Akuze
2177 AD
Entering atmosphere was never the most comfortable experience, even with mass effect systems doing their part to smooth the ride out, but none of the fifty marines aboard the large drop-ship complained. They were used to it, after all. Besides, the Major and the Drop-Master were both within earshot, and the first one to belly-ache would probably get a boot up their asses in front of the entire unit. Not to mention that this was Serious Business, not a training exercise. There was a time for bitching and there was a time for shutting up and getting ready for a fight, and the sudden disappearance of an entire colony pioneer team certainly qualified as the later.
"Alright boys and girls, listen up!" the Major bellowed, gaze tracking back and forth across their faces as he hung onto the roof-mounted brace-hook above him, swaying comfortably with the shimmy and buck of the dropship. The legacy of a lifetime in the forces and having been on more dropships than his subordinates had years in their lives. "You know the story! The colony and it's pioneer team have gone quiet! No distress beacons, no messages, no responses! Now, there's been no sign nor intel of four-eyed bastards or any other sort of unpleasantness in the area, so it could just be localized damage to communication systems. Likewise, it could be some sort of goddamn alien plague! So keep your buckets on, especially if you find bodies! I don't want to have to explain to the docs why one of you idiots needs to get quarantined because you licked something nasty!"
A few chuckles rippled through the dropship, silenced after a few moments to tension-bleeding levity by the Major's stern glare. He continued, voice gruff and authoritative.
"We're going in hot, but quiet. I want a clean sweep of the colony site. Alpha team, you're on perimeter. Beta, you're with me for the main compound. Gamma, you're on standby. Anyone hollers, you come running. Priorities are looking for the people and figuring out what went down. Clear?"
"Sir, yes sir!" the ship chorused dutifully, and he grunted in satisfaction.
The dropship lurched, descending rapidly through the planet's atmosphere. Through the small viewports, the marines caught glimpses of Akuze's barren landscape - vast stretches of windswept desert punctuated by jagged rock formations.
"Two minutes to touchdown!" the pilot's voice crackled over the comm.
The marines performed last-minute equipment checks, the familiar routine helping to quell the nervous energy permeating the cabin. Weapons were prepared, armor seals and shielding systems checked, medi-and-omni-gel dispenser topped off and calibrated, and comms tested. None of them were inexperienced, but none of them had ever dropped into a totally unknown situation live, either, and no one likes questions when it comes to combat.
More than a few eyes turned to the one rock amongst their number, the one person here besides the major himself that was utterly unshaken by the prospect of dropping into the unknown, deftly going through the motions of checking her equipment with practiced ease that bordered on casual. Something that many of them marveled at, were baffled by, could only respond to by shaking their heads. Yet, at the same time, they weren't surprised.
After all, what could life throw at Cassandra Shepard that she wasn't well-equipped to handle? What could they hope to hit her with that she hadn't already experienced, or seen something even worse? Investigating a silent colony could hardly match up with being on Mindoir during the raid, could it, never mind getting dragged off to a slave-world and living through a slave revolt and all the other crap connected to that particular fiasco!
Besides, not only was her calm confidence reassuring, there was the fact that she was a powerful biotic, more powerful than any other human according to the rumors, and one that had supposedly been getting special training by asari matriarchs even before BAaT had been established after the Mindoir raid. A powerful, well-trained biotic was worth a platoon all by themselves, every marine knew that, so having one along was even more of a reassurance.
"Thirty seconds!" the pilot called out, sound a little more tense than he had the first time. "Major, I'm not seeing any people from up here, and there are some signs of damage, but I can't tell what kind or how bad."
"You heard the man! Thirty seconds and potential trouble! Lock and load, marines!" the major roared, unslinging his own rifle as the transport's engines roared in deceleration.
The dropship touched down with a bone-jarring thud, kicking up a cloud of reddish dust. As soon as the hatch opened, the marines poured out in practiced formation, weapons at the ready. The eerie silence of the colony was broken only by the whine of the dropship's engines powering down.
"Alpha team, move out!" barked the Major. "Secure the perimeter. Beta with me. Gamma, hold position."
Shepard fell in with Beta team, her biotics crackling with barely contained energy. As they approached the main compound, the extent of the damage became clear. Buildings were partially collapsed, prefab units torn open like tin cans. But there was no sign of weapons fire or explosives.
"What the hell could have done this?" muttered one of the marines, eyeing the damage uncomfortably as the major stepped up to the control panel, sounding more than a little anxious. "This doesn't look like explosives or gunfire, and I don't think it's from some sort of weather system either."
"Stay sharp, watch your sections." Shepard warned, her eyes scanning for movement, even as she frowned faintly at the damage herself. It teased her memory slightly, something from her childhood, but what? "Whatever happened, it could happen again, and I swear to God that if one of you idiots get us killed because you weren't watching your area…"
"Shepard, the door is jammed. Get us inside and take point. If there is a system on this goddamn planet that might be able to tell us what happened, it will be the Colony Administrator." the Major ordered, stepping back and jabbing his thumb at the relcatricent object. The implication was clear, and she smirked a bit as biotic power bloomed around her body, the smirking broadening slightly as her fellows retreated from the proverbial line of fire. Taking up her stance, she focused that power to her right arm, took a step forward…and crossed the intervening yards between herself and the door in an instant, the sharp crack of displaced air nearly buried beneath the shriek of tortured metal as she lashed out with her fist, burying it in the center of the panel and smashing the door right off of it's proverbial hinges, leaving it to crumple a few dozen feet down the hallway as a twisted ruin.
"Looking like a fucking action hero." one of the marines grumbled, half annoyed and half awed, from somewhere behind her, and Cassandra would have flicked her hair and grinned at the man if she hadn't been wearing her helmet. Sure, she was a little more…artistic with her biotics than was strictly necessary at time, especially when she wasn't actively getting shot at, but she blamed her aunties for that. Asari commandoes were trained to fight not only brutally, but beautifully, with many of their martial traditions surviving more-or-less unchanged since their pre-space and early-space eras.
Somewhat easier to keep ancient traditions alive when your average lifespan was a thousand years and you could share memories and emotions at a touch with each and every member of your species.
Leaving her guns holstered so that she was free to use her biotics in attack or defense as needed, she led the way into the darkened building, it's interior dimly lit only by the dull glow of the solar-powered emergency lights, and a twitch turned her helmet-mounted light on, it's bright, white circle of light piercing the semi-dark. Not that she was relying on her eyes to look for survivors, but instead for dead bodies. Unlike the rest of her fellows, she knew that the only minds within a couple of square miles were the ones that had landed with her. Of course, she didn't try to make a habit of relying on her Force-given gifts at the exclusion of her physical senses, but in this case she was rather willing to believe that everyone from this colony was either dead or a long way from their homes. Something that was a problem, a big problem, and she really hoped that this wasn't going to turn into a shooting war. There was only just so much that the Alliance was willing to tolerate without simply deciding that the Hegemony needed to be dismantled, after all. Or rather, only just so much that they were willing to tolerate before deciding to actually follow through, because God knew that humanity had collectively decided the Hegemony ought not exist -in its current form at least- about a decade ago.
"Any luck, sir?" she asked after a long moment of watching the Major tap away with increasing frustration at the Admin Terminal, and he shook his head like an angry bear in denial. Growled like one too, looking distinctly unhappy.
"Nothing useful, Lieutenant. Just reports about some odd tremors about a few miles from here that they investigated, indicating subterranean activity of some kind. They sent out an expedition in Mako's to investigate about thirty-six hours before the colony went dark, worried that it was some sort of earthquake activity that could threaten the colony. Wanted to figure it out before they got too established, I guess."
"Tremors…? Did they figure out what was causing them?" Cassie asked, frowning thoughtfully, her memory twinging again. Something about the damage, and this kind of terrain, and tremors were definitely connected, but what was it…? And what were those presences she could feel approaching? They weren't humans, or even really sentient, but they were moving fast…
"Some kind of subterranean animal, they think. They found evidence of large burrows, and…Lieutenant?"
Cassandra had started paling rapidly the minute the word 'animal' had been mentioned, and she slapped her hand on her omni-tool to activate the emergency alert.
"All elements, prepare for incoming! Get that dropship in the air, now!" she snarled into her comms, spinning and sprinting back down the corridor as the ground began to shake, emerging into the sunlight again just in time to see said drop-ship, engines roaring as it attempt to take off, disappear in a cloud of stone and dirt and debris as a thresher maw erupted from the ground and slammed into it with a roaring shriek of outrage. The ruined transport tumbled through the air, half of it's engines gone and the rest exploding, to plow through half of Gamma like a flaming meteor. Cassandra staggered with a gasp, reeling her senses back into herself, grimacing in sympathetic pain and emotional upheaval as she felt fifteen lives, marines and flight crew alike, flicker out of existence in an insant.
"Jesus Christ! What are these things?"
"Medic! Holy God, I need a medic over here!"
"They came out of nowhere!"
"Sarah! SARAH! Say something!"
"This is Alpha, we're under attack by…arrgghhhh!"
The screaming over the radio was deafening, painful, and Cassie snarled furiously as her eyes darted around, taking in the two juvenile thresher maws that were busy slaughtering the better part of a company of Alliance Marines.
"Shepard, report!" the Major roared, recognizing that she was the only person who had any idea what was going on, and she shook off the lingering pain and glanced over at him.
"Thresher Maws, sir! The tremors the survey teams picked up were them burrowing, and when they entered their territory to investigate and returned here, it caused the maws to add the colony to their territorial claim." she explained, wincing at a fresh chorus of screams as one of them reared back to spray acid at the marines around it's proverbial feet, catching three of them dead-on. "My great-uncle told me about them. He killed one when he was younger."
The Major knew what that meant. Most of the Alliance knew about the old krogan battlemaster, Urdnot Wrex, that had helped rescue Cassandra from Anhur and practically adopted the girl. Unfortunately, at least as far as people who pissed her off were concerned -or, for that matter, her trainers who had had to deal with some of her more direct tactics and strategies-, he hadn't settled for simply introducing her to the 'glories of the shotgun' nor teaching her a handful of biotic techniques. Much to the lament of many, she had picked up a fair bit of his attitude as well, and it was only by the grace of her 'aunts' amongst the asari that the young Shepard wasn't a complete nightmare to deal with.
"Tactics?" he grunted after a moment, accepting that he didn't know how to handle this situation, and that any information his subordinate possessed was needed to save the rest of his unit's collective asses.
"Heavy weapons aim for the stalks, they're it's primary sensory organs, and the forehead area to dry and break through to the brain. Lighter weapons for the mouth, but that won't do much damage, and if they're able to hit the inside of it's mouth, it's because it's spitting acid at them. That stuff will cut through a Mako's armor faster than you can imagine, we might as well be naked for all the good this armor will do us." she reeled off, remembering everything that Wrex had told her about his Rite, one of her favorite stories to hear. And his to tell, for all he would grumble about how it wasn't proper boasting when he had to 'watch his language' and didn't have ryncol in his hand. "Keep moving, but don't expect to be able to outrun it for long. They're not sentient, like us, but they aren't stupid either. They can predict movement and will lead their shots with the acid. And forget about air support. Anything fast enough to hit them without ending up like the drop-ship would either kill us too, or -more likely- create aerial shockwaves that they'll sense early. They'll burrow and only come back out once the airstrike has passed by. We have to kill them on foot."
"And how do you recommend we do that? They're slaughtering us!" the major snapped, and she whirled on him with a glare that was wholly inapprioriate given the vast gulf between their ranks.
"I know that! But we're in their territory now, and they're not going to leave until 'the trespassers, us, are dead! So the only way we're going to make it out of this alive is for you to kill one of them with the rest of the company while I keep the other one busy." she bit out, spinning back away from him and eyeing the maw that had taken the drop-ship out of the air, which was currently trying to finish off the rest of Gamma. Sensing that her C.O. was about to say something, she looked over her shoulder at him and smiled a wry half-smile. "Don't try to argue with me about it, Major. I'm the only one that stands half a chance against one of these things alone, and even juveniles like these are supposed to be almost impossible to kill on foot. If we want to get out of this with even half of the unit alive, this is how it's got to be."
"…when this is over with, Shepard, you and I are going to have to have a talk about respect for authority." the Major finally growled, the closest thing he could get to submitting to her will under the circumstances, and Cassie grinned to herself as he turned his heel and darted away, shouting orders over the battlenet.
"Now then.." she muttered to herself, eyeing a small prefab shelter, not much different in size from a Mako. A flick of her fingers had it rising into the air, and she sighted carefully on her target before accelerating it with layered mass effect fields. It slammed into the maw's head at something approaching the speed of sound, sending it reeling to the side as the shattered shelter scattered across the ground beneath it. As the massive extra-terrestrial worm-beast shrieked it's outrage and turned it's attention towards the only thing in it's vicinity that it could vent that outrage on, as the last of Gamma squad scattered to regroup on the far side of the colony with the rest of the marines, she grinned a vicious and bloodthirsty grin. Flaring her biotics and calling on the Force, the black-blue lightning of dark energy threaded through with golden flame, she slammed her fists together. "I've wanted to do this since GrUncle Wrex told me that story for the very first time. Come on, beasty. Let's dance, you and I!"
She threw herself forward like a comet, a wild war-howl trailing in her wake.
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Milky Way Galaxy
Petra Nebula
Vetus System
Elysium
Illyria City
2178 AD
Elysium was a well-named world, considered by many to be the jewel of the Alliance outside of Terra Nova and Earth herself, wealthy and well-settled, with nearly half of it's 10-odd million inhabitants being aliens, predominantly asari searching for the perfect human mate. Or, as the case may be, searching to make as many credits as possible off of lonely and lustful humans on a world that was near enough to paradise. It was also a planet that, thanks to it's connection to the legendary hero Jon Grissom, was well-known for it's veteran services. Services that, combined with the environment, made it ideal for retirement for many a wounded warrior.
Retirement, or recuperation. Especially for those suffering from psychological issues, such as PTSD.
The sort of PTSD that one might, for an example, acquire when one's unit of fifty marines lands on a planet, is ambushed by two enormous, acid-spitting carnivorous burrowing worm-aliens, suffer seventy-percent casualties, and has a good number of the survivors forced into medical discharge due to the grievous, crippling injuries sustained in the desperate fight for survival. The very event that Cassandra Shepard, sole surviving officer of her unit, and the other fourteen surviving Marines had endured not sixth months before.
Six months of mandatory leave, psych evaluations, and attempts at "recuperation." But the memories still haunted her - the screams of her fellow marines as they were torn apart or dissolved by acid, the sickening crunch as the thresher maw crushed the dropship, the desperate struggle to stay alive as she faced down one of the monstrous creatures alone, and the stench of the acid-burned corpses. She had won, of course, managing to wear her opponent down and kill it essentially single-handed, just like her GrUncle had, but the cost had been enormous. Thirty-five dead, including the Major and not including the crew of the dropship. Oh, she had enjoyed the fight while it happened, of course, the thrill of adrenaline, the thrill of success and survival, but now? Now all she felt was a hollow, gnawing sort of guilt and doubt, the belief that she, somehow, could have stopped the entire thing from happening.
It was absurd, of course, she had known that even before the counseling had begun. For there to be any survivors at all, under the circumstances, was down entirely to her knowledge, powers, and a healthy dose of help from the Almighty. Oh, her fellows had been able to kill the other maw without much help from her, at least much physical help, but they never would have managed to organize and target it's weak points in time without her help.
As she stood on the balcony of her apartment, overlooking the beautiful parks and ponds surrounding the Gary Sinise Memorial Veterans Center, she didn't see the beauty of the setting sun as it painted the sky in rich, beautiful swathes of orange and red and purple. She didn't see the peace and the tranquility, the joy and comfort, of the thousands going about their lives below and around her. She didn't smile at the sight of a pair of young human girls playing catch with their dog, she didn't smirk at the sight of a young asari/human couple wandering the winding paths, stealing 'subtle' kisses from one another every few yards.
She could feel the warm, gentle presence of The Phoenix in the back of her mind, sad -or the closest approximation that the unfathomably ancient entity could feel so human an emotion, even after all this time of 'learning mortality'- but reproachful, even as the thought of giving up crossed her mind for even an instant. She didn't need to hear it speak to know it's thoughts, to know that one of the many shards of it's previous hosts would solemnly explain to her that it was impossible to save everyone, that being a hero -or even simply a good person, a good soldier- didn't mean accomplishing the impossible. It meant facing the prospect of total failure and facing it defiantly. It meant acknowledging that you were likely to fail, and making the attempt regardless. It meant rising again and again, however many times you must, until you could no longer rise or you had won.
She knew all that, accepted all that, internalized all that…and struggle to believe it all the same.
She felt a familiar presence flicker at the edge of her self-limited awareness, an instant before warm arms wrapped around her from behind and a cheek rested itself between her shoulder blades, and despite the weight on her soul she couldn't help but smile as Liara's soul reached out to mesh with her own. Her oldest friend, now her lover of the last five years, had dropped everything at the University of Thessia and taken the fastest shuttle she could find to Elysium when she had found out -from Cassie's mother- about the events of Akuze and Cassie's admittance to The Center.
Cassandra leaned back into Liara's embrace, drawing comfort from her lover's presence. She let out a soft sigh, some of the tension leaving her body.
"I thought I might find you out here," Liara murmured, her breath warm against Cassie's neck. "You've been distant all day. Do you want to talk about it?"
Cassie was quiet for a long moment, watching the last rays of sunlight fade from the sky. Finally, she spoke.
"I keep replaying it in my mind. Wondering if there was something more I could have done. Some way I could have saved more of them."
Liara tightened her arms around Cassie. "You did everything you could. You saved fourteen lives that day. Without you, they all would have died."
"I know that. Logically, I know that," Cassie said, mouth twisting bitterly. "I even know that the only way we could have avoided it would have been to get back on that dropship less than two minutes after we walked off of it, which is something that we never could have done, especially with the information that we had at the time." she sighed, turning around and pulling Liara into her embrace, the smaller woman happily allowing it. "They keep calling me a hero. Someday, I might even believe it."
Liara looked up at Cassie, her blue eyes filled with understanding and love, but not pity. Never pity, and for that very fact Cassie loved her all the more. "You are a hero, Cassandra. Not just for what you did on Akuze, but for who you are every day. The strength you show, the lives you touch."
Cassie gave a small, sad smile. "I'm not sure I feel very heroic most days."
"That's exactly what makes you one," Liara said gently. "True heroes don't seek glory or accolades. They simply do what's right, no matter the cost to themselves."
Cassie was quiet for a moment, absorbing Liara's words. Then she leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her lover's forehead. "What would I do without you?"
"Fortunately, you'll never have to find out," Liara replied with a tender smile, leaning up to press a warm kiss to the human's lips. A kiss that was steadily starting to deepen, promising interesting things for the rest of their afternoon, before the maiden reluctantly broke away and gently smacked Cassandra on the shoulders. "Hmm, none of that, now." she chided affectionately. "We promised our mothers that we would meet them at the starport, then all go out for dinner together. And you know that if we don't go, they'll burst in here without an ounce of hesitation, no matter what state we're in."
Cassie pouted for a long, long moment, batting her eyes playfully at the other girl, before she chuckled softly, shaking her head. "You're right, of course. The last thing we need is a repeat of what happened on Thessia last year."
Liara's cheeks flushed a deeper shade of blue at the memory. "Goddess, don't remind me. I thought my father would never stop teasing us about that, with far more detail than I ever wanted to hear coming out of her mouth at that."
"At least your father just teased. Mom gave me a 30-minute lecture on 'proper decorum' and 'setting a good example as an Alliance officer', then started teasing. Though at least she wasn't as bad as Auntie A." Cassie said with a wry grin, which broadened at Liara's petulant mutter of 'no one ever is'.
She stepped back from Liara, taking a deep breath to center herself. The weight of Akuze still pressed on her, but Liara's presence and words had eased it somewhat. She could face the world again, at least for now.
"Alright, let's go meet our parents. There's nothing quite like family to help settle a weary soul, right?" she said, and the pair of them left hand in hand, looking forward to a relaxing night with the people they loved most in the world, followed by a romantic -and passionate night- with one another.
Naturally, they had just gotten to the restaurant and sat down for dinner when the air-raid sirens went off and the sky started raining shuttles painted in the colors of the Blood Pack.
On the one hand, the last thing Cassandra ought to need in the middle of her psychological convalescence was more combat. Typically, high-stress environments -never mind those directly similar to recent traumatic events- were considered a very bad thing for people in her position.
On the other hand, slaughtering mercenaries and safe-guarding innocent civilians alongside her aunties, mother, lover, and the impromptu militia of 'crippled' and 'incapable of combat' veterans that they had organized had proven quite healthy for her heart and mind. Especially when she had gone one-on-one with Garm, the Blood Pack's head-honcho, and sent him running for his life with at least three ruptured organs and one missing eye. Really, by the time the fighting was over and she had helped provide first aid and comfort to the wounded civilians, she was feeling better than ever. Better than before Akuze, even!
Unfortunately, The Center wasn't willing to take her word for it, and to her admittedly complicated feelings, she found the extent of her stay rather impressively increased. At least Liara had made arrangements to keep up with her classes long-distance, so they wouldn't be separated anytime soon. Sure, both of their focus on their respective responsibilities might take…something of a hit, given their close proximity and privacy, but they would manage. They always had before.
"If nothing else," Cassandra told Liara a few days after the attack, as they lay tangled together amongst the sheets, still flushed and sweaty from their recent passion. "I'm getting all the hard bits of my career out early. It all has to balance out eventually, right? Hard to start, easy to finish. That's the key, you'll see."