-12:07:12
...
Pushing himself up the final stairs of the observation tower built to overlook the spaceport, James Merrick raised his rifle up and hunched he got down and belly crawled until he reached Soka Junian, she herself was on her stomach and covered in an improvised camouflage netting.
As he reached her, she looked his way and pulled the netting off her side, wrapping him in it as well. James rolled slightly closer to her and dropped the end back down. Together, the two of them stared out into the pounding rain and smoke as they gazed at the Reaper Dreadnought remaining perfectly still. Soka remained silent as she wiped the smudging red face paint off her face and raised her rangefinder back in the direction of the behemoth.
Silently James wondered how he had missed it. They were in such a hurry to reach the spaceport that they somehow did not notice the kilometre-tall vessel 30 odd clicks outside of the city. He supposed it no longer mattered. What he had to be thinking about now was just how much this would affect the plan. He had seen the pinpoint accuracy of the Reapers hitting ships. Sometimes he wondered if he escaped Earth out of Reaper mercy… an investment on the Reaper's part to spread fear and terror into the hearts of the organics to weaken resolve when the Reaper's attention turned their way.
Whatever had been the case, he doubted very much that this Reaper would see the benefit of mercy. Not when the night sky was lit read as it fired on just about everything it saw in close striking distance. What was it targeting its anti-ship weaponry at? Infantry? Survivors?
"It's still not moving towards us?" James asked his companion, taking the rangefinder from her talons and taking a good look for himself.
Next to him, Soka looked his way. Pulling the rangefinder from his eyes, he looked over to the turian nearby, just lying there next to him and funnily looking at him. It was like he had said something ridiculous or something to elicit the expression from her. Perhaps she did not like him taking her equipment without asking for permission.
Whatever had been going on with the woman, he decided to be safe than sorry and handed the device back to her. Soka made a strange sort of throat-based noise like she was clearing something out of it and turned back to face the Reaper's direction.
"It seems to be moving in a patrol pattern…" Soka spoke finally, her voice tense as she looked through the scope again. "But I noticed something in the movement. It's… how should I put it… I think the Reaper is wounded, Merrick. I mean seriously wounded... or damaged. Whatever it is. Navy must have put it through a serious barrage, so it came here… somewhere quiet to do repairs."
The Reaper had been critically damaged? Perhaps they still had a shot at escape after all.
"Go Navy," James muttered.
"Go Navy," Soka repeated as she handed him her rangefinder. "It isn't using any main armaments. For every target it hit so far, it needs to get within 1000 metres or so. It seems to be sweeping a safe zone for itself…"
Soka's hypothesis would certainly explain why it was attacking anything and anyone it perceived as a threat of any capacity. Was it possible that a wounded Reaper could feel fear for its own life? James certainly hoped that was the case. Whatever the case, they had to move before the Reaper decided to expand its safe zone their way.
"Do you think we have a shot at just getting on the freighter and leaving?" he asked her.
"Spirits no," she whispered back, sounding like she had thought his question was a stupid one to ask. "I think it's confused, but it has enough sense to spot a sudden launch, and perhaps it might think we'll report its state back to the fleet… It'll send out its air support, or warn Reapers in the system and that'll be it."
James nodded and went silent. Soka was glancing his way once again, but she said nothing more to him. The two of them returned to their silent observation of the Reaper. As she looked away, it was his turn to look at her. Soka had seemed to gain back some sense of her turian stability… if that was ever a thing.
Whatever the case, she seemed to be much more in control of herself than when they first met; and since James' failure to stick to his own decision became clear, she seemed almost elated in his change of heart, as though he had decided on the spot to find some sort of compassion and do the right thing for the first time in his life.
Little had she known it was all smoke and mirrors…
"Four times…" he spoke suddenly.
His words had naturally caught her attention. Soka looked his way, but James could not look her in the eyes. He held his attention out on the darkened horizon.
"I've been passed over for promotion to Lieutenant Commander four times," he pressed on, his tone somewhat ashamed in his admittance to his turian counterpart. "My old CO feels… felt… that I was too compassionate for higher responsibility… that I 'used my heart as a brain' was his exact phrasing. When we first met… I tried to be harder than I was for first impressions sake… but I'm not."
Soka remained silent next to him. Through the small UV lamp between them and his peripheral vision, he could see her mandibles flicker slightly. She seemed to have been reassessing him. Whether that was a good or bad thing, he did not know and Soka's long silence did nothing to help gauge the reaction properly.
"I still believe we are too valuable to die, and we shouldn't broadcast what we're doing…" he hastily amended, hoping to regain some of his image. "But if we can save people, I'm not disinclined towards it. So… Soka… I'm sorry that I was dicking around with your moral fibre needlessly."
The turian was still silently staring at him. After a good moment, she seemed to have shaken her head and looked away, her rangefinder once again was back in use, but it seemed as though it was just for show.
"I'm... glad that you lacked the conviction to your original stance," she mumbled in a strange tone. It was like she was straining to admit something like that to him. If it had been anyone else, it would have come across to James that it was a display of shyness.
Deciding to stop using the rangefinder as an excuse, she dropped it between the two of them and looked at him properly once again. She lifted herself slightly as she rested herself on her elbows. Her mandibles flared back open as she started to speak, at least attempting to. It took several attempts before…
"We can't save everyone… you showed me that, and you were right in many of your points…" she found her voice. "…but if we can save these civilians … perhaps it is something we both can live with."
Soka went silent, and the pair of them were left staring at each other perhaps a little more intensely than they should have been. James exhaled slowly and nodded as he shuffled a little closer to her.
"…Start from opposites and meet in the middle?" he elaborated upon her point.
The turian woman did not speak a word, all she did was blink once and nod, her beak opened slightly to reveal a small row of sharp teeth. Neither of them said a word. They both just lingered in the strained silence. Noticing nothing, not even the distant Reaper roar and the sky that emulated the pair of them in neon red.
"-Lieutenant, can we come up here?"
And just like that it was over. Soka snapped her head back to the direction of the sound of Private Nascimento and so too did James. Sure enough, the young soldier was peering around the corner awaiting an acknowledgement. Looking in the direction of the Reaper for a moment, James turned back and nodded.
Private Nascimento stood up and clambered over to where Junian and he were laying, and took a seat behind the steel cover. Trailing him were the two law enforcement officers Abboud and Lee. They sat down next to him, both of them looking at the new officers in charge with relative suspicion. Junian, it seemed, got the brunt of it.
"What do you need, Private?" he asked, redirecting their attention solely to him.
Shifting his rifle into his lap, the Private looked at him as though he had all the answers. Nascimento was in for a disappointment.
"Sir, you mentioned you had a plan?" he inquired as he peered around the cover as though he could see the Reaper through the dark. "My plan involved getting the civvies outside of the city… perhaps to one of the smaller settlements, see if we could rendezvous with more law enforcement and military and organize something. But if you have something on your mind, I want to help you with it."
Merrick chuckled lowly. The plan… yes, for now, it seemed to be shot to hell for the time being.
"Well, we had a plan until the Reaper made its appearance. We don't have a plan anymore," James admitted to the Private and the civilians. Glancing at Soka, he added. "But option two is still on the table, right Junian? More the merrier, I always say."
Soka was once again looking through the rangefinder. Unlike the last time, she seemed to be serious about it.
"I have an idea," she informed James, her attention seemingly too valuable to be spared to the others. "I don't think you're going to like it, because I don't like it."
Next to her, James arched his eyebrow and squinted at her.
"Does it involve option two?" he asked her, attempting a little levity between the two of them in the face of the challenge in front of them. "Because I'm fairly certain I didn't like it from the start."
He could have sworn he could the woman emitted a low growl out of annoyance.
"Option two is not on the table just yet," she all but snapped back at him. She lowered the rangefinder and glared at him as she added. "Are you going to hear me out, or do I just go ahead and force option two to happen right here, right now?"
James raised his hands in mock surrender and widened his smirk into a grin. It seemed as though he had touched a nerve.
"Well, since you put it that way... If you have a plan that doesn't involve option two, then I just have to hear it. It has to be good…" he retorted right back, earning an expression of admonishment from the woman.
"Are you two okay?"
The Private ended the banter between turian and human, man and woman. Soka blinked and coughed awkwardly. She rolled on her side lifted herself until she was in a sitting position and pulled the netting off of her, leaving James the only one covered.
"Right...okay…the freighter, James - I mean Lieutenant…" she spoke up, gesturing to the spaceport a block or two away from them. "The explosives on the Freighter. What sort of explosive device are we talking about?"
Pulling the netting off, James sat up just as she had and looked in the direction of the spaceport she was gesturing to.
"A Cerberus built colony killer bomb… 25 megatons," James informed her, earning several profanities from the law enforcement officers, who as residents of said colony that Cerberus had marked the bomb for use against, were justifiably upset. "We were on the verge of dismantling it when the Reapers arrived... if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, then option two is back on the table, isn't it."
Soka reached out and shoved James.
"For the last time, no James!" she hissed at him, so flustered that she had already forgotten the formality she had tried to return the two of them to. "We take the bomb; we put it into the New Esperance Element Zero fusion reactor and create a bigger bomb... and then lure that disoriented Reaper into ground zero before detonation."
Soka had been right… James didn't like this plan. He might have even disliked it more than he had disliked option two. It was one thing to commit suicide by Reaper… it was quite another thing to lure the Reaper into the middle of a still-occupied city and detonate an improvised fusion bomb. The Reaper was wounded and potentially disoriented, but it wouldn't be stupid. It would know if there was an evacuation order on their part.
That meant they would have to denote the bomb without telling any of the residents of New Esperance. That was seventy-five thousand people before the war. Even now that were still tens of thousands of people who would be caught in the blast wave; the blood would be on Soka and James' hands…
"You… you're talking about wiping this city out!" he heard Officer Abdoul admonish the turian.
Looking her way once again, James found Soka staring at the civilians intently. It was not dissimilar to how he was attempting to get her to understand the value of their lives over everyone else. She was calm and collected, but it was all just a mask in all likelihood. From what he knew of her, she was probably inwardly shaken that she was taking this position. With all her heart she wanted to save people. To find her advocating this sort of sacrifice…
"I want you to think about this carefully because this is a big-picture action…" Soka spoke directly to Private Nascimento and the civilians. "How old is that thing? How many extinction cycles has it been involved in? Even if it was one, that is one too many. How many lives in this cycle alone has it eradicated?"
The question loomed over everyone's head. It was a question that he had and had kept him up at night following his first night after the fall of Earth. These machines had killed a galaxy of trillions every fifty thousand years spanning back to damn near the beginning of the universe… Taking the aeons of extermination, a city seemed like such a small price to pay to knock one of these fucking bastards out.
"And would you be so quick to this if it was a turian colony?" Officer Lee demanded to know, his expression of disgust etched right into his voice. "Those are thousands of humans you're talking about killing now… Would you be this goddamn philosophical if you had some skin in the game?!"
And there it was. It was exactly what the Reapers loved most about the organics they exterminated; it was the organic predilection towards suspicions of others outside their race that the Reapers preyed upon time and time again. If they were going to survive, they all had to do it together, even if it meant doing the hard things.
"You don't know a goddamn thing about her. She would make the same call," James growled at the cop, jumping headfirst into the defence of his partner. "This isn't a turian or human thing. This is a matter of survival for all of us as organics. If we have a chance to kill a Reaper, then we have to take it, no matter the cost."
James' words brought any further debate on the subject to a close. The cops were understandably livid, Private Nascimento looked torn between agreeing with command and his loyalty to the two officers he had been through hell with protecting god knows how many civilians from the Reapers. Next to him, Soka looked at him strangely, like she hadn't expected the show of loyalty in the face of her advocating for the sacrifice of thousands of innocent human lives.
Standing up, Private Nascimento raised his rifle back up and looked down on the two lieutenants. He was still troubled with everything, but he was not about to express that so openly.
"When you two are ready, we'll link up with the civilians and move to the port, okay, sir?" he addressed only Merrick, he remained unable to look at the turian in the face of what she was calling for. James suspected that somewhere deep inside the private, he was suspecting that he was coming to terms with the fact that Soka's analysis of the situation was the only correct course.
Soka remained still, refusing to look at the accusing expressions of the civilians as they followed Nascimento down the steps of the tower, leaving the two of them alone once again. Soka waited silently still until she was certain that she was out of the earshot of the others before she gasped and dropped her expression of firm conviction and revealed the full self-loathing she felt for herself for what she was calling for. She looked his way, her eyes wide.
"Now we're both bastards…"
It was all Soka could get out before her eyes widened even more. She launched herself towards the edge of the tower safety railing and vomited over the side. James followed after her. He stood up and joined the turian as she hung her head over the edge expelling her stomach contents, which appeared to be primarily water. Unsure of what to do, he reached out and placed his hand on her carapace.
"We can't shy away from this," she muttered out to him as her talon wiped her mouth. "Tens of thousands of people are going to die because of us… because of me. And here I wanted to save everyone I could. I don't even know if it will work… the best-case scenario, we kill it… worst case… we disable it… knock it out of action. I guess I could take every minute that thing is trying to recover as a good sign… and if we get back to command, we can have the navy direct some ships to finish it off, right? What do you suppose the odds this will kill the-"
"Soka breathe…" James spoke up, cutting her off as he reached out and pulled her gently from the edge. "Just breathe, and come with me."
The turian rounded back to face him. She nodded and fell silent as she allowed the human to guide her back to where they had been sitting. He helped her back down and took a seat next to her. His hand remained on her carapace as he watched the woman attempt to find some sort of stability in the shadow of the plan she was advocating for.
Despite it all, James had to admit that he admired her display of strength. She said exactly what needed to be said. When he thought they were down to option two, and Private Nascimento just wanted to run and hide, she presented the unspoken third option and did not shy away from defending it. The hardest option was now the only correct option.
"This is the right move," he reassured her. "I'm shitty at making the hard choice, but this is clear as day to me. You are right… we're trading a few thousand lives for that one ship genocide."
Soka did not reply. She continued to hang her head in shame. James could not even begin to imagine the place she must have been in. If the roles had been reversed, if he was the one who had to advocate the destruction of thousands of turian lives to turians, he could only hope to have had even half of the empathy she seemed to have held for the human she had marked for death. Silently he wondered if she was even a career soldier to begin with… Perhaps she was a reservist… if that was the case; he wondered what she did outside of her military service…
"You know…" he observed, his voice growing light in hopes of lifting her mood from the display of despair. "With all things considered, I think you should be in command of this mission now."
Soka blinked. Slowly she looked up and met his eyes with her own. She titled her head as though she had been confused.
"You were in command in the first place?" she asked, her harmonic tone touched with an inkling of humour.
With a grin spreading onto his face, James shoved her shoulder softly.
"Which one of us is the human on a human colony world?" he reminded her as they both were illuminated in Reaper red once again. "And much more importantly, which of the two got rejected for promotion more?"
That was all it took. The turian finally broke her through her depression just enough to emit a small bark of laughter at his expense. To get her back into combat worthiness, he would do whatever it took. Even at the cost of his self-respect. She was a good investment.
"You're right; you were definitely in command of the partnership. I just don't know how I can live up to your example…" she said mock mournfully, reaching out to take his hand off her shoulder. "You know, I need to know how it is you get rejected so many times for a promotion for such a stupid excuse…"
The two of them continued to laugh for a little while longer and slowly the two of them fell into a comfortable silence as they both continued to be soaked in the rain and the looming Reaper threat just out of their sight. They sat there together in spite of this misery, James' hand being still clutched by Soka's talon tightly.
"I don't like this plan in the slightest…" she confessed, staring straight ahead into the darkness. "…but thank you for supporting me."
James glanced at her. He nodded with a faint smile.
"Well, you know me…" he reassured her. "I got your back whenever you need it…"
As James' went to pull his hand away from Soka's, her grip tightened on it. James tried not to wince openly, so he watched as Soka stood back up and pulled James back to his feet as well. He nearly collided with her and quietly, the two of them stood in much closer proximity than need be.
"I know you do…" she replied quietly. "…comes with the partnership."
Still standing together in silence for a little while longer, Soka finally allowed her grip on his hand to be released and with that, Soka and James were back on the clock. They collected their helmets and rifles and made their way out of the observation tower. They had civilians to move and a Reaper to murder.