-07:51:58

...

Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, James rested his head against the cargo truck's backrest and ran his hand over the side of his chest plate. He tried his best not to look at Soka, who was watching with great caution written on her face.

While he was asleep, Soka used her free time to retrofit his armour with a brace to wrap around his injury. Her theory was that it would keep the affected area compressed and allow him better mobility. When asked why she hadn't slept, her explanation was to remind him that James had made her sleep only hours prior. There seemed to have been a small tinge of a blush on her face. Well… if that was even possible for a turian and not something he was just trying to characterize the turian with a human trait, he did not know for sure. James guessed that he just liked the idea that it might be possible…

Out of respect for her, James decided not to disconcert the turian too much by asking why she would spend her sleeping hours with him. He supposed she would use the mission as an excuse, but she could have done the same with a bit of medical tape and bandaging. She did not have to go all out and modify his armour. Still, it was a thoughtful gift from her to him. He was taken aback by her display of tenderness. A trait he did not think turians possessed… but he supposed he too held onto some stereotypes.

While the gift was thoughtful, it wasn't exactly a nice gift. The trade-off to this brace, it seemed, was an excruciating constant pain which he decided to remedy with good old-fashioned morphine he found in the spaceport medical bay and more amphetamines to counteract the drowsiness the morphine shot gave him. All he knew for certain was that he was going to be an absolute strung-out mess at the end of this.

Somewhere off in the distance, the Reaper dreadnought roared out its siren call, and the ground shook as the Reaper took a step. It swayed the cargo truck and made James keenly aware of the RX-12 Doomsayer Eradication Device sitting on the floor between James and Soka.

Say what you wanted about Cerberus, but they weren't fucking around when they developed a bomb with a blast yield of twenty-five megatons compressed into a weapon that weighed no more than twice his weight. Although it wasn't armed and probably would have been triggered by a ground shift, it still spooked the ever-loving shit out of him.

James wiped the dirt and grime off his face and blinked furiously to get his focus back. Twenty-four hours ago he hadn't exactly planned on sitting next to a twenty-five-megaton weapon with the intent of using it. He supposed he had his new friend to thank for that. If anyone should have been buying the drinks when they got back to the Citadel, it should have been her. What with her option two and now this… option three as he now called it.

He caught her looking at him once again. The concern she had for his health was noted and… touching. He faintly smiled at her out of reassurance. He felt like absolute shit, but he was high, pain-free and raring to get this mission underway. The morphine-induced sleepiness would subside once he got his adrenaline flowing.

Pulling back the hammer on his Mattock, He stood up and banged the wall leading to the cab of the truck.

"Remember the drill you two?" he called through the wall of the truck cab. He remained silent as he waited for an answer from the two silent police officers.

"We'll move the bomb into the plant and take positions outside and keep you alert to all activity," was Officer Lee's nervous response.

It was hesitant… like he did not like the plan. That was to be expected. They were aiding and abetting in the destruction of their city. While the explanation and justification had been spelt out to them numerous times, Lee and Abboud naturally were against it. He was not blind to the looks they gave both Soka and himself… but especially Soka. Soka, to her credit she did not address it. Oh, he knew full well it must have bothered her. This whole operation was her brainchild and she was uneasy with it. But it was the right course. Not many had a chance to destroy a Reaper.

"Good…good..." he said to himself as he brought his attention back to the concerned turian. "Soka, you'll take the trolley inside, I'll keep you covered."

He wanted to do it himself, but in his state, Soka insisted she was the one to move it. Soka stood up as James had before her. She stepped forward and bracing herself so that she did not fall, she quietly fastened the last of the straps James had left loose on his behalf. It seemed as though she was not about to take any chances and wanted to personally ensure that his armour was in top shape for what lay ahead of them.

"Still think we should have brought Nascimento with us…" she muttered to him as she fastened his neck guard tightly, making the human squirm.

James could appreciate the sentiment. It was something he wanted – an extra military-trained gun out here making a stand against potential occupiers of the plant. The problem was that someone trained had to stay behind and guard the Gola and the civilians. As much as Soka might have wanted him to stay behind, the mission was in part James' responsibility. Nascimento's responsibility was to the people he had saved. He would serve a far better guardian to them then a critically wounded manlike him could.

Of course, naturally, Nascimento disagreed. He wanted in on the mission. It was a request Merrick had to put down by pulling rank on the man. He didn't want to do it, but it was the only option he had. It took a little effort and a lot of reassurances, but the soldier understood where he fit into the operation. Besides, he was being entrusted with the only escape route off the planet. That was quite the responsibility in itself.

As she finished inspecting his armour, Soka stood next to him, pulling her rifle off her magnetic strip, the weapon extending out in her hands. James raised his. Silently, the two of them stared at each other as they felt the truck round a corner and begin to slow down. There was nothing to say. They were in combat mode now.

The breaks hit hard out of the blue, the doors slid open, and out clambered Soka and James, their rifles raised and aimed at the encroaching Reaper husks shuffling towards them. They shot them down and directed their fire to whatever that stood up against them next. At the moment it was Cannibals, forcing the pair of them to seek cover before they fired back, cutting the nearest one in half and downing a second and third one.

Soka pulled a fragmentation grenade out of her bandoleer and threw it hard at a squad of Marauders, smacking one of them in the face. The grenade fell and midway down, it exploded, tearing three of them in half, a fourth lost a leg and collapsed, roaring and still firing at the two of them. Soka shot it clean through the head and rounded back to shoot down six more husks that tried to flank them, the seventh met its end at the hand of a hard smash to the head from James' rifle.

Scrambling out of cover, they bolted together at several Reaper Cannibals attempting to counter-attack against their offensive actions. James pounded four clean shots through the centre mass of the closest one and shifted his fire to the next one as Soka sprayed their position with rapid suppressive fire from her Phaeston. Their attention diverted to more marauder fire that hit and flared James' kinetic barriers. Ignoring the agony as he dove to the ground, he raised his rifle from his prone position and shot out one of the former turian's legs, bringing it down to his level. As it screamed and pointed at him, James triple-tapped it through the skull until it stopped screaming.

Bolting up next to him, Soka paused long enough to reach down and impressed upon him her strength by lifting him right up to his feet without a sweat. She pulled a captured Cerberus smoke grenade and laid down some visibility cover for the pair of them to dive in between a concrete girder and rolled over sky car, under which laid a managed corpse. The pair of them fired through the smoke and as it cleared they found nothing left standing.

Soka was the first to stand up. Fearlessly, she climbed to the top of the car for a better vantage point. She raised her rifle and fired off a burst of fire on several straggling husks. With the husks neutralized, the final threats in the immediate vicinity were clear for the moment.

"Clear," she shouted over the squad communication system the four of them were connected to. "Move it fast!"

James turned back to the truck and found Constable Abboud and Lee were out of the truck. Decked out in Alliance armour, the two of them presented a much more formidable sight than before. The two of them pulled the RX-12 out of the back of the vehicle and carefully they walked the explosive towards the front doors of the plant on the back of a trolley. Soka and James moved towards, taking a flank each, their rifles swinging and scanning for any sign of a straggling Reaper drone.

They paused at the front doors. They appeared to be locked. But Soka had an answer to that. She stepped forward and pried the door open. James helped and together they forced enough room for the bomb and trolley to get through. Lee and Abboud pushed the bomb inside and let go. James and Soka followed after it and the door closed behind them, separating them from the Constables.

"Okay, we'll deliver the weapon to the fusion chamber and find an alternative route out," James spoke over the radio to the civilians who were separated from them. "Take cover out of sight and away from the truck. We don't want to draw too much attention to it, copy?"

"Copy that…" the reply belonging to Abboud came back to him and Soka. "And take your time will you? I'd rather you not set that thing off right here and now."

James emitted a small chuckle as he signed off. He had the same sentiments. Option three was his last resort death, he didn't want it to happen any more than option two… but he did imagine that it would be marginally less painful than option two.

With the police now heading out to find some cover to keep an eye out on Reaper forces potentially moving in to investigate the disturbance, James turned his attention back to Soka, who was now examining the bomb. After several moments, she looked up and locked eyes with him once again. With a solid heave, Soka got the bomb moving just fast enough to let James take the point.

Taking their time, James and Soka moved from hallway to hallway, following the written directions through the sectors. They only paused long enough to clear the bomb's path of obstructions. Turned over equipment, bodies… The plant was a mess, but it seemed largely unaffected for the time being. No enemy contact… not what either of them had expected.

It wasn't long before both they and the bomb were in an elevator leading directly to the inner chambers of the fusion core reactor room. Neither of them spoke, there wasn't anything to say as they both stewed in the destruction they were moments away from turning into a reality. Soka was restless, her talons tapping away on a small terminal she had set up on the weapon. She looked awful like death warmed up. She wasn't physically injured, but she was in clear agony as she finished working on the weapon.

The elevator opened and James stepped out first into the core room. Like top level, it too was devoid of Reapers… It was all very peculiar. Perhaps it was just not a priority to them. The suppression of the human element seemed to have been their primary goal for the time being. Perhaps the wounded Reaper had assumed direct control over the ground forces and was using them to secure its safe zone. Its arrogance left this potential threat exposed for Soka and James' exploitation.

Turning away from the corridor leading to the core, James glanced at Soka who was tapping in the arming sequence by the looks of it.

"This is the last chance to back out…" he reminded her gently. "I'll support you in what you choose… but are you certain you want this?"

Soka looked up from the explosive device and looked him over with a grim expression. She didn't want it, but she did not have the vocabulary to express that desire. Instead, her head gestured to the elevator.

"The bomb is armed and counting down. We're committed. What I want is irrelevant now," she spoke in a stone-cold tone. "Come James… let's get moving."

Giving the now-armed explosive a final look, James nodded blankly and followed Soka back to the elevator. As she hit the top side panel, and the elevator hummed to life, Soka turned back to him and brought the detonation device out for him to examine. She was in a daze as she stood there staring at the power to destroy a city resting in the palm of her talon.

"I've set the weapon on a fail-safe timer," she murmured blankly as she tucked the detonator out of the way. "Six and a half hours from now the bomb goes off. That will be plenty of time to activate the citywide defences and get back to the ship. Once the Reaper is inside a half kilometre of the power plant, we remotely detonate the bomb. If the remote fails… or something happens, the bomb will go off within 90 seconds of missing the detonation mark. If the bomb is tampered with, it will go off… no chances."

Although he was privately impressed by her thoroughness in ensuring that the weapon went off in whatever circumstance, James nodded and held his low as he struggled to come up with something, anything he could say to lift the spirits of the morose woman standing next to him. As much as he wanted to lift her spirits, there was ultimately nothing he could say about the whole affair. What they just did was tantamount to mass murder.

"We're doing the right thing," he said to himself for what felt like the thousandth time since he told Soka they would not be helping civilians escape from this hell. It seemed so long ago, but now here they were not only not helping civilians, but actively involving themselves in their deaths. The handful they rescued was nothing compared to what they just did.

Soka looked up, her sharp eyes narrowed at him.

"You keep saying that like it makes it better," she pointed out incredulously. "We just murdered tens of thousands of people for a chance at killing a Reaper, Merrick. There is no 'right thing' about this."

James wanted to reply, but the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. Their moment was over. They raised their weapons and stepped out into the main level of the plant. It was time to get back to the business at hand. Objective one had been completed.

Now came objective two. They would infiltrate the former System Alliance military command post two kilometres south of the fusion plant. From there they would have complete access to the Alliance military defence network set up in New Esperance between when Cerberus withdrew from Eden Prime and when the Reapers hit the planet. A plethora of anti-ship rocket launchers and mass accelerator cannons had been installed to meet them. They went silent and mostly unused when the Reapers launched a total ground offensive and overwhelmed the command post, killing thousands of marines and naval personnel in the prospect. The fall of Fort Girard was the cataclysm that led James to Soka in the first place.

And now here he was going back with her. The rockets would act as a lure. They needed to convince the Reaper to break the patrol pattern so that it was inside ground zero of the explosion.

Gunfire caught his attention. It was Soka. She stood there in one of the offices and decided to make her exit through the plate-glass window. She looked back to James and leapt through the broken window to the ground below. James followed after but did so much more carefully. He couldn't risk aggravating his injuries any more than he already had.

As James joined Soka once again, the skies lit up in red and the Reaper emitted another blast of its weapon, followed by an explosion in the distance. It emitted another blast of its somehow even more evil Jericho's trumpet, and the earth shook once again, knocking James and Soka off their feet.

But none of this heart-stopping terror was what bothered either James or Soka. As they stood up, they found themselves looking at a sight far more terrible in its implication.

Lee and Abboud were nowhere to be seen.

The truck was gone.

At first, James didn't think this was happening. He chalked it up to hallucination from the drugs and the internal bleeding, but as he did a double take, it was clear they weren't in the wrong location. Smoking reaper corpses were strewn across the parking lot from the firefight that they engaged in. Lee and Abboud had left them behind.

They were stranded there…

Soka stepped forward, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide as she walked up into the devastation they caused against the local Reaper force. Slowly, she turned back to him.

"Where in the fuck did they go!" she shrieked at him like a woman possessed by a demon. "We told them to stay, right?! That was a pretty important part of the whole FUCKING PLAN!"

As Soka reared back and started to stomp a dead Reaper marauder, James turned away and activated his communication link back to the MSV-Gola, back to Nascimento. The other line opened immediately.

"Nascimento, this is… this is Merrick," James struggled to start. Rubbing the back of his neck, he added. "I just wanted to let you know that you are a good man, a good man who doesn't jump into an irrational state easily. You will listen to what I say and you won't react badly, but be diligent in what I ask of you to do."

He was greeted with a long silence.

"Sir, are you alright?"

James watched in silence as Soka pulverized the marauder's skull into the pavement and her attentions turned to the husk it was lying next to. Like the marauder before it, it too got the Soka Junian special attention.

"I'm just great…" James lied through his teeth. "So… look, Private… Lee and Abboud kind of took the truck and left us at the plant and didn't wait for us. I installed a tracking device on it and linked it to the Gola's computer. I want you to find it for me."

True to James' assumption of Nascimento's nature, the man remained collected. If he was upset, then he certainly hadn't audibly made that known to him. There was a small 'huh that emitted on the other end of the line before Nascimento came back on.

"Sir…" he started. "This doesn't make sense… it says the truck is at the next objective. Why would they go there without you-"

James disabled the line without giving the young man his thanks. He hobbled over to Soka stamping the Husk's head into the pavement still and grabbed her by her shoulder, forcing her to turn around and stare at him. She was well beyond furious. If there was an expression that said 'I'm going to set you on fire and eviscerate you' it was exactly what the expression Soka was wearing would look like.

"Soka, listen to me... Lee and Abboud went on to objective two without us…" he informed her.

He did not say what he was thinking… no… what he knew was going on in the minds of Lee and Abboud. Silently he watched as she calmed down by refocusing her fury to deduce what the two civilians were plotting. Her mandibles flared open as she stared at him. Soka's realization of what was happening was clear.

"That command centre would have more than just direct access to the anti-ship batteries…" she breathed out loud as though she was trying to get him to confirm her theory. "It should have the ability to broadcast live signals over the citywide intercom… you don't think they would… no, they could not be that foolish!"

James nodded. As well-intentioned as they might have been, Lee and Abboud still thought the Reapers were unthinking drones. That they wouldn't be tapped into the communication networks hardwired into the planet. That they wouldn't hear their plea for the citizens of New Esperance to evacuate the city before it was too late. They were on the precipice of ruining their one shot at killing that Dreadnought.

But so far, it seemed as though Lee and Abboud hadn't gotten their message out. The Reaper would have fled by now and the bombsite would be flooded with Reaper ground forces. Soka and he still had time to run the two kilometres through Reaper-held territory to Fort Girard and stop the two of them from committing to the act… one way or another.

With any luck, the Reapers had already dealt with the two of them.

"I hate to say it, but the Reapers are now our best friends with regards to those two…" James informed Soka as he grabbed his rifle. "Come on, we got to double-time it!"

Knowing better than to protest on the grounds of his physical injuries, Soka nodded instead and together the pair sprinted off in the direction of objective two. Both of them were well aware of what was going to have to happen if the Reapers hadn't dealt with the civilians first…