[Shattered Soul] 3 – A Fateful Meeting

As the team swept down long corridors with their guns raised, cameras followed their every move...

Soon enough, the team came upon their first scene of battle in a long corridor. 

On one side were figures that the team was all too surprised to actually see, what appeared to be mummified humans that had the water sucked right out of them, leaving behind corpses that would never decompose due to the planet's atmosphere and lack of bacteria. All the humans wore strange flak armor that none could recognize, their weapons more so. All seemed to be pre-Contact war weapons, featuring ammo magazines with literal bullets. 

"Shepard, come, take a look at this," Wrex spoke up, kneeling before a corpse.

Creeping over to Wrex, Shepard, with his weapon still raised, looked down to see something...horrifying.

The mummified corpse Wrex was kneeling over had an injury unlike anything Shepard had ever seen. It was as if something struck the armed man, melting a hole right through the man's chest, leaving behind a charred carcass of a man. The man must have died nearly instantly from such a horrific injury that not only obliterated the major organs in their torso, while leaving behind a charred wound. 

Looking around, the team found that almost all of the corpses had similar ways of death. A few bodies rested around a small crater where some sort of explosive melted the very metal around the impact while vaporizing entire parts of the men and women around it. Some of the remains were...hard to stomach, as half of their bodies were just missing, vaporized from the explosion of whatever attacked them. A few others had their entire bodies riddled with these massive pink spikes, with some of the corpses seemingly blown apart into chunks. Meanwhile, smaller pink crystals remained embedded in some of the chunks.

"Just what the hell happened here?" Tali asked, sounding sickly and ready to throw up from just the sight of the battle.

That's when they reached what appeared to be the ship's boarders.

Aliens of unknown races, yes, races. Multiple races were involved in the battle, ranging from small creatures fully in armor wearing breathing masks to tall split-jaw humanoid aliens that stood seven feet or more in full combat armor.

Reaching down to grab one of the alien's weapons, Wrex examined it.

"The hell are these supposed to do?" Wrex asked, holding a strange circular pistol.

"Don't shoot it. We have no idea what it does," Shepard warned, making Wrex grumble.

Holstering the strange pistol to his side, Wrex climbed to his feet, examining the entire  scene before him, before commenting, "Whatever these things are, they were slaughtering you, humans, with Krogan efficiency."

Shepard did not respond to Wrex, speaking to everyone, "We need to get to the Bridge. If more of these...things were out there, hidden away, they could very well be as dangerous as the Rachni if this...carnage is anything to go by."

"Like the Rachni?" Garus asked, shocked by Shepard's accusation.

"Look around you? The people here were slaughtered like cattle; they put up a resistance, yes, but they stood no chance against these aliens, " Shepard explained.

"Before we make any hasty assumptions, let's get to the Bridge and find out what really happened," Tali suggested.

Nodding, Shepard said, "What Tali said; let's get moving, people."

Suddenly, the ship's intercom cut on, "F--a---y, ---t -o-k --u ---s so -ong? G-- your ----- up ---e, ----'s --actor is --most --ad." 

Silence took over the hall, that is, until the comms came alive as Joker's voice spoke out, "Uh...Shepard? You guys might want to hurry up. Whatever you guys did to turn on the ship's power seems to have put the ship's reactor into a meltdown; you guys have an hour, at the most, to get out of there."

Cursing, Shepard yelled out, "Double time! Get to the bridge!"

...

As the team rushed through the halls and long corridors, quickly nearing the bridge, cameras followed their every movement, and the one seeing everything unfold frowned upon seeing the team's composition consisting of more than just humans. Even then, the observer did not recognize any of the aliens accompanying the humans.

Part of the observer felt that the Humans were Covenant sympathizers and deserved to die for betraying humanity, while another part of him wanted to confront the group. The Observer knew that the group approaching them was not in the UNSC, at least to his knowledge, as he knew no branch with the insignia that the humans of the group wore. Nor could he identify the armor or weapons the group was equipped with, though he did notice several covenant weapons being carried by the largest alien in the group.

This observer was, of course, not alive by any means. For he was an AI, or to be more accurate, an Enhanced Fragment of one.

His name was Epsilon, though he preferred Church. 

At the moment, his data core was inserted into the main console of the bridge, allowing him access to all of the ship's major and minor systems. This did not help Church much, as most of the ship's systems had long since malfunctioned, stopped working, or no longer had enough power to keep running, though he could still access the cameras, some doors, and some of the ship's computer systems.

Knowing they'd reach him soon, he quickly calculated how long the Reactor would last before taking them with him if they were betrayers of humanity. Based on his calculations, he'd have, at most, twenty minutes to talk with them before the window to escape closed, and these intruders would be unable to escape. It is better he dies and takes them with him than risk getting their hands on his data core and what was left from the artifact that lay, shattered, on the bridge not far from Church's long-since dead robot unit that lay on the floor, ruined from numerous plasma burns and melted metal caused from plasma grenades.

Without a robotic body to control, Church was left roaming the ship's internals for who knows how many years. He wished he had brought another suit; perhaps he could have done something other than wait and wait until some UNSC force found him if he had another suit.

Once that team reached him, Church had one thing he could do to ensure they went down with him: stall for time. If they wanted to destroy him, they'd be out of luck, as he was currently hooked to the entirety of the ship. While the ship's computer systems and electronics were mostly nonfunctional, he had plenty of space to hide and latch onto. Once they were on the bridge, all he would need to do was put the ship under emergency lockdown, which would put a majority of the doors and airlocks of the ship on lockdown, meaning that they'd have to pry them open if they wanted off the ship.

When they reached him, he hid himself from view, disabling his holographic projection that acted as his digital avatar when talking to humans.

As soon as they reached the Bridge, they swept the room, their facial reactions hidden by helmets. He focused on their conversation, only to be immediately met with a problem.

The Humans spoke English, thankfully, but the aliens? They spoke strange languages that would take Church far too long to translate.

That wasn't the strange thing, however; it was more that the Humans spoke English to the Aliens, and they seemed to understand what the Humans said and replied with their alien languages that the Humans could understand. Did they have something that translated the vocal language of everyone present in real time? How much time has passed for Humanity to not only find more aliens but also develop this kind of technology? Did humanity win the War? Was the Covenant defeated? How? That couldn't be possible! Everyone knew it was a losing battle! 

Church needed answers.

...

As they turned down another long corridor, Tali spoke up while running. Her Omni-tool activated as she looked at it, "It should be just up ahead!" she said.

The closer they got to the bridge, the more signs of battle they encountered, to the point where it looked like the Humans on board had sacrificed their lives to stop the aliens from reaching the bridge. The humans put up a valiant effort to stop the humans despite the clear prowess and strength of the aliens, having run past dozens of dead aliens and hundreds of dead humans. Wrex found himself respecting these warriors. They certainly seemed more brave than most Krogan he knew.

Once they stepped onto the bridge, they were met with an even more incredible scene. What seemed to be elite soldiers were strewn about the room, braced behind barricades made from metal furniture and whatever else they could get their hands on. Multiple long-dead automated turrets on the ceiling were drooped down, seemingly having helped the human mow down the largest number of aliens, as a literal mound of bodies blocked the hallway outside the door.

Much to their surprise, when they all stepped onto the bridge, the door behind them slammed closed, locking them inside.

"Tali, extract whatever you can. Garus, Wrex, see if you can find us a way out of here! Double time, move!" Shepard shouted before throwing a few hand signs to Ahsley and Kaden to help him clear the room and ensure no dangers were present.

As Tali neared the console and activated her Omni-tool, she jumped back as a blue holographic figure appeared over the main console of the bridge. 

"Who are you?" The Hologram asked in English.