I don't own either AvP or ME

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USM Victory, flagship 3rd fleet, Eden Prime, high orbit.

"All shuttles on board?"

"Yes, Admiral."

"Has everyone been accounted for?"

"Yes, sir. Both our troops and the civilians. Everyone we could reach has been embarked."

"Good." Admiral Singh stared at the datapad, checking the numbers one more time. So many dead, so many missing. And that's in one city on a new colony world. If this were to happen on Shanxi, or, God-forbid, Earth- "

Even now he had trouble understanding it. Humanity had all the advantages. They had the weapons, the tools. They could move faster and kill at a distance. Eradicating the xenomorph infestation should have been a simple exercise in pest-control. Except that it was not. Initially, things had gone well. The marines had landed and established a perimeter around the spaceport. Within that perimeter, no xenomorph lived. Then they expanded outward, going from building to building clearing them out.
But there were no xenomorphs. They were nowhere to be seen. The marines moved on, they checked everywhere, the tension increasing as they expected hostile contact at any turn.
Then the first report came in. A marine patrol, four men strong, had been moving through the main sewer. They had reported movement on their motiontrackers, then contact had been lost. A second patrol went in after them but found nothing.
Additional units entered the sewers. Again, they saw movement. This time they were prepared. When the creatures struck, the marines opened fire. The skirmish lasted for more than an hour and when it was over three more marines were dead, but the creatures had been driven off. More marines converged on the sewer system as it seemed likely that the xenomorphs had built their hive there. It took two more days before the location was found. Meanwhile, a steady stream of civilians, survivors of the geth attack, was moving into the secured area, looking for shelter. Marines and naval personnel set up shelters for them.
The marines attacked the hive, hoping to bring the infestation to an end. The resulting battle raged for two days. In the tight confines of the sewer system, most of humanity's technological advantages were useless. Xenomorphs would jump out of corners to land among the marines, forcing them not to shoot for fear of harming each other. It was suicide for the xenomorph as well, but they did not seem to care about their own survival as long as they could take a few humans with them. Between the creatures' teeth and claws and the splashes of acid blood, losses mounted rapidly. By the time the queen was dead and the hive had been destroyed, over a hundred marines had been killed and the operation had to be labeled a failure. The hive had multiple exits and examination of the footage from the helmet cameras showed individual xenomorphs fleeing the fight, carrying eggs, clearly intending to set up a new hive elsewhere.

Worse was to come. In the spaceport, one of the civilian refugees collapsed, spitting blood. Before the guards could converge, a chestburster fought its way out of the body and ran off. The marines searched for hours but found nothing. Unfortunately, people's nerves were badly affected by the incident, and another civilian was shot by accident as he made the mistake of approaching one of the marines from behind. It was then that Singh had decided to start to evacuate the refugees to the fleet, reducing the population of the shelters to facilitate the ongoing search. But the process had been difficult. x-ray machines and ultra-sounds had to be set up in the shuttle bays of the ships and everyone had to be checked, causing massive delays.
It took two days to find the lone xenomorph in the spaceport and by then it had killed two more civilians and seriously injured one of the marines. Meanwhile, more civilians arrived at the spaceport, but the Marines would no longer let them in. They had to be checked out first, causing more delays and several shooting incidents as refugees tried to sneak in. Three more refugees were found to be infected and had to be killed, causing further trouble with the other civilians.

Then new reports had come in of xenomorph sightings further afield. They were popping up at multiple locations in the region around the city. The large area over which they appeared seemed to indicate that there were multiple hives. The marines launched drones and send out search parties. One of the hives was located in a cave system several kilometers from town. By then Singh had received reinforcements allowing him to launch an offensive in brigade strength. Skirmishes above ground were ended quickly in humanity's favor as armor and airpower obliterated every xenomorph they could find. However, as soon as the first troops reached the caves, the old problem returned. Once again, it came down to an infantry battle at point-blank range. Once again, the marines died to suicide attacks with exchange rates that became increasingly unfavorable as they came closer to the hive.
Then again, as Singh had realized in despair, against an enemy such as this, any exchange rate was unfavorable. A single xenomorph warrior was not much more than a piece of ammunition and, as became increasingly clear, easily replaced. Even a cursory study had told him that a majority of the civilians had gone missing. Many of these had undoubtedly perished during the geth attack, but still, he had to take into account that xenomorph numbers, even for that one hive, were likely to be in the hundreds. Once again, the marines prevailed, albeit at considerable cost. Once again, the queen was killed and the hive destroyed, but once again it was clear that eggs had been removed and taken to unspecified locations.
Meanwhile, at the other end of town, the xenomorphs had grown increasingly bold, they were re-entering the city and testing the defenses. By then the refugee flow had slowed down to a trickle, and patrols reported that both city and countryside seemed to be abandoned. The numbers of known survivors had been added up and compared to the last known figures for Eden Prime's population. The result was extremely disheartening and Singh had to face the reality that by then the total number of xenomorphs was likely in the thousands. Of those refugees that were still found in remote locations, a disturbingly large fraction proved to have been infected, leading analysts to speculate that they had been placed in the path of Marine patrols in the hope that they would be brought to the spaceport before the chestburster hatched.

Once more, marine reconnaissance drones and low-flying gunships tried to determine the approximate locations of the hives, but the difficulty of that task had increased considerably as it had become impossible for patrols on foot to move freely and investigate likely spots. Worse, the xenomorphs themselves were learning. When a hive was finally located in an industrial complex and the marines moved in, the images obtained through recon drones showed an interlinked system of two hives, each with its own queen, and with the eggs spread out in small packages over a dozen different rooms.
No attempt was made to infiltrate the nest. Instead, the ground troops withdrew to a safe distance and a wing of F-302 fighter-bombers blasted the area using ground-penetrating missiles and incendiary bombs while Cheyene gunships circled the area looking for anything that tried to escape the blast. Arguably it was the most successful operation so far. Unfortunately, it had also been the last. Even as the hive system was exterminated, yet another group of xenomorphs suddenly hurled itself against the defenses of the spaceport in a concentrated effort to break through. The perimeter was breached but the Marines managed to contain it and repel the creatures. Still, it was grim news as it became clear that the attack had originated from inside the city, a clear indication that another hive had become active within the urban area. With losses mounting and Marine commanders increasingly reluctant to sacrifice their troops in direct attacks on the hives, another airstrike was contemplated, but Singh had vetoed it. Even if they managed to locate the new hive, and even if they were willing to carpet bomb a large fraction of the city, the reality was that they were losing the war. Multiple hives, each with hundreds of warriors were still operating in the countryside, with the xenomorphs ranging further and further away.
One thing that had been learned from observations was that the old assumptions about the xenomorphs' ability to adapt to new hosts had, if anything, been an understatement. In several hives, remains of cattle and local wildlife had been found that had been used as incubators, meaning that the supply of potential hosts had effectively become infinite and no matter how many airstrikes they launched, the humans would never be sure that they had wiped them all out. That would require harsher measures and there was no point in sacrificing any more lives while they prepared for that. So, Singh had ordered the evacuation. While the marines fought a holding action against increasingly frequent xenomorph attacks along the perimeter, the last of the refugees were taken up to the waiting transport ships. Then the marines fell back toward the landing platforms, boarded their shuttles and departed.

"Signal the fleet to proceed with the mission."

There was a short delay, then the Lieutenant spoke. "Yes, sir."

Singh looked at the datapad one more time. "Let's see how the bastards deal with this."

-0-0-0-

Feros

"So far, so good." Shepard stood up in the turret of the Grizzly and looked around. The view was stunning. They were parked on the skyway, just outside the colony's garage and several hundred meters up in the air. All around her, she could see the massive skyscrapers of what must have been a prothean metropolis. "Well, I guess that protheans didn't suffer from vertigo. Seriously, who builds roads like this?"

"Guess they liked the view," Wrex grunted.

"I suppose." She shook her head and ducked back inside. "Jin, all systems functioning?"

"Yes, ma'am. They're behind on maintenance, but it's not too bad, and these old cars had a lot of redundancy built into them."

That was certainly true. The Grizzly APC and its various derivatives had been built to last, which was a big part of their appeal and one of the reasons that they were still in production, more than half a century after their introduction. They could be found anywhere. Among the Marines, Earth's Home Guard units, planetary militias and, as in this case, private security companies. Exogeni had brought several of them to Feros and they had been gathering dust in the garage ever since. Fortunately, Grizzlies were all pretty much the same in terms of controls, which meant that marines could use them easily. Even more fortunately, they were considerably larger than the MAKO, with a large, relatively spacious hold, which meant even a krogan could ride in them in relative comfort.
Of course, there's no such thing as free lunch, Shepard grimaced. As much of an improvement as the Grizzly was over the MAKO in terms of carrying capacity, there were downsides as well. It didn't thrusters or an eezo core. If they went over the edge, or if the skyway crumbled beneath them, they'd just drop straight down and splat. Neither did it have shields, though Grizzlies made up for that with armor that was significantly thicker than the MAKO's. An aftermarket add-on that included a shield generator had become available in recent years, but Exogeni had clearly not bothered to invest in it. Worst of all, this particular model lacked firepower. All it carried was a heavy machinegun. Useful, yes, but nothing like the massive punch of the MAKO's mass accelerator gun. Who would have thought I'd actually miss that rolling science project? Ah well, if this had been a MAKO, the lack of maintenance would have left it inoperable by now, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

"Well then, let's go!"

The Grizzly lurched forward and moved off.

-0-0-0-

USM Victory, flagship 3rd fleet, Eden Prime, in orbit

There was an almost unnatural silence in the command center, as though everyone was holding their breath, waiting for whatever was about to happen.

"Final check. All personnel accounted for, all systems ready. Admiral?"

Singh closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Proceed."

The order went out. Six destroyers, circling the planet in low orbit and with their weapons already trained downward opened fire as they passed over the colony, sending a hail of mass accelerator slugs toward the planetary surface. Within seconds, a ring of dust from the impacts surrounded the colony. The warships kept firing, shifting their aiming points as they lay down a bombardment in concentric circles, closing in on what had once been the main city of Eden Prime. Soon, the entire area, consisting of hundreds of square kilometers was completely obscured by the dustclouds.

"Initial bombardment complete, sir. Standing by for second phase."

"Proceed with second phase. Authorization given for nuclear deployment in-atmosphere by my order. Confirmation code..." Singh rattled of the string of numbers.

"Standing by for confirmation, sir."

There was a moment's pause, then: "Response from Rear-Admiral Lansing aboard USM Medina-Sidonia. Nuclear release in-atmosphere confirmed."

"Then proceed."

Within minutes, the Medina-Sidonia, flagship of Singh's screening elements, passed over the dust-covered landscape and released a single missile, which sped down to the surface. Just before it reached the atmosphere, the nose-cone opened and split up into multiple warheads that made independent entry into the atmosphere. They made long, clearly visible trails as they fell down until they disappeared into the dust clouds.
For a few moments, nothing seemed to happen, then, almost as once, ten fireballs appeared in the dust, spread out over the entire bombardment zone.

"Detonation confirmed. Second stage complete. Mission successful."

Light travels fast, but even so, it took several minutes before the light from these explosions reached the two Hierarchy frigates that had been observing the human operations from a discrete distance. The humans had known they were there, of course, had even sent a few fighter patrols after them during the early days. But more recently, they had been happy to ignore the turians, just as the turians had been happy to be ignored.

For several more minutes, nothing seemed to happen, then one of the frigates pivoted on its axis and accelerated away from the star system.

-0-0-0-

Feros

"Geth dead ahead." Shepard snorted as she said it. No kidding! It's not like they could be anywhere else on this bloody road. She looked through her gun sight as the Grizzly rolled forward. So far there seemed to be only standard infantry units, which would not be much of a threat. But if there were any rocket troops hidden among them, they'd be in trouble. Without a kinetic barrier, even a single hit could potentially cripple or even destroy the vehicle. Better safe than sorry. She pushed down on the firing controls and unleashed a storm of bullets that swept over the geth. One down, two, three, rocket! Shepard re-aimed the gun as soon as she saw the geth platform lift the launcher. A last burst and it tumbled down. That was too close.

"Wrex, come with me. If there's any more of those rocket troops out there, we need to clear them out before we drive any further."

They disembarked and advanced slowly down the skyway.

"Commander?" Jin's" voice came over the comm-link.

"Yes?"

"I'm picking up some chatter on the radio. Someone's transmitting nearby."

"Really? Can you patch me in?"

"Sure."

There was a moment of silence then...

"-not going further down. *crackle* -fools' errant. I don't *crackle* says. Wait, there's someone out-"

"Sorry, ma'am. The transmission stopped."

"Pity. But at least there are some humans out there. Some here on the skyway and whoever they were talking too. I guess Fai Dan was a bit hasty dismissing that science team as dead and gone." Shepard looked around. To get backscatter from a radio through the general jamming that the geth were doing all over the area they'd have to be pretty close by and there just weren't many places where they could be.

"Over there," Wrex nodded with his head to a hatch at the side of the road. "I've seen these prothean skyways before. There's usually a tunnel off to the side where they run power conduits. Kind cramped for me, but humans would have no problem. I figure that's where they're hiding out."

"Let's check it out."

As they approached the hatch, they heard the sound of gunfire.

"I guess the geth found them." Shepard shook her head. "Here we go."

They dropped down through the hatch. The tunnel, like the skyway itself, was not in great shape, with pieces of the ceiling lying around on the ground and at least half the lights out. Still, there was enough light to see the two geth platforms ahead of them. A blast from Wrex's shotgun took out the first, even as it turned around to face them. The second backed away, taking cover.

"Grenade?" Wrex asked.

"No. I'd rather not set off any explosions on the skyway. This place is pretty banged up already. We'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way."

She advanced down the narrow tunnel, scanning for movement until she came to a support column. "I go left, you go right?"

"Sure."

They split up, advancing on the last place they'd seen the geth platform. Shepard's motion tracker showed nothing, not that she's really expected it to. Geth weren't organic. They only moved when they had reason to and when they sat still, they were completely immobile.

As Shepard came to the next support column, she spotted something in the darkness further down the tunnel. The geth had chosen a good hiding spot, in a place where multiple overhead lights had failed, but the long-wavelength infrared detector on her helmet could pick up the heat loss of its power core, even through the crate that it was crouched behind. Shepard smirked. Even robots seemed to be watching too many holovids. Or perhaps they just didn't realize that when it came to shooting through multiple layers, a chemically powered rifle had a big advantage. The hypervelocity, ultralight rounds of a mass effect weapon tended to shatter on impact, releasing all their energy on to the first thing they encountered. Often enough that sufficed to break though the armor, bit only as long s the armor consisted of one layer. An old-fashioned bullet that stayed in one piece just punched through everything it met until it ran out of momentum. She lifted her rile, and fired, straight into the crate.
As expected, the armor-piercing round just punched straight through both sides of the crate and into he geth behind it. The platform rose, bringing its own weapon to bear, but got caught in the head by a shotgun blast from Wreax that ripped it wide open.

"Problem solved."

"Yeah, But you might want to take a look at this Shepard. Looks like those humans didn't make it."

Shepard walked over to where the krogan stood. The bodies of two humans, both riddled with gunshot wounds were lying on the ground. Clearly, first aid was not going to help them.

"What the hell were they doing out here? They said something about a fools' errant, but.-"

"Here." Wrex kicked against a box that was lying on the ground between the two bodies. "They must have been moving this, whatever it was. Must have been worth a lot, if they risked coming out here."

"Well, let's look."

Shepard knelt down and opened the lid. "Huh. Well, well." She switched on her communicator. "Jin, move the Grizzly up a bit. Then send T'Soni down. I think she ought to take a look at this."

-0-0-0-

HNV Stalwart Defense

"They did it. They actually did it."

"Yes, sir. The orbital bombardment took over an hour, and they used spinal mass accelerators, not just the broadsides. Then the nuclear weapons went down. A total of ten on a single missile."

General Corinthus nodded. "Just like what we heard about from Torfan, then."

"Not quite, sir. This time there was no trace of Cobalt in the explosion. These were enhanced radiation weapons instead. A massive initial radiation pulse to go along with the fireball, but very little in the way of radioactive isotopes. The environmental damage should be... limited"

"So good to know that the humans have a special nuclear weapon for each and every occasion. And all because of this 'biological agent' they claim the geth deployed."

He stood up, unable to sit still. "What is going on? What has the humans so scared that they'll sterilize their own colony, violate their own laws against the use of nuclear weapons on garden worlds, as well as the Council's Edict? They talked about some sort of biological threat, but all we could find was a story about some kind of animal, not a disease. Hardly a reason to wipe out a colony."

Corinthus sighed. "We'll have to send word to General Victus. Compile a report. All the raw data that our frigates collected as well as our assessment. We'll keep an eye on things, but as it is, I cannot predict the next human action. As it is, they may actually abandon Eden Prime completely and withdraw to Shanxi. If so, I would recommend that we mirror their stance and fall back on Relay 288. That should diffuse the situation and if the human carriers withdraw from the Utopia system, our presence here will no longer be needed."

His aid looked up. "With all due respect, Sir, but do you think that likely?"

"Likely, no, but neither did I think it was likely that they would drop thermonuclear weapons on their own planet, so I clearly don't excel at predicting human behavior. Right now, I'm trying to look for any positive news. Spirits know we can all us some."

-0-0-0-

Feros

"Commander?" The asari looked around in some confusion. "You said I needed to look at something."

"Yes. This is more your field than mine, but unless I'm sadly mistaken, we've got ourselves a box full of prothean knick-knacks."

"knick-?

"Stuff. Prothean stuff." Shepard kicked against the open box they had found.

Liara knelt down, careful not to look too much at the two dead humans. "Yes. It's prothean. Household items, mostly." She picked a few items up. "Not really interesting or valuable, at least not in academic terms. Musea all over the galaxy have collections like this." She looked up. "I don't understand. What were they doing here?"

"Other than getting their dumb asses killed? Smuggling. Cannot say I'm surprised. A small colony out in the ass-end of nowhere with tons of prothean stuff lying around. It may not be very interesting from a scientific point of view, but there is certainly a market for that stuff among collectors. Not enough to warrant an expedition, but if you're here anyway..." Shepard shrugged. "It's illegal, of course, to trade in Prothean artifacts without government oversight, but it's not like anybody really cares all that much about this kind of small stuff. As long as they kept it discreet and didn't force the Exogeni administrators to take action, you can bet that everybody was quite happy to look the other way. All these people had to do was pick up all the little odds and ends that they could find, stack them somewhere and sell them off to whatever shady trader that shows up here. Because they couldn't take it home. Not in large quantities. The customs people would confiscate it the moment they landed on a human core world. That explains what that salarian trader was doing here. I was wondering why he bothered, but now it makes sense. Between legitimate trade and a steady supply of prothean artifacts, I'm sure he made a tidy profit"

"Nice little set-up," Wrex grumbled. "They could pick it up for free, 'cause they were running around this place anyway, so it was all pure profit." He grinned. "Until the geth showed up."

"Yeah. So, I figure the science team and their security got caught in that building up ahead, but they haven't been wiped out and they're waiting for some kind of relieve effort. Smart move would be to cut your losses, but these morons here got greedy and still wanted to collect their stash. Perhaps they figured that if Exogeni sent help and extracted them, they could bring this stuff along and make it disappear in the general chaos. Seems it didn't work out too well." Shepard looked at the crate. "We might as well take it with us. I doubt it's worth much other than as souvenirs, but we've got plenty of room in the Grizzly and there's no point in leaving it here. Other than that, let's collect the name-tags from the bodies. Because I'm not dragging a bunch of corpses around with me. And then I guess we'll just continue down the skyway. Whoever they were talking to is still out there. Maybe we'll finally get some real answers."

-0-0-0-

Near Relay 288

"No. Absolutely not!"

"But-"

"Was I unclear?" Adrien Victus looked around the room. None spoke.

"Good. If the humans want to bombard their own planet, let them. If anything, it saves us the trouble. As for their violation of the 'no nukes on garden worlds' rule, that is for the Council to deal with. Let them file a diplomatic protest, or throw the humans off the Citadel if they want to take it that far. It has nothing to do with us.
Now, as to this ridiculous proposal to join forces with General Corinthus, listen to me closely; and in future, try to think before you speak. There is a human officer out there, in command of a carrier group, who has just shown that he is willing to drop nuclear weapons on one of his own planets. That means he either received orders to do so or is at least convinced that his superiors will agree with his course of action. And with the United Systems Military in that mood, you want to concentrate our forces on their doorstep? Present them with a threat, strong enough to destroy any of the fleets they have in this region of space? Are you that eager to start a war?"

Again, no one spoke.

"Very well. General Corinthus has not asked for our assistance. If he does, and only then, will I consider redeploying. I don't know what has the humans so spooked. But whatever it is, right now their focus is not on us and we will make sure we keep it that way until they've calmed down."

Victus looked down at the conference table, taking a moment to collect himself.

"Send a message to the Citadel, copy to Hierarchy command. Give them our data and recommend that they push as many reinforcements as they can to a position one relay jump away from us. General Corinthus is right: The humans may stand down from their current posture, in which case we may all be able to go home, but we cannot take any chances."

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A/N. When bombarding alien worlds use dirty nukes, when bombarding your own, use clean ones (or as clean as a nuke can be). It reminds me a bit of the early repeater guns that were designed to fire square bullets at heathens and round bullets at Christians. There are some unfortunate implications here but under the circumstances on Eden Prime, it is a sensible policy.

Human destroyer class ships are still being named after famous admirals, though this choice may not be the most obvious. Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y de Zúñiga-Sotomayor, 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia, was greatly maligned by popular accounts, in particular, British propaganda of the time. But, considering the mess he had to work with, he actually seemed to have been quite capable as a commander and his administrative and logistical abilities were quite remarkable, so, hey, why not?

For the human-xenomorph 'war', I'm leaning on the Earth-hive books by Perry. He describes this situation: Humans win all the battles but lose the war. The only solution is large scale nuclear explosions, which, of course, means that in a way you're still losing because now you're blowing up your own planets.