
A tangible divide between her people had splintered about a hundred and twenty years ago. At a political divide, the quarians were essentially split from homeworlders and outworlders.
Naturally, the topic came sensitively. Missions like these were supposed to be a bipartisan effort for both parties to work together on a commonality. You get a little bit of this, but you don't lose sight of the reason why we're all out here in the first place.
Tali, if you couldn't plainly guess, was a homeworlder. But she also knew that quartering yourself on a planet and stabilizing the species was likely their best chance to reclaim the territories they'd long since lost. She was worried in the same vein, however, with people getting too complacent in the future. Upcoming generations would shrug and lose sight of what got them out here in the first place. And then all the tens of billions of lives lost to a senseless genocide would go unanswered and left to wander the void for an eternity more.
Unacceptable. There would be atonement. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday for what the geth had done.
Soon enough, the jostling stopped and the calming ambiance began to reclaim the cabin. Just your regular shuttering of unsecured gear and the occasional bouts of turbulence from the gusts outside.
She cast her gaze up to the two pilots talking amongst themselves, their voices almost lost to the din of the working commotion. Just the flicks of switches and radios as the two glanced about, studying both the windshield and the instruments that surrounded them.
"We're out-clear. Peak at six point five zero seconds. We're getting a gleam."
An idled alarm. More flicks and knobs being turned. "Copy control. We're op-ready. Vizpop go."
The co-pilot turned a head over his shoulder to give Reeger an update. "We're looking for a good spot to land. Nothing looks good yet."
Kal gave the pilot a thumbs up. "Copy."
Tali turned to look at Juel. "See? Vacation."
Juel bristled in his restraints."You are just something else, woman."
She kept listening to the pilots.
"How about there?"
"Nope. No good."
"...There?"
"Eh. Don't think so."
"Keep looking."
"...I'm seeing uh... Oh look. In sectional two by eight. That looks clean. Check four space."
"Uh. Uhm..." some taps on the small keyboard from the pilot. "Four space checked. That's the spot. Let's pull descent."
Co-pilot faced Kal again. "We found a good zone. Get ready. Expected GST at five."
Kal relayed to everyone else. "We gotta landing zone people. Five minutes, everyone."
She heard the engines changing pitch as the pilots began to ease up on the throttle.
"What're you expecting we'll see?" Juel asked her.
"Dirt. Trees." She thought harder, "...Rocks."
"Oh wow. Gee." Juel grumbled, "Exciting."
She leaned back and closed her eyes. She liked to imagine John watching her with that carefree grin he always had. A small smile, one barely even traceable on her lips, was there.
The minutes crawl by. She listened to the preparatory conversations between scientists and the marines combing through their personal gear.
"We're quick contact in ten."
The engines began to roar. She could hear mechanisms change thrust vectors. She could feel the inertia trying to pull her head down to her feet and whirring motors from landing gear.
"Steady. That four space looks good."
"Nice catch on that."
"Touch down. Touch down. We're contact final, control. Copy. Out."
The pilot gave Kal the thumbs up he needed to know they could finally dismount.
"Alright people! Let's go. Let's move. We got six hours of sunlight and I don't want a minute of it wasted." Kal ordered, walking down the aisle.
Dozens of men and women release restraints and scatter about the cabin to get the things they'd need to set up camp.
"Check your parties and maintain your parties. No one gets lost. Clear?"
"Clear." The marines repeated.
Lining up, the quarians took the ladders down to the bay that would grant them access to the earth below. Juel and Tali were among the last to descend to the bottom floor.
In a bound-up and jumbled group, the bay doors cracked open. Sunlight spilled in, and the sixty-four members of this party squinted in unison as the doors continued to fall until they became a ramp that would grant them access to the world around them.
They all sauntered forward.
Juel sniffed and cinched the straps on his backpack tighter. "Excited?"
"Sure." She forced.
The group immediately gave each other space and spread out.
"I want security, marines! Let's go!"
Squads dispersed and the marines got to work.
Tali watched Niamo already issuing instructions to her team and using terms far beyond her. Words like pedology or biogeochemistry. Or... Isotopmawhatchamacalllit.
God she felt kinda stupid. She supposed all of that was just not her domain.
"We're sight-line clear. Radials checked. We're secure." Came the report on Kal's radio.
"Copy. First maintains perimeter. The rest of you; let's get camp setup."
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"Never did ask you about your politics." She said to strike up some conversation with him.
Juel took some steps on this long trek upward to a hill they were ordered to go to. "Uh. Galactic or local? '
"Local. Position?"
"Homeworlder." He said at length before turning to her, "I don't think I need to ask what yours is."
"Why, because my dad's Rael'Zorah?"
"Might have something to do with that." he breathed, their ascent steepening. "Why do you ask?"
Some more steps to make sure she wasn't going to slip under wet rocks. "Just curious."
"Politics suck."
"Politics keep the fleet afloat as much as its fuel."
"I hate that saying."
"It's true."
He stopped and perched himself on a boulder. "I thought this was supposed to be a vacation."
"It is."
"Then why we talking about politics?"
"What would you rather we talk about?" She asked, catching back up to him and stopping.
"I don't know. Not that."
"They're important."
"Yeah, sure. But what are the normal folk like me supposed to do about it? I follow the laws and work full-time. That's all I got time for."
She settled herself into a squat because she figured they could just take a break here. "Sorry. I was just trying to kill time."
Juel glowered and felt bad. He thought hard for a moment. "Maybe we should talk about what we like to do."
"And what would that be?"
"...I like to surf the extranet." Juel said.
"That is just about the most interesting thing I've ever heard someone say." Tali said lamely.
"Okay. Your turn."
Tali thought for a moment. What did she like to do?
"That's a good question." She answered honestly, "I like... watching movies, I guess."
"I've never seen you once watch a movie."
She still sat in that squat, arms folded across her knees, stare transfixed on the trees. Juel was right. She hadn't watched anything for months. Not since Ullipses. She used to all the time back on Normandy after shift. She remembered in a passing memory last June? July? when John showed her an announcement about Fleet and Flotilla 2 being in the final stages of production and a release date being announced soon. Showed her a week or so after the mark that'd been left on her from the clutches of Peak 15.
She was supposed to see that with him. Both of them. They never did.
"I watch them late at night." She lied.
"Anything good to recommend?"
"Nope."
"Figures."
He took in the landscape and recalled the unnamed planet they'd visited only a week ago. The air there was dryer and more arid. You could see as far as the curvature of the planet allowed. Here, PODA-S2 was more wet and humid. Jungle like. Fog clung to the air. The clouds often hugged this planet and her mountains. It felt much smaller. You couldn't see as far.
"Could you imagine just living here?" Juel murmured, their conversation already forgotten. He pictured himself walking out of a cottage just past that little stream beside them. "Just living in a house of wood. Chopping up trees. Hunting animals. Making jerky."
"It'd be a simple life."
"I feel like it'd be pretty fulfilling." Juel said quietly.
He imagined himself separated from this suit. Wearing nothing but a shirt, pants, and boots.
"I wonder what it'd be like to be normal," Juel mumbled, that imaginary cottage of his still pictured in his mind.
"What do you mean?"
"The suits, Tali."
"Oh."
He sighed and felt for the clasps on his visor. A simple little pull and tug and he could disengage the seals and just feel it all. "Part of me just wants to say 'ah, fuck it' and just take it off. Right here. Right now."
"I wouldn't want to see that."
He stammered and put a hand up against his face. 'I meant the visor. Keelah. The visor."
She gave him a heartless chuckle. "It feels amazing."
Juel gave her a face and dropped down next to her in a squat much like her own. "You actually did that? You're lying."
"I'm not."
"What happened?"
She thought of those few final nights on Ullipses. The campfire under a boundless sky of stars. John's lovelorn gaze shadowed by amber flames. And then their first and final kiss.
"Got a little sick." she answered. "Brink of death had me doing all sorts of crazy things."
For a few moments, they just listened to the creek. He knew she was mentioning her days on Ullipses. But he pressed on anyway. Both for her sake and because his curiosity burned for more.
"So. Like, just the visor or the whole...?" He motioned his head.
"Yeah. Took off the whole helmet."
Juel kept his stare forward as he tried processing that. "I want to do that so bad."
"Nothing's stopping you." She rasped sarcastically.
He rolled his eyes. "So what's it like?"
She saw a flower next to her and unclasped the fasteners on the pack she'd been shouldering.
"I don't think I can explain it. So many feelings that I can't even describe. I felt... cold wind. Fire. It hurt. But I felt so alive. It's just—I don't know."
𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑒𝑐𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑠𝑦.
"And you didn't die." Juel drawled, "Maybe the whole immunodeficiency thing is overblown?"
"Maybe just a weensy little." She mumbled, depositing the flower into a jar and capping it.
He stood back up.
"Ready to go?"
"Yeah." She pocketed the sample back to her pack and stood.
Juel was about to ask her what brought her to the Neema but steeled himself. That was self-explanatory. They all knew what it stood for. It was one of the reasons he'd picked it himself.
"What brought you to the Neema?" Tali asked him. He was a little caught off guard by her thinking the same thing as him.
"That's a long story." He intoned softly as they began to ascend this fairly steep incline.
She didn't say anything but he decided he'd take that as a signal that she wanted him to continue. He knew about her. Perhaps it would be okay if he revealed the most out of anyone aboard the Neema to her.
"My birthship was the Gognimae. She was part of the heavy fleet." He began for context. More careful climbing. More silence. "...I used to be a pre-pilgrimage marine. Fell in love."
Tali just listened.
"Bad combo." Juel muttered, "You can imagine how that ends."
He stopped walking even though they'd just started. He wanted to say her name without a thing to disturb him because he hadn't said it himself in years now. "Serah'Meyann nar Gognimae." Came a murmur.
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Many years ago.
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[ MFS GOGNIMAE ]
OPERATIONAL PROCEDURE: RECALL PER ISSUED DIRECTIVE | ORDNANCE CRITICAL
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The Gognimae and her two escorts coasted toward the relay, a measly hour away from their second of three transits to regroup with the bulk of the heavy fleet and resupply.
Seven task groups; a conglomerate of patrol and heavy fleet ships, were on rotation. A six month skirmish turned war against emboldened slavers and pirates that had taken too much of a liking picking on civilian envoys soloing it out in the terminus or ferrying supplies to other task groups spread about the galaxy.
The quarian fleets did not take kindly to these acts of aggression. Nor did they take kindly to the uptick of boarding actions against their civilian ships. And given the lawlessness of the Terminus, the quarians were the biggest authority in this quarter of the galaxy. And so long as they remained within its ungoverned borders, they would assert and enforce their dominance against anyone who dared to tread upon their sovereignty.
Given the relatively 'meek' size of their enemy, this war had been mostly one of transmissions and spying that had finally led them to the three worlds these groups called home.
In the three months of work it took to find them all, they'd learned that their numbers were in the tens of thousands. They had fleets. They had tanks. They had soldiers and all the men in the world to run their sniveling logistics.
The quarian fleets administered a fury of scorched earth. Orbital bombardments. Eradication of their enemy's lesser craft. Destruction of stations. The amount of ammo expelled and discharged from the quarians would give even turians pause. Nothing was spared. Even things they could've taken for their own. They wanted to underscore the purpose of what it was they had set out to do: To tell the inhabitants of the Terminus of what would potentiate if you got on their shit list.
Nothing escaped without their knowing. Everything was flagged and tagged. Cockroaches leading their executioners to the next nest for the next slaughter. Holes to flush the rats from. But weaker and weaker they became. No mercy. No quarter.
The Terminus only had one rule. Everyone knew what it was. But this campaign had an objective to change that. When they finished this theater, there would be two rules for the Terminus to adhere to: Don't fuck with Aria. Don't fuck with quarians.
But this war still raged. The lesson was still being learned. So the fucking around and finding out was still out on full display.
Juel and Serah slept. Slept in the safety of their cots in their spartan room. Two cots flanking the walls. A small desk. A locker organized with all of their meager belongings. There was a soft alarm. A simple one from the tiny plastic clock on the nightstand they shared.
She turned it off, hoping it hadn't woken Juel. Seeing as how his leg and arm had yet to move from where they dangled told her it hadn't. She withdrew her hand and snuck it back under the covers before staring at the man she called her own. A fellow Gognimaean. They both knew it was something to frown upon when you were hooking up with someone inside your own birthship. If everyone did it, the incest would kill them faster than any outbreak could. But Juel's and Serah's families were both first gen on the Gognimae, so she figured that gave them somewhat of a pass from the taboo.
In their quiet little sanctuary, sealed off from the rest of the world which was attributable to an actual door, she dwelled.
She wasn't even sure what got her to fall for him, now that she tried to remember. Nothing came immediately to mind other than him being such a witty asshole. Was it really the charm in that personality of his that she'd fallen so hard for? Or was it because he treated her the same as he did did everybody else?
Ah, that didn't sound quite right. Every girl wanted to be treated special. She wasn't the exception, and Juel did treat her special. But the confidence he had; the one where he talked to everybody the same regardless of who they were or the status they had? It gave him an allure she didn't quite follow. She'd been flirted by a lot of guys. And they all talked to her differently than him. Not like Juel. No jests. No spice. No acidic sarcasm. They were just so... gutless. Talked and acted like toilet paper around her because they wanted to be nice and... attractive she supposed? That wasn't attractive. That was pathetic.
Juel treated her the same way he always had his entire life. Ever since they were kids. She was always the butt of a good joke. But one she always loved hearing even if it was at her own expense. She eventually fell in love.
Then one day he decided to join up for the service. She elected to do it with him just to make sure if he ever got rotated from the Gognimae, she'd be there with him in the same outfit.
She kept her feelings a secret. Kept them a secret for years. And all that time, Juel never made an indication he liked her and she didn't do a thing to let him know. Then one day, he pulled her aside into a closet when they were walking down a hallway and told her he'd found love.
She'd almost cried thinking he'd fallen for someone else. Then he took off his helmet in that dingy little space. What followed after was...
She blushed. Well. A memory she'd be happy to have for the rest of her life.
Fate had been lucky for them. They never got stationed elsewhere. So the Gognimae remained home and they got to stay with family. For now.
She kept staring at him. She couldn't see anything except that loose arm and bit of leg from underneath that blanket of his. She realized that she'd fallen for her best friend. That was the allure. They were friends first. A couple second. Perhaps that's why it worked out so well in the end. She wanted to sit and just enjoy the company of silence and her sleeping future husband, but something disturbed the ambiance. Her brows furrowed. She could feel and hear distantly through the hull a chain-like rumble. One she recognized immediately.
Spooling. One of six of the human-designed 40-millimeter point defense cannons installed on the Gognimae's hull about 7 months ago. Then a cacophonic roar unleashed.
It stopped as soon as it had started. Then more spooled up again. Another long and thundering salvo.
"Juel. Wake up." She said, throwing off her blanket and kneeling over him, "Something's happening. Wake up."
He stirred awake.
"What. What is it."
The PA answered him. "Attention. Attention. Priority Directive. All squads to stations. Prepare to repel borders. Offshore entities on intercept. Unknown and untagged inbound."
He got to his feet and didn't even bother with the blanket he'd tossed on the floor. They could hear the shuffling of feet and commotion just outside. They opened their door to meet the crazed movement of the Gognimae's crew rushing about.
"We need to get to the armory." Juel said. But before they stepped out into the halls, he faced her and made their visors touch. "Good morning." He squeezed in quickly. Then they went out into the hustle and bustle to do as they were ordered. They ran into Sergeant Kas'Rie, their squad leader.
"Kas. What's going on?"
"We don't know." He motioned for them all to start walking with him, "All we see is a ragtag group desperate enough to try and take this ship. PDGs already took out two of them but they're closing fast."
"How many?"
"Eight left. All boarding craft. Radar's pinging additional blips out at range. Three frigates and some corvettes. It's probably where they came from."
Serah couldn't bring herself to understand how eight little flies could even get that close to the Gognimae. She was a floating menace. More gun than ship essentially. "That doesnt make sense."
They kept moving and filtered through the dozens of the crew passing by. "It does if you know we're almost bingo on ammo." Kas answered.
"How could they know that?"
"Vultures trying to pick up scraps from the sidelines. We're on resupply and they probably know it. Everything else to question is above our pay grade."
"And our escorts?"
"Engaged with the escorting strike craft that got them this far."
They finally made it to the line that was leading out of the armory. One quarian went in and another popped out with a rifle and a rig of gear on their chest.
"They will pay their share of tax. Every tile they touch will be paid for with flesh. I will make sure of that." Kas murmured as they waited.
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Sergeant Kas and his five marines were tasked with holding cradle five of seven. Cradle five, unlike her six other counterparts, was bottlenecked by a flight of stairs and a flat cargo lift to ferry whatever supplies happened to squeeze through her tight space.
Four stayed below. Two up above with an S80 for a crew-served base of fire. All six leveling arms against a single sight line.
Adda and Chasuk operated above. Kas, Kann, Juel, and Serah remained below.
Juel opened a channel to Serah and tapped his ear to show her he wanted to talk. His voice was hardly a whisper above the small pops of static on their line. "Hey."
"Hey." She mumbled back.
They locked eyes from across the bay and said nothing to each other for the coming moments. It was a suffocating silence because Juel didn't even know what to say. Simulations and training could only prepare you so much. The combat they'd seen was one where their enemy was but a pinprick of shadows to laze with HMGs. Not with small arms at these kinds of ranges.
He wanted to hurl. He wanted to tell her he was scared. Terrified of what was to happen. But he couldn't say any of that. He wasn't even worried about himself. He was worried about her at the exclusion of all else. He cared about everyone in his squad. But he wasn't in love with them like he was with her.
"...I love you." Is all he could utter.
Soft unimpeded static on the line. Eyes still locked. Then screeching metal from the doors that separated them from the void. He ended the call and faced the coming threat.
On reflex, the squad of six stiffened guns against their shoulders.
"No quarter." Kas ordered, "No mercy."
"They shan't have it for us." They said in unison.
A bright light began to emit from the top of the airlock. An arcing and blazing white glow.
They all stared at the light descending down like a loading bar for the violence that would soon follow. Then it opened with a blast, shearing the doors from its hinges.
"Fuck 'em up."
A cone of red tracer fire focused and lazed the only door the boarding party could push through. The S80 barked its steady volley of fire, cloaking the aerobridge in a shimmering display of grazing and refracting rounds. They danced and bounced, like lasers off mirrors.
A cloud of pink mist began to leach through the air, but Kas' team did not let up. Rounds continued to pour downrange. Seventy-four galactic seconds of fully sustained fire. The S80 coughed its third spent sink and demanded an exchange of barrels.
Juel peered deep into the depth of the mess they'd caused. A pile of dead in all a manner of ways. He could hardly make out the mush. But then he saw a forklift appear in the boardcraft's corridor, a blast shield secured to its front, and began its slow advance toward them.
"Kas!"
"On it."
Kas took a sidestep and flicked the safety off his gas-operated anti-material rifle conveniently placed next to him.
Iron sights against where he pictured the driver would be, Kas let out a low grumble.
"Enjoy."
He fired. No, he detonated. A howling boom as a 70-caliber round struck the shield, shearing its jacket into a splay of sub-sonic confetti, core cavitating the barrier with a pulsed flash, and embellishing its face with a sweltering red halo. A warping shockwave reverberated around the sergeant with every anti-matter slug singing out to meet its target.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Juel could feel the rippling pressure hammering through his chest. His vision danced from the compressive force and his hands clenched tighter on the hold of his rifle. He glanced at the bolt ramming back to expel and forward to load, spent shells coughing black, breech spitting sparks, muzzle casting out its breaths of death.
But the industrial vehicle did not let up. It pushed and pushed. The six quarians held, a suppressive concentration of fire cloaking that damn hallway with everything they had.
The forklift finally made it out of the exit. But it toppled over the lips of the bay, sending it careening forward off its wheels, revealing the mess Kas had made of the operator. Only a pair of legs remained. They catapulted off the seat without even a pelvis to hold them together.
But the forklift did what it had set out to do. Men split out from the hallway from the cover it provided, guns at waists to cloak the bay in return fire.
"Kas!" Adda bellowed from above, "It's a whole company! We need to fall back!"
He agreed. "Suppressive fire! Fall out! Move!"
Adda yanked the charging handle yet again to expel another hot sink and swept the deck in an unyielding supersonic screen. A batarian caught in her sweeping laze, his head disappeared into tattered ribbons and flecks of bone.
The four of Kas' team below scrambled back. Back up the stairs they went. Kas, then Juel. Serah being the third. Kann was not lucky. At his sixth step up, a round entered through the back of his skull and exited out through the front of his visor. A spider web splintered across, and a splash of red spattered the broken membrane of glass. He was dead before his visor crunched to pieces onto the steps below. No one noticed.
The remaining three ran past both Adda and Chasuk who maintained their base of fire on that catwalk.
"Where's Kann?!" Adda screamed, flinching from the effective fire coming her way, "Where is he!" Chasuk tried to search too but the rounds that whizzed by kept him from doing anything but glance.
"Kann!" They shouted.
Kas forced Juel and Serah toward their second line and screamed to Adda and Chasuk. "Let's move! Let's go!"
Chasuk shook her shoulder as she cut down a turian emboldened enough to show his face. "Adda! Go! Go now!"
Adda did as she was told. She pulled back and dropped the S80 to its carrying handle to make their way to their next line of defense. Before Chasuk could follow, a round passed through his knee. He fell with a pained gasp, rifle clattering to the floor.
Seeing the man fall, she did an immediate about-face without even thinking. As she reached for that trauma handle on his chest rig to pull him to the door, a round passed through her from hip to hip, paralyzing her instantly from the waist down. She fell into a crunched heap and screamed.
Kas, from the breadth of the door, watched the stairs with his rifle raised and knew there was nothing he could do to save them.
"Go, Kas. Go." Chasuk demanded, crawling meekly toward Adda, "Secure our second line."
Kas gave them only a glance. But then he was gone. He fell back to the second of four lines of defense with only three of his men remaining.
Blood pooling in a puddle together, Chasuk yelled to Adda. "Adda. Adda." Chasuk watched her eyes darting, searching. Chest heaving. "Look at me."
The gunfire from below still whizzed by. They finally locked onto his. His hands trembled violently, but he reached out and grasped her hand to get her to focus.
"We have to hold them off a little longer." He cooed, "Come on."
"I can't—feel my legs." She was shivering. Head quaking from shock. Her wounds almost made a sucking sound, "I can't...—feel—"
"—I know." He fished from his pocket two fragmentation grenades. It had gotten to this point that using ordnance was commensurate to the threat. They didn't want to be lobbing grenades inside their own home. But that kind of jurisprudence went out the window when the risk of letting what could be an easy flanking to all the other squads protecting the other bays was as high as it was.
He set the explosive in her palm and wrapped both his hands around hers.
"You know what to do." He rolled onto his belly and shouldered the S80 and yanked back the charging handle to exchange a used sink for a new one.
Adda pulled the pin and held the lever down.
They could hear the unmistakable stomping of feet storming the stairs.
Before he could even see anyone, Chasuk squeezed a long burst. Running into his line of fire, they all stagger forward, chests and appendages splitting from the rounds that passed through them. Adda threw her grenade. It landed by a small fuel canister and dispelled its ordnance; turning the explosion into a cocktail of sticky flames and boiling oil. The screams they heard below was a heavenly sound to the two dying quarians. She reached for the second grenade and yanked its pin, lever yet again, waiting for her go.
But Chasuk was half a second too late. A pair of men chanced the stairs with a charge and passed Chasuk's line of sight. They cut Adda down, splitting her open under a volley of rifle and shotgun fire. Her spine collapsed and she fell onto her legs, grenade clattering from her hands and rolling toward her murderers as a final parting gift.
Adjusting his firing position as best he could, he saw them try to kick away the offending grenade before being subsumed by the rupturing explosion.
A smirk graced Chasuk's lips from Adda's last act of defiance. She'd died a warrior's death. Knowing he would soon join her, he held his resolve and waited for his calling.
What remained of the explosion was a man missing half his vertical plane while the other had fallen victim to losing parts of his face. The surivor barreled through the settling cloud of dust and smoke and landed his hands on Chasuk's neck, wrenching him away from the S80, and dragging him onto his back.
Chasuk wasn't fazed in the least. The stupid quack was trying to choke him out but didn't realize the quarian had metal plates braced around his neck. Chasuk's hands flanked the man's head and applied torque to the skull. The body followed and Chasuk tossed the offender atop him down to a nine-foot fall to the floor below.
"Y'all ＳＵＣＫ at this." Chasuk yelled to the pirates below, "You 𝙎𝙏𝙐𝙋𝙄𝘿, -witless-, 𝑪𝑼𝑵𝑻𝑺."
It was about all he could fight with now. Words. Chasuk breathed heavily and felt his vision begin to swim and slip. He pulled himself up against the frame of the door and fumbled for the handle of the rifle he'd dropped since the S80 was too far out of reach.
He could hear more feet trampling up. And he would be here to greet them.
"I'm comin' Adda." He breathed with ice in his dying breath, "Hold the tab for me."
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The hallways through which they'd come finally fell silent. The quarian defenders in cradle five finally acquiesced with their lives. Only three lonely souls waited tacitly with arms leveled toward the second door the pirates would have to charge through to get deeper in the ship.
Kal brought up his radio. "Cradle five compromised. First echelon eschewed. Squad Baptal indisposed and in need of reinforcing.".
From behind them, they could hear the battles that raged in all the other cradles. Kas doubted any of the others could spare anyone if their experience was anything like theirs.
"This is squad Baptal, in need of point hardening at echelon two. We are fractioned-active. Please respond." Kas tried again. Juel and Serah looked at each other, fate hovering starkly over them.
"Negative, negative." Came Gognimae's marine command, "Dispensation denied. Hold echelon two; fall back as necessitated. Hold that line, Kas."
Kas' shoulders drooped. "...Affirmative."
He snapped to his two remaining soldiers. "Stop looking like that and spread out. We have a job to do."
They spread out. But Juel and Serah's eyes never separated. Like a chasm between them, they knew whatever outcome to be was not going to run in their favor. They were on level ground now. No base of fire to support them. No squad automatic weapon. And a force ten times larger than them giving chase.
This was it. This really might be it. Serah wanted to say something. Wanted to tell him they had a good run, but then there were contacts. Juel squeezed his trigger and mag dumped the bend in the hallway. But there was too many of them to catch them in a crossfire. Two turned to four then to eight.
But their foe wasn't returning fire. A cold sweat licked Juel's back. Why weren't they fighting back?
Flares flew out across the room, blinding Serah and Juel. Juel careened back, gun still in his hands, and in an act of brazen defiance, cloaked what he couldn't see in a field of fire until he felt a sharp kick to his gut and a battering against the back of his head. Stars burst from the canvas of white drawn over his eyes as he desperately tried to blink away the blindness.
His eyes soon faded back to nominality with three men pinning him to the floor. Juel could look up to see Kas fighting two pirates attempting to subdue him, watching a blade wrenching free from the throat of one before connecting it to another man's shoulder, handle promptly becoming a joystick to control what was now his hostage. The pirate let out a pained and blood-curdling scream from the dagger's teeth touching the bones in his traps.
"𝙎𝙝𝙪𝙩 𝙪𝙥." Kas growled, holding the man in front of him against the slavers that poured through that gate.
Juel forced his neck to find Serah, cheek plates scraping the floor. He saw her in the same fate as him. Foot on her neck and bodies holding her down.
"Get off her!" Juel screamed as he watched them wrench her up to her knees, "Get off her!"
A man passed through the threshold of Squad Baptal's second echelon of defense. His face was a marred mess. A ripe fruit that'd been the recent survivor of what was like a mallet accident gone wrong. Blood dripped from and around his charred skin.
"Y'all are tough. I'll give you that." The man said with his broken face.
"Who are you." Kas demanded, holding his hostage, blade snuck between the muscle and clavicle.
"Captain Jolak." Jolak said, "I'd suggest you let Brad go."
Kas tilted his head as if he'd heard the stupidest thing ever in his life. "You come to my home. Kill my people. And you're telling me what to do. Go -fuck- yourself."
Kas took a couple of paltry steps backward, closer to escape, using his knife as leverage to force his hostage into compliance.
"Yeah. I am." Jolak said, "You hear that?" The man put a hand up to his ear and listened to the battles echoing deep inside the Gognimae's guts, "You're not winning this, quarian. This ship's already mine."
Juel was wrenched up to his knees and cuffed. Seeing as how they'd finally secured some functional produce, Jolak motioned to his lieutenant to get the two out of here.
"Last chance." Jolak warned Kas, "You surrender, you get to go with your friends. What you do after I sell you, won't be my problem no more. Do what you want then. Better than dying."
"Wait." Kas crumbled, his grip loosening on the knife, "Just...—wait."
Jolak held up a hand and everyone stopped moving. Kas looked to Serah and Juel and they looked back to him. He tried to tell them what he could through eyes alone, but it wasn't enough.
"I'm sorry, young ones," His cold and ruthless stare returned, "Keelah Se'lai."
In a singular fashion, Kas both unsheathed his blade from Brad and pulled from his holster, his pistol, before blowing open his hostage's skull and misting the air with the execution. He fell back to echelon three.
"God damnit." Jolak growled and sighed, hands tossed up, face miffed as if he'd only lost a couple dollars, "Welp. Let's get these two on the ship, Bolin. We'll have this wrapped up soon."
"Roj."
Jolak motioned the rest of the mercs dotted about. "The rest of you. Go. We're wasting time. Ain't making money sitting around."
Jolak watched them filter past dead-Brad to go deeper into the ship's entrails. When they were all gone, Jolak sighed.
This mission was an absolute bust. A catastrophic failure. Even with all of the planning and waiting, the ship they'd been admiring from afar for months now was still too much for Jolak and his bandits to take for their own. He was not expecting quarians to be putting up this much of a fight. And with the odds stacked so heavily against them now, self-preservation was what took the front and center. Interested in only saving those he knew, he'd ordered everyone else not part of his crew to their deaths as an exchange for the time they'd need to get out of here. Out of the sixty on his boarding craft, only a mere twenty four remained. Six quarians had decimated what he thought was going to be an easy haul and a cash cow that would've been big enough for him to finally just retire. All the other boarding craft had barely fifteen men amongst each of them. Most of them untrained and witless mercs looking for a quick buck to make on the side. If their experience here was anything like the other cradles, Jolak knew he was only biding time at this point. The others were undoubtedly already getting mopped up. Wherever that quarian squad leader was going, he was likely to have his back up soon.
At the very least, he'd get something out of this stupid mess. Enough money to fix his face up at least. Quarian slaves usually paid out a pretty penny for someone's plaything. Probably an easy 170k haul just for the girl. It was better than nothing.
Jolak turned on his heel with Bolin and his team to take the produce back to the ship.
"How much longer you think they can last?" Bolin asked.
"Enough to get us out of here, I hope." Jolak intoned before glancing at Juel and Serah, "I can see why you folks hold such a premium for the market. No one wants to touch pilgrims with all the tracking gear they come with. Too many strings attached. So we gotta steal you straight from your ships."
Juel exchanged a stare with Serah and neither of them said anything.
Out of nowhere, one of their captors by the name of Bryson kicked Serah for no other reason than to deliver senseless violence. Neck in a whiplash, she fell to her knees, elbows catching her fall. Juel wrenched toward her but was pulled back.
"Don't." Juel was warned.
"A little taste of whats coming for killing Jason and Beaver, you stupid cunt." Bryson mourned with his double chin, whisking the woman back up, feet scrambling for purchase from the sheer abuse. He thrust her around and pushed her toward a passing desk, stomach taking the brunt of the blow. She let out a pained oomph as the air got sucked from her lungs.
"We're gonna kill all of you when this is over," Juel seethed, hands straining and tugging against his restraints, wrists screaming for reprieve from the tearing and pulling, "I'm gonna kill all of you. I promise."
"Bet." Bryson quipped, "I'm gonna fuck this bitch raw and make you watch. Make that tight pussy beg for this cock."
Juel's teeth gnashed. His lip, caught in the grinding, drew blood from the hate welling in his chest. The chubby shit stain went over to Juel and then leveled a kick hard enough to send him careening to the floor much like he'd done to Serah. And like Serah, Juel was able to catch his fall with his elbows. He was pulled back to his feet, shoulders crying out from the hands that forced him back up.
"Stop damaging the product, Bryson." Jolak protested angrily.
"Nah. Don't tell me what to do in front of these stupid aliens." Bryson rose his boot up to give Juel another hefty kick. But Juel just about had it. If he traded his life for only one more to kill, or at the very least, injure gravely, it was going to be Bryson. He would not chance another second of his existence around Serah. Juel whirled around and caught the kick with his hands. Then he cartwheeled himself to the floor. The wet pop of an ankle detaching from a Talus could be heard.
Bryson screamed and they both crashed to the floor, rifle clattering feet away from them. Bolin's team was about to intervene as Juel climbed on top of the fatty, but Jolak stopped them all.
"Nope. Don't help. Bolin, you're going to have let this fat squirt go." They all watched as Bryson fought futilely against Juel's unyielding viscera of bloodlust, "It's time for Bryson to sleep in the bed he's been making. He don't follow orders. He don't respect authority. And he fucks with product." Jolak dropped to a squat and retrieved Art's rifle, "You don't fuck with product, Bryson. It's gonna be a quick lesson to learn. Sayanara."
"...What about the quarian?" Bolin asked, waving to Juel.
"Eh. I'm happy to lose a part of this pot just to see the fat boy die. Lessgo, folks."
Jolak and Bolin's team left Bryson behind and closed the doors behind them.
Bryson squealed. "Guys, no!"
"Juel!" Serah's voice tore through the door that separated them, a desperate and heart-wrenching cry. As they dragged her further away, her plea swelled into a raw cry. In this frantic moment, vivid memories surged like a torrent. The warmth of his laughter. His tender promises. His delicate kiss. His soft snores. His asshole jokes. She was never going to have that again. The fragments of her life fell. Split apart. The memories of all the joy were encroached by the the shadow of suffering that was to lay ahead.
"Why," she pleaded, voice breaking into a bitter sob, "Why are you doing this. Please stop—just stop doing this."
Juel never heard her cry out. Hate deafened him. Blinded him. He rose both his fists high up and smashed the chains on his wrists against the man's nose, caving it in. The man moaned out a wailing and pathetic cry, but Juel wasn't done. Unprocessed rage, indignation, and wrath reserved for gods, he rose his fists again, but Bryson resisted and reached out to stop the onslaught. Still stradling Bryson, he cast his wicked gaze on that bleeding face and wanted to welcome nothing but a painful death to this animal. He drew in close until his visor kissed the broken holes in his ugly face, eyes staring into the depths of the lowly soul.
"Stop struggling," Juel whispered in a hum, a banshee of hate pouring from his gaze. "I'm going to kill you. I promised."
The man by now was crying and Juel bathed in his misery. Bryson persisted in his pitiful defense, but Juel was better, even with the cuffs that handicapped him. Bryson tried to clutch Juel's hands to stop the pummeling, but he took the fingers and snapped them, Juel's visor specking with blood and spit from the howl that burst out. A right hook battered Juel's chest, but Juel pinned Bryson's trapped arm even deeper with a knee and kept snapping bones. Having had his fill of giving the man the suffering he'd deserved, he stood up and let the man lay and cry.
"I surrender," He bubbled out in a drool, "I surrender."
ɴᴏ ǫᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ. ɴᴏ ᴍᴇʀᴄʏ.
The quarian stripped from the wall a five-foot piece of unused metal conduit and hoist it high overhead before heaving it down like a sledgehammer. The pipe cracked over Bryson's neck, blood flecking the ceiling. Open mouth and caved-in face, Bryson gasped emptily for air. Thirty quick seconds of Juel's torture. He would be dead within the minute. Without sparing a second, Juel began to pummel his shoulder against the door the escaping slavers had closed behind them.
"ＳＥＲＡＨ."
He bludgeoned his body against it, frame giving slightly from whatever was holding them closed. He charged again and again and again. His body a relentless battering ram against an obstacle that kept him from giving chase. He growled and swore until the fourteenth assault, where the door's defenses finally gave way. A pipe that'd been wedged firmly through the door's handles clattered to the ground, defeated, as he burst through its threshold.
He made it back to cradle five and stopped next to the remains of Chasuk and Adda. He knelt down, barely even taking the time to look at Chasuk with a rebar harpooned through his collarbones as he ripped out the pistol holstered to his chest rig.
"ＳＥＲＡＨ!"
He rose the handgun and got a sight picture over of the guardrails. Nothing. It was empty of the living. Down the stairs he went, taking them two at a time, leaping over Kann's body, realization dawning. The cradle was barren of a boarding ship. And the emergency shutters were clamped down over the broken airlock.
She was gone.
They were all gone.
"ⁿᵒⁿᵒⁿᵒnononoNoNoNONONONO𝙉𝙊𝙉𝙊𝙉𝙊𝙉𝙊!" He heaved a scream he didn't know he could make. He pitched the pistol in his hands as far as he could hurl, throat caterwauling an unbridled screech; a shrill howl that blistered his throat, face twisted into a grotesque mess.
His feet no longer held him. He dropped to his knees and plastered his face and hands up against the wall of the Gognimae and cried, breath so empty and lungs so short for air, his chest lurched for a breath that he couldn't take.
Serah'Meyann was gone.
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Present time.
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3-20-2184
[ GEMINI SIGMA | PODA-D7-77 SYSTEM | PLANETARY BODY: PODA - S2 ]
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Juel listened to the soft creek and stared at the waters inkling by.
Tali's lips only parted, mind wanting to shape out something to say, yet she found herself strangled by silence. What solace could words possibly lend? The never did anything for her. They never mended the loss she felt. Only mocked and ridiculed the intensity of what endured within the heart.
She gifted Juel instead the solace of silence. Platitudes were worthless. No matter how well-intentioned or how much meaning you tried to force in them.
Being present was enough. And that's what she would do.
In the embrace of this wet forest and its shadows with its restful and trickling creek, Tali finally approached Juel and gave him a tender hand on his shoulder before motioning that they should continue.
"Come on. We can walk the rest of the way in silence." She said the same way he'd done for her a week ago.
His voice could barely escape a whisper.
"Okay."