Plan for the Galaxy Chapter 56

PFTG

A/N Hi everyone! This is the next chapter of PFTG. It took a little longer to get this done than I thought it would. Even then, I must admit I am a little uncertain that I got it down right. I hope you will let me know what you think. Especially as we are nearing the end of ME1. There is plenty of Mass Effect left to go.

As I near this milestone, I just want to thank all of you who are supporting me, especially to those who have been doing it since basically the beginning. I couldn’t do this without all of you. Not just the financial side. If it wasn’t for this, I would still be dragging my feet on my stories. You motivate me to write more and for that I am very grateful.

Anyway, that’s enough of the sap. To the story!

Chapter 56 – Battle on the Citadel

…

(Brock POV)

War. War never…

An explosion nearby cut those thoughts off as I was forced to duck behind cover. Right. No time for dramatics then, as the geth were trying to push past the cordon my people had established on the presidium and spread throughout the Citadel. I might get asked about why I had so many troops on the Presidium once this was over but for now, they were crucial to keeping the geth from spreading too far and keeping the people safe.

Once the Relay had opened on the Presidium, we had been unprepared for just how many geth would be coming through all at once. Even if we had already had my people in place, they would have been overwhelmed by numbers and would not have been able to prevent dozens of geth from escaping the vicinity to cause further havoc around the Presidium with the weapons we had on hand.

After the initial wave, which included a few smaller troop carriers that quickly spread out to drop their troops all over the Presidium and the Wards closest to it, the number slowed down to where my heavy troops could push through to the Relay monument and set up defensive positions to prevent more coming through. A job that they had taken to with great enthusiasm, partially from the two quarian pilgrims that were part of the heavy teams sent to the Relay

That still left us with a massive number of geth on the Citadel. CSEC had been completely unprepared, so while there were a few CSEC officers who were helping to fight back or to evacuate civilians, my people still took the bulk of the work in fighting back against the invasion. Their numbers were increasing though, so I couldn’t really say too much.

“Bravo team!” I called into my comm as I saw a group of rocket troopers moving towards the Tower. “There is a squad of rocket troopers on their way to you. Watch your backs!”

A garbled confirmation came as I leaned out of my cover and fired a burst from my butcher at the squad of geth hunters moving towards me, followed by a Prime. The hunters went down in short order, not having had a chance to cloak yet, their electronic screams dying and lost in the sound of weapons fire.

“Grenade out!” Torrin called, throwing a disc towards the Prime. The explosion shrouded the large geth mech as the explosion knocked it back a few steps, damaging the shields, but not taking them out completely.

I used the distraction to pull the Thumper from my back and made sure it was loaded with a Thor round. “Fire in the hole!” I shouted, aiming at the geth as it righted itself.

The Thor round flew true, exploding on the geth’s frame. The shields did nothing to stop the heavy electrical discharge that lanced all around the large mech frame. I hadn’t used a Thor round on a Prime yet, so I was happy to see that the geth heretic’s frame seized before its light went out and it collapsed. Not one to take chances, Torrin put a burst from his own Butcher into the thing, making sure it stayed down.

“We’re clear,” he declared.

“Move to the Tower,” I ordered, standing from my cover and marching towards the elevator. Torrin, Hectar and an asari named Hollisa moved with me.

“Alpha Team,” a voice came from the comm as we sprinted through the Presidium. “You have several geth squads ahead of you, including two armatures that had been dropped by geth troop carriers. Sending a flight of Grims to provide support.”

“Copy that,” I grunted as we ran. “Torrin, Hollisa, be ready to provide Barriers.”

We came to an open courtyard just before the Tower’s elevator. Sure enough, there was a large squad of geth with heavy support waiting to hold off anyone trying to get inside. Sadly, there were also plenty of bodies around the area from people who had been trying to leave before the geth got there but hadn’t made it in time.

I hardened my heart to the death and chaos of the innocent and pushed forwards, firing the Thumper into a cluster of geth troops that were standing near a garden bed. The Hi-Ex round tore them apart, throwing shrapnel all over the place.

We pushed through towards the elevators that would take us up the Tower to the Citadel Chambers. We collected Bravo and Gamma squads as we went, pushing through the geth faster with our larger group.

We reached the elevators to find that they were locked down. Without being asked, Hectar ripped open the control panel and started grabbing at wires and yanking at them.

“Alpha team, cover Hectar,” I ordered, aiming outwards to watch for any incoming geth. “Bravo, Gamma, take a side each and run a quick check on the buildings around us for any civilians and politicians that haven’t made it out. If there are any, Gamma can escort them to a safe zone.”

Both teams acknowledged my orders and took off. I trusted that they would be able to get the job done, just as I trusted Hectar to be able to hack into the Tower elevator.

“How long do you need, Hectar?” I asked, not looking back at him.

“About five minutes,” he replied tersely. “The cyber security is a lot stronger here. I’m having to reroute power pathways and bypass the security safeties.”

“Right,” I replied. “We’ll have your back. Let us know when.”

I turned on my comm. “Base, this is Alpha team, come in.”

“Go ahead, Alpha team,” a calm voice replied despite the faint sound of explosions in the background.

“I need air cover up on the Tower in about seven minutes,” I replied. “Also, if there are any other teams that can make it to the Tower elevator in less than five minutes, that would be great.”

“Roger that, Alpha,” the Base comms operator replied. “Grims will be dispatched to the top of the Tower. ETA, eight minutes. I have Heavy Team and Nova Team inbound to your position. ETA four minutes.”

Two teams? That was great. It would give me more options to search for trapped civilians.

“Alpha Team, be advised that Spectre Shepard appears to be making her way to the Council Chambers via that outside path of the elevators. They are encountering heavy resistance. Dispatching Grim for a fire support run.”

She was already outside the Citadel halfway up the Tower? Damn, she was in a hurry.

“Roger that,” I replied. “Do we have any idea on how things are looking in space?”

“Defence Fleet is taking a beating,” came the swift reply. “Geth are pushing them hard. Council has fled to Destiny Ascension and they are being pressed hard by heavy geth assets, but they are holding for now. Relays are still locked down for now, though chatter suggests that the Alliance is ready to come through the moment that they are active again. All Shieldstar space assets are outside of the current combat zones. Reaper is holding position to the rear of the geth fleet.”

Ok, that’s where we stood for now. I had a feeling that we had to destroy the reaper to get the Relay’s to open. Though, in the game, it hadn’t taken destroying the egomaniacal being to open the Relay. The mail console would give them the access to the Relays around the Citadel, letting us open them for the fleets to come in. No reaper death necessary.

The two extra squads arrived as Hectar announced that it would only take a few more seconds to get control of the elevator. The two arriving teams quickly took up defensive positions, facing away from the elevator bank.

“We need to make it to the Council’s main terminals,” I said to my squads, making sure they could all hear me. “Once there, we can open the Relays for the fleets to come in. That will give the Citadel Defence Fleet the strength to push back all of the geth. That is the objective for Alpha Team. Bravo will hold the elevator, making sure that it stays clear for our return. Heavy and Nova will push up the stairs with us and once we have cleared the area of geth, they will do a check of all buildings in the area and evac any civilians out of the Tower. Don’t use any aircars without a flight of gunships providing escort. There is too much risk of it being shot down by geth gunships, or passing in range of a frigate or something.

“We are expecting former Spectre Saren and an unknown number of geth as targets,” I explained, giving as quick a briefing as I could to the soldiers with me. It might not be an official army, but they were as good, if not better than standard troops from any army unit. “We also need to be aware of Spectre Shepard and her ground team. Not sure who it will be, but there will be at least two of them from the list of known associates that was sent out. They will be on their own mission to combat Saren. If needed, clear the area of geth and establish a cordon to ensure he can’t escape and standby to assist if it looks like she is about to lose.”

I got a chorus of acknowledgements, right as Hectar announced that he had control of the elevator. We all piled in, squeezed a little uncomfortably with our armour and weapons. The elevator could hold the weight of all of us, but it wasn’t really designed for holding twelve fully armed soldiers at once.

Another thing that made the Tower such a strong defensible position. Wouldn’t want the peons having a chance of rising up against you if you were too heavy-handed with them.

Despite how fast the elevator was, it was still more than a kilometre from base to top, meaning we had about forty-five seconds before we reached the top. No one spoke, focussed on the combat as we were. We could see flashes from explosions all throughout the Presidium. I hoped that my people weren’t going to be badly hurt from this.

“Alpha Team,” a voice over the comm spoke up, “this is Oracle. Grim gunships are beginning their attack run on the top of the elevator. They will clear the path for you.”

“Roger,” I replied. I turned to the group around me. “Grims are clearing the top for us. Keep your eyes open for any they missed and double check the ones on the ground to make sure that they stay down.”

Finally, the elevator slowed as it reached the top of the Tower. The doors opened with a chiming sound and we piled out, weapons up and scanning the area. There were plenty of corpses from civilians that hadn’t made it out in time lying around. There were also plenty of dead and dying geth in the area. From a quick look, it was both from the gunships as well as small arms fire.

A few CSEC uniforms were among the dead, but I wasn’t seeing any weapons with them, other than a couple of pistols. Certainly not enough to justify the number of dead geth with small arms weapon damage.

My guess is that it was probably Jane moving through the area.

“Bravo,” I called out firmly. “Hold here for our retreat. The rest of you, forward to the top. Let’s move!”

Our three remaining squads pushed forwards over the damaged courtyard and moved at a combat run up the stairs. I wasn’t bothering with my SONAR; it was a fairly open area and I didn’t really need to look for hidden geth or hiding spots of civilians. I would trust my people to do that.

A flickering of bending light drew my attention, as something with an imperfect cloak moved past a flower bed. “Cloaked geth!” I called out, raising my Butcher and firing off a burst of slug rounds. They impacted the Hunter and took out its shields, punching large holes in the mainframe in less than a second. “Check for air distortions. Their cloaks are not perfect. Use SONAR if you don’t trust yourself.”

It would work, but it would be distracting in the open. I should get Hectar to fine tune that or give another mode to identify it without causing other distractions. Thoughts for later.

We pushed up the stairs. Taking out ambushing geth units was so much easier when you had so many soldiers with you. With that many eyes keeping track of things, there was no chance of not seeing a rocket trooper hiding behind one of the planted trees or one of the raised garden beds.

We had made it about halfway when the comm came alive.

“All teams,” the calm voice of Oracle was slightly more tense. “The reaper is moving towards the Citadel. The arms of the Citadel are beginning to close and will be finished in approximately one minute. All gunships to focus on geth gunships and air assets. Grounds teams to continue objectives.”

I looked back the way we had come and sure enough, the arms of the Citadel were closing. I had been so focussed on the march up the Tower fighting the geth that I hadn’t really been paying attention to anything outside of our area.

Still, the reaper drawing closer meant that it was time. The Hidden Enterprise was about to make its move, which would likely cause collateral damage. Not desirable, but I hoped that the laws of physics would win the day and that shrapnel would be at a minimum.

Having the Enterprise had been part of the plan, but not mentioning it was crucial to maintaining deniability later. I didn’t need the Citadel investigators finding out about the Enterprise and our MAC system through an intercepted and decrypted transmission once this was over.

“You heard her, people,” I spoke up, staying off the comms. “Double time it. We need to be up top yesterday. Heavy and Nova, watch our flanks. Move it!”

We charged up the stairs, moving at a dead run. Any geth that stuck its head up was blasted out of existence before they could do anything to bother us. None of them were able to even get off a shot before they were taken out.

My legs were starting to burn from the constant up-stair running and I was breathing a little heavier, but not too badly. I knew that everyone else was starting to feel the effects of the uphill run. But we were almost at the top now.

“Visual on the reaper!” came the flanged voice of the turian in charge of Nova Team.

I risked a look back. Sure enough, the reaper was approaching the closing gap of the Citadel arms. It was far enough away that it was barely visible to the naked eye, despite its massive size. It was rapidly getting larger as it approached the Tower.

I could feel a thrill of anticipation. It was almost time.

…

(Jane POV)

She was just so done with today.

After all the drama that had taken place with Brock, Kaiden and the rest of her ground team, she’d had to reject Kaiden’s attempt to seduce her. Then she’d needed to get ready with prickly ground team members, knowing that she could have helped remove that tension before it came to a head, or at least deferred it by not standing with the lone accuser in her Lieutenant.

Then there was the hunting and fighting Saren through the tombs and ruins of Ilos. Being just moments away from catching up with him and having to go the long way around the ruins had left her feeling impatient the entire time, which had only gotten worse with every geth that had popped up for her to fight.

She had been distracted by the still barely functioning prothean computers and would have to go back to try and get more out of them later, if possible. And no matter what she did, they were never able to catch up with Saren before he went through the Conduit.

Then they had gone through the Conduit straight to the Citadel, complete with the heavy crash landing in the Mako on the Presidium. She hadn’t fallen unconscious, but her body hurt from the heavy jerking against her restraints, even in her armour.

She’d had to push that aside though and evacuated, only to be almost shot as soon as she emerged from the Mako by private mercenaries, all of whom were wearing Shieldstar logos on their armour. This in turn reminded her of Brock and she felt a mix of regret again about the situation regarding his departure from the Normandy, annoyance that Brock’s people had almost shot her with heavy weaponry that she wouldn’t have had a chance surviving, and suspicion as to why Brock’s people were standing ready at the receiving end of the Conduit waiting for someone to come through.

The massive number of destroyed geth in the area gave her the idea that they had been waiting for a while.

“Watch yourself, Spectre,” one of the privateers called out to her. “We almost blew you to pieces.”

“Then learn the difference between geth and people,” she barked back angrily.

“Already did,” the same person replied. “Otherwise, you would have ended up like the scrap around you.”

Jane just grit her teeth and helped Liara and Tali out of the destroyed tank. The little quarian froze for a second, seeing all of the destroyed geth in the area. As it was, she little out a very soft ‘whoa’ before jane pulled her out of the vehicle.

“If you are looking for that turian that came with the geth, they have headed to the Council Chambers on top of the Tower,” the merc called again. Finally, something useful.

“Roger that,” she replied. Right then, the Relay behind her deactivated with a bright flash before going inert.

“Alright folks,” the merc called out to his people. “Show’s over here. Head off to reinforce the other teams at the safety zones.”

With that, the company of mercenaries or private soldiers or whatever they were, all left the area, leaving Jane to her thoughts.

She shook her head out. “Let’s get to the Tower,” she ordered, already moving towards the aircars.

The Citadel transport vehicles were locked down due to the conflict, but Tali was able to quickly activate one. Within a few minutes they reached the base of the Tower. She had hoped that the aircar would get her to the top of the Tower but apparently there was a hardline code that stopped it from going up there when there was combat.

They managed to get about halfway up the Tower in the elevator before it was locked out. Looking across at one of the other elevators, she could see Saren and another squad of geth in another pod, heading to the top of the Tower unimpeded. She couldn’t help shaking her head. She really was beginning to hate that turian.

They were forced to ascend to the top outside the elevator, fighting against geth forces the whole way, ignoring the weird sense of vertigo that accompanied their fighting in a different gravitational plane than the rest of the Citadel. They were almost bogged down by several heavy geth machines, but the appearance of some of Brock’s gunships put them down hard, clearing the way for Jane’s team to get to the top.

Finally, she had made her way up the stairs to the top, finding Saren standing on the ledge of the balcony that she had stood on herself to petition the Council, looking as calm as though he was enjoying a vid instead of taking over the Citadel. It was almost insulting. The turian didn’t even bother turning around as she approached, instead he continued to tap away at the terminal he was using.

She frowned as she looked him over. There seemed to be more prosthetics than he’d had before. She could tell that even without him turning around. What the hell had the reaper been doing to him?

Suddenly, Saren took a step forward and dropping down off the ledge of the podium disappearing from view. Jane took two steps forward, intending to see where he went, before he floated up on his anti-gravity sled that she remembered from Virmire. He casually flung a grenade in her direction and she dove behind the low wall of the garden bed, to avoid the explosion.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t make it in time, Shepard,” Saren said calmly.

“In time for what?” she called out to him, worried about whatever else he had planned.

“The final confrontation,” Saren replied smoothly. Above them, Jane could see the arms of the Citadel beginning to close. “I think we both knew that it would end like this. You’ve lost, you know that, don’t you? Sovereign will soon be on the Citadel and have control of its systems. He will activate the Relay and the reapers will return.”

“I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve,” she shouted back. “Besides, it doesn’t look like your little invasion has gone quite as well as you planned.”

“A temporary setback,” Saren countered, not sounding bothered in the slightest. “And ultimately pointless. Sovereign can’t be stopped by something as meagre as Brock Nielson’s piddly ground troops.

“You survived our encounter on Virmire. But I’ve changed since then. Improved. Sovereign has… upgraded me.”

“You let that thing implant you?” she barked, incredulously. “Are you insane? Or did you simply forget about every other alien that had Sovereign’s implants and lost its free will.”

“After Virmire, I couldn’t stop think about what you said,” Saren confessed. “About Sovereign manipulating me. About indoctrination. Doubts began to eat away at me. Sovereign sensed my hesitation. I was implanted to strengthen my resolve. Now my doubts are gone. I believe in Sovereign completely. I understand that the reapers need organics. So, I guess I should thank you. Join us and Sovereign will find a place for you too.”

Jane couldn’t help shaking her head. Saren had reaper tech implanted in his head, taking away his free will and ability to have independent thoughts. It was too late for him now. There was only one way this was going to end. The sky continued to get darker as the arms got closer

“You can’t even see it, can you?” she asked, swapping her pistol for her Scalpel. She was going to need all the firepower she could get for this matchup. “You’re being controlled even now. I’ve seen what the reapers do to people. Whether it was your indoctrination centre on Virmire, or the husks that they made out of humans, self determination is not on their agenda. Or do you think that I would forget about all of that. If that’s all they need organics for, if you are all they need organics for, then I wouldn’t trust them for the end of the galaxy.”

“My relationship is symbiotic,” Saren replied. “But there isn’t time for that now. Look, you can see Sovereign approaching even now.”

She risked a look out into space and saw that, yes, she could indeed see the approaching reaper. It looked tiny, despite its large size, due to the distance it was from the Citadel.

She felt her resolve weaken slightly, watching the approaching reaper. There was nothing she could physically do to stop it. She was going to need to get these arms open and get the Relays active again so the Alliance fleet could make their way into the Widow system. She still had to finish off Saren before she could find a way to take out Sovereign. If she didn’t, the reapers would be here and this would all be for nothing.

She sighed and took a steadying breath. It was now or never. Time to finish this, once and for all.

“Tali,” Jane said in a low voice. “Overloads, drones, EMPs… anything to affect his cybernetics you can think of. Liara, I want you to stop him moving. Put barriers up and stop that sled of his. We can do this.”

“Jane, wait!” Liara interrupted, pointing towards the reaper.

Jane risked another look back. A look turned into a stare. And as her mouth dropped open unwillingly, her stare turned into a gape.

What the hell?

…

(Aleria POV)

It had been a while since she had been on the Hidden Enterprise. Ever since the command crew had moved to the Balrog, the Hidden Enterprise had been responsible for escort duties from different supply runs to their dockyards, making sure that there was plenty of element zero and metals required to both expand the docking station, as well as manage all of the upgrades to their fleet. Its normal captain was a human woman, Jessica Parker, who had been a frigate captain before she had been captured on an escort and supply mission to colonies in the Terminus. Once she had been rescued and gone through the same rehabilitation that they put everyone through, she had chosen to sign on with Shieldstar as all her family had died in a fire more than a decade earlier.

She wasn’t completely sure, but she had heard rumours that Saren was the one that had killed them when he was on a mission. That was the rumour, but even if it wasn’t true, it made for great gossip.

For this mission, Captain Parker was in temporary charge of the Balrog, while Aleria had taken over the Enterprise once more.

Nothing against the human captain. Brock had made the request for this, partially out of nostalgia but also out of practicality. Aleria had just had more experience with missions regarding the reapers and their overall goal. In Brock’s mind, she had earned the chance to take the first shot at the reapers and the Enterprise was the vessel chosen for the job.

The human luckily had not taken offence, thrilled with the chance to briefly be in charge of their flagship. She was still extremely grateful for having been saved after nearly two years in captivity. The bonus that Brock was paying the woman hadn’t hurt either.

Now, Aleria sat in the updated captain’s chair, on the expanded bridge. It was double in size to what it had been before. The upgrades had made the renovations possible. It wasn’t exactly necessary, but it had been desirable. After all, a semi-warship was not meant to have an undersized command centre. That was Brock’s reasoning anyway.

“Captain,” the sensor officer called over to her, drawing her attention. “The reaper ship has started making its way to the Citadel. It just rammed straight through a turian cruiser. It looks like the arms are starting to close too.”

“MAC is charged at one hundred percent,” the gunnery officer added.

“We are not drawing any attention from the other ships in the system,” the sensor officer said, clearing one of Aleria’s concerns. After all, the MACs used a lot of power to fire.

Aleria took a deep breath, steadying her nerves. The timing on this had to be just right. Too close and the shot would pass through the atmosphere provided by the Citadel and would risk causing the whole thing to pop like a bubble. Too far and the ship would be moving too fast, which meant that pieces would fall like rain over the space station and create a massive threat to the people on it. They had a very small kill zone to work with here and they couldn’t afford to mess it up.

“Confirm that there are no other ships or Relays behind the target,” she ordered.

“Confirmed that there are no background objects in the kill zone,” came the professional response. “Target area is green.”

Good. Now she just had to give the command. The thrill of anticipation passed through her. The first time that this massively overpowered weapon would be used in the fight against the reapers would be ordered by her. Ever since she had witnessed the first trial shot all those months ago, she had both looked forward to and worried about this day. Now it was here. She tapped out the clearance code for the weapon to be fired from her terminal. The XO had already put in his own code, meaning there was only one thing left to do.

“Gunnery officer,” she said, slowly but clearly. “You have a green light. Fire when the reaper is in the kill zone.”

“Roger, Captain,” came the response from the asari matron sitting in the chair.

For a few long seconds, nothing happened, the atmosphere so tense and still that it felt like everyone had stopped breathing. The whole galaxy paused, save for the distant flashes of the fleets in combat.

Then, after what felt like an eternity, the asari gunnery officer tapped a button on her console.

The thump felt through the ship felt like the biggest release of tension, as the MAC round left the cannon and travelled near light speed. The scopes showed the round as it travelled so much faster than anything else in the system, blitzing by on the right trajectory to collide with the reaper.

The question of whether or not the alien war creature seemed to notice the round coming at it was never answered for Aleria. She thought that it might have but after having gone through the entirety of the Citadel Defence Fleet without a scratch, even after ramming through a turian heavy cruiser, didn’t consider anything fired by the other ships to be a threat, regardless of speed.

Aleria liked to think, in the moment before contact, that the reaper realised its impending death and felt helpless, knowing that his plan was thwarted for now. Either that or that it was so confident in its superiority that it didn’t bother moving out of the way, thinking that it would be able to tank anything that was fired at it.

Ultimately, it didn’t really matter, because once the MAC round was fired, the reaper ceased to exist.

Well, not completely, the round passed through the alien ship as if it wasn’t even there. It completely cored the reaper, leaving a massive hole through it as the MAC round instantly overwhelmed its shields and armour as if it were made of paper. The high velocity of the round meant that the round passed through it so quickly that it didn’t even transfer any energy into the large dreadnought. A straight through-and-through.

The reaper carried on for a moment, before all of the external lights died down and it started to list sideways, rotating helplessly on its axis. Aleria felt completely satisfied, seeing from her scopes that the ship was dead in space. There was a surprising lack of debris from it, but she realised that its momentum was carrying it towards the Citadel, where it would eventually collide with the space station.

The effect of the dead reaper on the battle was instantaneous. For a long second, nearly all shooting stopped as the geth apparently needed to process that their boss was gone. The defending ships also stopped, clearly not having expected the massively overpowered reaper to be one-shotted like it was. But that just meant that they were on a time limit.

“Send out the planned transmission,” Aleria ordered the comms officer.

“Roger,” the turian said, smiling at she tapped a button on her console.

The transmission was just garbled nonsense. Brock had decided that a smoke-trail would be needed, something to throw off Citadel investigators. Between having the physically altered ship and the garbled transmission of Persei speaking gibberish, it would hopefully slow them down, but also motivate the Citadel to bulk up their fleets for when the reapers actually arrived, making them think that there was a powerful alien race hiding in the stars somewhere.

“Helm, get us out of here yesterday,” Aleria instructed.

“Roger,” the pilot replied. “Diverting power from the MAC. Redlining the engines. Going at two hundred percent recommended flank speed. Burnout in twenty minutes.”

“That’s fine,” Aleria responded. “We will be well on our way out of system before we hit that. Input our preplanned coordinates for the jump to empty space and make it as soon as we can.”

As she received another affirmative, she looked back at the screens. It looked like the fighting had started again and the geth were starting to overwhelm the Citadel Fleet through pure numbers. Though this time the Relays were apparently open and Alliance ships were pouring into the system a dozen at a time. Hundreds more corvettes, frigates and cruisers were appearing in the system as the Alliance threw its fleet at the geth.

“We have some corvettes and a pair of frigates in pursuit,” the sensor officer called out. “They won’t catch us but appear to be trying to get our outbound heading. They are hailing us.”

“Ignore their hails,” Aleria ordered, thankful that they had planned to go on a random series of jumps instead of going to any of their bases. “Are we ready to go to lightspeed?”

“Twenty seconds to clear the gravity well of the nebula,” came the reply. “Citadel arms are opening again.”

She spent the last few seconds watching as several large cruisers fired at the dead reaper with missiles and their own mass accelerator cannons. She saw it getting knocked off course so that it would clear the Citadel, with several large chunks of shrapnel being blasted off it. A quick look showed that those chunks were heading right towards the Presidium.

The blue blur of lightspeed came to life in front of the Enterprise and as they disappeared to the safety of lightspeed, Aleria prayed to the goddess that none of their people would be hurt by the debris heading their way.

…

(Jane POV)

Whatever happened to the reaper, Jane wasn’t sure. Not at this distance anyway. It looked like something exploded from within and had sent out some debris heading perpendicular to the Citadel.

What she was sure about was the result that it had on Saren. He immediately started screaming and clutching his head. His balance on his sled faltered and it started drifting wildly from side to side. Saren was heedless of this, continuously screaming even as he landed on the ground, thrashing about and clutching at his head.

“Jane!” Liara cried out. “Now’s our chance!”

“You both focus on the geth!” Jane shouted as she vaulted her cover and sprinted to the flailing turian. “I’ll find out what’s going on!”

“Roger, Jane!” Tali replied, sounding enthusiastic as she raised her wrist and fired off a drone.

Jane sprinted to the fallen turian. “Saren,” she shouted over his screams. “What’s happening to you?!”

“It’s… agh... the upgrades,” Saren grunted between his screams. “They… burn!”

Burning? Some sort of failsafe that Sovereign put in the augmentations? “How can I fix it?” she asked.

“Can’t!” Saren gasped in agony. “Deep. Too… deep!”

Jane looked at him spasming, feeling helpless. She knew that he had made his choices and was likely facing a firing squad, but this looked like he needed help now, and she couldn’t do anything about it.

“I can’t,” Saren bit out, “I, can’t… hear his voice. Silent. Stopped… talking… Sorry… Shepard. Twisted… my mind. Told me… we’d be safe. Save the Council. Save… our people! Stop the reapers!”

“I will,” she swore. “I will stop the reapers.” And she would too. She wasn’t going to let them become like the protheans.

In the background she distantly heard Liara calling out that she was opening the arms of the Citadel again. She ignored that and focussed on the turian.

“Goooooodd,” he bit out as his spasming increased. “More… are coming! So many. Don’t let them… win!”

“I won’t,” she repeated. “I won’t let them win. I will find a way to stop them.”

His headed twitched in a jerky nod. “Please… kill… me,” he gasped.

She felt sorry for this moment. Sorry for what Saren had become. He was apparently the best of the Spectres. Now he was reduced to this dying creature, not even fully himself, after being twisted by the reapers until he was convinced that the only way to save the galaxy was to destroy it. She could do this, though. It was a final act of mercy.

“Very well,” she said, pulling her pistol from its holster. “I’ll warn the galaxy. I’ll let them know that your last breath was seeking for it to be saved from the reapers.”

A bitter half smile flashed across Saren’s pained face. “Thank… you,” he grunted.

Not willing to draw it out, she put her pistol to his head and fired. He jerked one more time before collapsing as his muscles relaxed, his expression now completely at peace.

She shook off the lingering sadness and looked around. Tali and Liara had finished off the last of the geth and were now standing a few steps short of her out of respect.

“Well,” Tali said hesitantly. “That was a little… anticlimactic.”

“Indeed,” Liara concurred, ignoring the dirt and scouring on her own armour. “After Virmire, and after making it up here and hearing him talking about the final battle, I had assumed that there would be a much greater fight than clearing up a few geth.”

“Not every battle needs to be fought with guns, ladies,” Jane replied, closing Saren’s eyes and standing up. “Isn’t that what politics is all about?”

“Normandy to Shepard,” Joker’s voice came over the comms, breaking into their conversation. “Shepard, we are in system engaging the geth. The Council has been saved, but the reaper is going to be destroyed. It’s on collision course with the Citadel Tower and one of the captains from the asari has ordered its destruction to knock it off course. Recommend you find cover.”

They all looked over to the reaper that was visibly closer than last time she had looked at it. Sure enough, a ship flew in closer and fired something. They couldn’t quite see where it hit the reaper, but the massive dreadnought exploded and was knocked off course from the Citadel, floating between two of the arms. She had no idea which ones off the top of her head.

Heavy footsteps announced the arrival of more people. She raised her weapons, in case they were unfriendly, but lowered them the moment she saw the Shieldstar logo on their armour.

“Jane,” a familiar voice barked at her, the tone instantly getting her back up. “Get out of here now! Debris from the reaper is headed right for us. Get to cover! You too Liara and Tali!”

Jane looked back up and tensed as she noticed that there were several pieces heading straight at them, faster than she thought they would. They were all probably several dozen metres long and a few tons each.

“Everyone get down!” she shouted and started moving away backwards.

Unfortunately, she had forgotten that Saren was on the ground right behind her. She took two steps and tripped over his body, landing heavily on the ground, pain shooting up from her left shoulder as she landed on her side.

A quick look showed that a large piece of reaper ship was almost on them, heading right at her.

She froze for less than a second, realising that there was nowhere to go from here. She couldn’t get up in time.

A hand thumped onto her good shoulder and she looked up, seeing Brock’s familiar helmet.

“Torrin!” he bellowed. Jane instantly turned blue as she was covered in biotic power.

“Don’t clench,” he barked at Jane, before throwing her thirty metres into the clear as the biotic power reduced her mass drastically.

The last thing she saw before the plate hit, was Brock leaping for the edge of the platform, aiming to drop into the garden bed below. Then the first piece of reaper plate hit and everything went black.

…

(Garrus POV)

He pushed another piece of rubble out of his way, trying to clear up the area as much as he could. Not that there was all that much to begin with.

The few pieces of debris that had been blown off the reaper and made its way to the Citadel Tower had done a fair bit of damage, but not as much as he had feared. Jane had disappeared under one of the sheets, or so he thought, until she came out from behind one of the buildings to the side. Brock had thrown her there to safety, apparently getting Torrin to use his biotics on her to make it possible.

That meant that, with Tali and Liara both having been unharmed from the reaper debris, Jane’s entire ground team was completely fine, save for some bumps and bruises. Not bad for having helped stop a risk to galactic safety.

Unfortunately, Brock’s people were still looking for him. The only one still missing from this whole venture.

There was a dozen of Brock’s people in armour digging around the pieces of alien starship that had crashed into the Tower, and the rubble from the Citadel that had been smashed in the collision. After he had thrown Jane clear, he hadn’t looked like he’d had time to get fully out of the way himself. Torrin had been able to execute a Biotic Charge, something that was considered nearly impossible by turian biotics except for the most powerful. Brock hadn’t had that advantage.

For all his abilities and brains, Brock was still just a normal person.

Garrus was afraid that Brock had finally been stopped for good. Already his heart hurt thinking about that. He really hoped that Brock was ok. Jane had been their leader on this mission, but Brock had been a massive part of it too. Garrus refused to believe that the human would just roll over and died.

With that in mind, he turned to another area that hadn’t been searched, looking for a clue on the whereabouts of his friend.

“Here!” a voice cried out. “Found him!”

Garrus’ head jerked back, and he began sprinting towards the voice that had called. It was an asari in Shieldstar armour, carrying the same auto shotgun that Brock used, along with an unfamiliar pistol on her hip.

Her voice hadn’t just brought Garrus over; he saw that Jane, Liara, Tali and nearly all of the remaining soldiers from Shieldstar ran to the location the asari was referring to. Even a few Alliance and CSEC personnel that had made their way to the Tower in a hurry had come to look at what the asari was saying.

Apparently the asari noticed too. “Clear space,” she barked at the incoming crowd. “No crowding here. Set a perimeter and call a medic.”

A familiar young turian raised a hand to his ear and started making a call, while the majority of the private soldiers turned and stood around their asari teammate and apparently their boss.

“Medic in a gunship,” Torrin reported. “Thirty seconds out.”

The asari nodded, not even looking up. “He’s alive but not responding. He isn’t losing any blood. I guess it’s being stopped by his armour.”

Garrus felt his mandibles clench involuntarily. Brock was injured again. After the whole ‘nearly dying on the asteroid’ that Brock had done, Garrus had hoped that none of his friends would be seriously wounded again. Though, he was fairly certain that as long as there were no long-term effects, Brock wouldn’t care as long as the job was done.

His human friend was oddly pragmatic about that.

The whine of a gunship engine approaching drew Garrus’ gaze to see one of the gunships that he had seen flying all over the Citadel was on approach. If Executive Pallin saw that, it would be instant fine and censure against them for that. Way too many regs were being broken for his stickler of a boss to do anything else.

The gunship lowered right next to their gathered group and a person carrying a med kit leapt out before the gunship had landed. A second person also jumped out, but made sure to grab a floating stretcher from the gunship.

Garrus couldn’t get close enough to see what was going on, but he felt Jane move up to stand beside him. Liara and Tali were there too, standing on the other side of Jane. Williams and Alenko were around somewhere. He could see Williams looking on, looking oddly concerned. Alenko wasn’t even bothering to pretend that he was concerned. He was moving off looking around the damaged Chamber.

Garrus had no idea where Wrex was right now.

“Right,” the medic said loudly, “he’s stable for now. We can move him to the best hospital on the Citadel immediately. Form up escort detail.”

The guards moved in what almost looked like a military formation as they stepped back from their positions and formed themselves into an escort with an honour guard pattern that looked familiar to Garrus from his days in the turian military. All spectators were moved out of the way so that there was no path to the gunship being blocked.

“Ready,” the medic called to Torrin and a human man who was standing on the other side, ready to help push the stretcher. “Now, lift!”

The stretcher was lifted and the asari tapped a few times on her omnitool, before the stretcher hovered on its own. “Good,” she said, not looking up. “Now move.”

The stretcher bearers moved down the path created by their fellow privateers, carrying their injured boss, Garrus’ friend, away. Though, as they passed by him, Garrus felt his mandibles clench harder as he saw the damage taken by his friend.

Brock’s left leg was gone above the knee.

It looked like something had crushed the armour to the point that it had cut the knee off. The armour on the left thigh was pinched together, with no gap between the front and back pieces of the thigh armour.

The plus side was that being injured in such a way meant that the armour itself would act as compression for the injury, lessening the amount of blood that would be lost. It was something that would work in Brock’s favour. So, while Garrus was worried, he wasn’t as worried as he had been after he had been hurt on that asteroid. In fact, he was a little relieved. You know, all things considered.

“Oh, no!” Liara gasped, her hands covering her mouth, she looked like she wanted to go to the human, but the guards were definitely going to prevent anyone else getting close to their boss.

“It’s actually not as bad as you think,” Garrus said. “The armour will seal of the wound and…”

“Garrus,” Tali cut him off firmly. “Shut up.”

Garrus wisely shut up. The little quarian wasn’t the most threatening if you didn’t know her, but she was devilishly tricky with her technical knowhow. He didn’t need her to show her imagination in punishing him.

A chime sounded from an omnitool and Garrus looked over to see Jane look through hers. She read whatever the message said and sighed.

“Come on,” she said. “I need to meet up with the Council. They have called for a meeting with Udina and us. They also want a debrief of what happened on Ilos and what we did here on the Citadel. The whole ground team is coming.”

Garrus looked back to where Brock was being loaded onto the gunship by the medics. “And Brock’s people?”

“Not our business,” Jane replied, sounding a little sad about it. “We can only hope that he will be fine after all of this. I’ll visit him as soon as we are done and he is in a hospital bed. Let’s go.”

She turned and headed away, moving perpendicular to the staircase towards the Council’s private docking bay on the Tower; the one they had evacuated from. Garrus stayed for a few more seconds, aware that Liara and Tali likewise hadn’t left either. Williams and Alenko were moving to join Jane too. The three aliens watched as the gunship flew off quickly, disappearing below their level to go to the best hospital on the Citadel, most likely.

“Come on,” Garrus said. “The sooner we get done, the sooner we can go see him.”

With that, he turned to follow Jane. It took a few seconds but he heard two different steps fall in behind him. He held back a tiny smile.

It was going to be ok.

…

1 film, 4 reviews

The Matrix

Thessian Suns Publication

By Helia Mis’audis

This vid was splendid! It came with a warning that some people might not be able to mentally process it and those prone to paranoia and conspiracy theories might read more into it than expected, for good reason. The story was well-paced, captivating and complex. The acting was exceptional and convincing. All in all, a must-see vid.

Sur’kesh Leaf Script

By Silarn Moduk

The theorems that could be extrapolated from this vid are most engaging. The vid itself was visually spectacular and the plot points were exceptionally well planned out. The concept of life as nothing more than a simulation for other higher beings or energies is one that has floated around theoretical physics circles for millennia and this is one of those versions brought to life in a most engaging way. I highly recommend it.

Palaven Daily Call

By Marticus Lossus

This vid has it all. An engaging plot, well written script, well-acted characters, a charismatic and terrifying villain and a concept that beggar’s belief, wrapped in a couple of hours of amazing entertainment. The action scenes were the perfect kind of intense and the combat truly believable. A vid beyond its time. I recommend that everyone should view this at least once.

The Krogan Word

By Ognut Grax

Not gonna lie, if you find a way to make me fast enough to dodge bullets and make me strong enough to punch through concrete, I’ll give you one of my quads. With the number of females that would be crawling over each other to get a chance of having my kids, I wouldn’t need it to make me more desirable. Who needs guns when you can just punch people twenty feet?

I’m sure there was more to it than that, but I don’t care. I still want to see the fight scenes again.

…

A/N I know that I had the Matrix as a movie that was watched earlier, but I didn’t do a full species review on it, I don’t think. Regardless, I hope that this makes up for not having had a review for a few chapters.

Not really sure if I pulled off Garrus’ scene well. As a cop, he is used to seeing a whole bunch of damage, and knowing that his friend was going to live, compared to the earlier time when he wasn’t so sure, I think he would be more thoughtful than panicking about it.

Brock just can’t get a break! Anyway, let me know what you think. I enjoy your feedback.