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Beta(s) :
XxX-XxX-XxX
The train the rebels had ridden to get to them was waiting when they stepped into the open space of the district. It was small, made of three simple, sleek looking black and white train cars topped by automated turrets. Engineers swarmed around it, loading crates up onto the rear car while another squad of Guardians and Troopers formed up defensively between them and it. They parted to let them through as the turrets blared to life overhead, shredding the enclosed staircase they'd come down and the Husks already coming out behind them at the same time.
"I need ten minutes!" One of the engineers, a woman from her voice and the curves of her armor, said while she and a handful of Engineers swarmed around him and Zaeed's bloody and limp body. "Ten minutes and we'll have all the supplies that were left in this district!"
"You have five!" Miranda answered, shoving a Phalanx into his hand while Engineers put his wounded arm in a loose, dirty sling and left him there, at the base of the ramp that led up, into the middle compartment. "You want something for the pain?"
"I'm fine, Miranda."
"Are you certain?" The woman asked lowly, "I can have one of my Engineers"
"I'm. Fine." He grunted, paying her a look, "Where do you want me?"
"Right here." She grunted simply, pointing at the bottom of the ramp where he was, "You're on rear guard. I'd put you back in the people-carrier compartment, but…"
"I wouldn't go." He nodded, raising the Phalanx and nodding, "Fine. Five minutes, right?"
"Yeah," she nodded, raising a submachine gun he didn't recognize and rolling her shoulders, blue fire crackling along every lithe inch of her too perfect body, "we'll need the ammunition and medical supplies for the attack on Cronos Station."
"Heavy guns are going to need to cool!" An Engineer inside the 'people-carrier' called out as the Reapers pushed forward, falling in the dozens to the continuous heavy mass accelerator fire, "They're close to overheating!"
"Zaeed has a detonator-"
"I know." Miranda nodded, raising the little cylinder in her free, crackling hand and smiling, "Old bastard always was fond of blowing everything up. So, I had Wil search him, before we pulled out. He didn't try very hard to hide it."
"No point to." Doe shrugged, winced as his arm shifted, and then ignored it. "Either I would need it, or there'd just be Husks."
"No reason to hide it from you," Miranda filled in, "and no point, if you were over-run and dead."
Finally, the heavy guns on top of the train began to whine and, one by one, shut off. Turning, he could see steam coming from each of the little triangles. The metal encasing them had melted and deformed on the back end, where they encased the Heat Sinks. Engineers were already on them, though, cutting the casings away to rip out the ruined 'Sinks and replace them. Each glowed white hot, overridden in an attempt to keep them firing.
And to keep the Reapers at bay.
The heavy cannons had slaughtered dozens, maybe even a hundred, of the deformed Reapers had tried to push through the heavy mass accelerator fire. And they had very clearly regretted it, too. Their hunks littered the ground up nearly to the shield wall, limbs, heads and legs scattered across swathes of ground meat, metal and ichor. As the heavy cannons died, though, the Reapers began to surge forward again.
The pin-point fire from the line of Guardians and supporting Troopers answered, Husks, Marauders and Cannibals jerking as precision rounds cut them down. The Husks behind them pushed on, though, pressing forward and trampling those under them. Troopers behind the shield line wound up and, almost like baseball players, hurled grenades high and into the mass where they exploded, ripping apart more of the creatures.
Raising her hand, Miranda warned, "Barrier! High explosives detonating!"
Zaeed's charges, whatever he had done to them, ripped through the hallway they'd been fighting in and the last room alike with a dull almost muted, whump. Everything inside the hall was ripped apart and, along with the hall and the room themselves, hurled outward in a rain of blood and shrapnel that covered everything for hundreds of feet around, eviscerating anything not made of metal caught in its wake.
Aside from them, protected behind a wide barrier projected twenty feet across and thirty high.
"Damn, cheerleader. Warn a bitch next time?" Another woman in an all-black, smooth skinsuit like Miranda's growled from above and behind him, the tattoos on the shaved sides of her head glowing.
"That wouldn't be any fun." Miranda shrugged, her own hands raised to bolster the Biotic barrier. "Shall we Push it? I see some survivors."
"I'm game." Jack, the Biotic bomb that she was, growled in answer. "You take the lead, Miri. I'm still a bit out of it from checkpoint two."
Miranda didn't answer, simply grunting for effort and setting the Barrier off like a second bomb. This one showered the same area, and the fisftul of mangled Husks trying to rise, in another dose of deadly shrapnel. By the time both were over, enough bodies had been shredded, bled, and impaled that Vlad himself would have raised his eyebrows at the display of power and brutality.
"So," Jack sighed, sagging to a seat on the ramp, "that about wrap the day up for us yet, Miri?"
"Yes, I believe it does." The Cerberus woman answered, amid the cracks of Harriers, cutting down anything trying to leap through the hole left where the hallway had been. "Unless something else pops up that we need to-"
"Aaaaaagh!" They all jumped and durned, along with several rifle bearing Troopers, as Zaeed, head loosely bandaged and arm in a sling, staggered around the corner with his rifle in his one good hand. He eyed them each in a slow turn and then looked at Doe himself and snapped, "Who da fuck said you could blow up my shit?!"
"Uh…"
"Fuck you!" Zaeed snapped as an Engineer cautiously approached him with a needle in her hand. Pointing his rifle at her and staggering by he grunted, "Not you. Gimme some o' that, my head feels like a Banshee smacked it into a all. Oh fuckin' wait, one did!"
"So," Jack started, rolling her shoulders, "he's about as happy as always."
"Three minutes!" Miranda bellowed, "Guardians, on perimeter watch. Troopers, half yourselves. Half of you on watch, half on cargo duty. For the Human Race!"
"For the Human Race!" They bellowed fanatically as Miranda turned, rolling her eyes.
"They're…"
"Racists?" She murmured, nodding as he and Jack followed her up the ramp, into the cramped, seat-filled compartment. "They are, but they're more than willing to fight the Reapers. And, more importantly, not shoot at the aliens helping us.
It was like they'd taken a transport, widened it, and then shoved back to back seating down the spin and put it on the tracks. There was barely enough space in the car for that and, just from looking, he knew knees would be bumping knees across the aisle as it moved. He'd been in worse, though, so he didn't complain.
It was empty of Husks, after all, and that was more than enough at the moment.
"Mhm." She gestured to one and, grateful if anxious, he collapsed into it, letting his head loll back against the seat.
"I should warn you…" He looked to her, sitting across from him, and she smiled, "You're something of a celebrity among the rebels."
"Why?"
"You're a Human soldier from another dimension, where you served in a Human-centric military against a massive cabal of technologically superior aliens." Jack snapped out lazily as she slipped by, having to turn and practically shove her rear into his face to do it, to sit beside him. "Bunch of racist fascists like them? No wonder they like you so fucking much, is it?"
"How do any of them-"
"You briefed some of the higher ups in the Alliance about it, didn't you?" Miranda asked, "When you showed up on Menae."
"Ah." He nodded, "Spies."
"Spies." Miranda nodded, "Cerberus has- Well, had, some of the best intelligence operatives in the galaxy. Next to the STG itself and, in some cases, better than it."
"And now?"
"Now? Well…" Miranda smiled, her too-perfect teeth glinting viciously as she leaned back and crossed her arms almost arrogantly, "Now they work for me, for the most part."
Inside a couple minutes, the people-carrier filled to the brim with armored soldiers. Troopers, Engineers and even Guardians, squeezed into the back with their shields pressed against each other between them, loaded in quietly as the train began to pull away. For a moment, all was silent, until the heavy guns began spitting intermittent fire at, he assumed, Husks dropping down to hound their escape.
Trains, it turned out, were a lot faster than emaciated, mangled people on foot.
"Once we get to the last check-point, be ready to move." Miranda warned him a few minutes later, sitting, for all her rank and posh upbringing, right with the rest of them. He paid her a look and she explained, tersely, "The Reapers are hitting every entry-point except this one."
"Why not?" He grunted, aware of the numerous red eyed gazes watching him, "If the Reapers aren't hitting it yet, then it's because they are waiting to."
"No." She answered simply, "It's because this one isn't on-record or visually discernible from outside the structure itself."
"I see." He blinked, "How is it disguised?"
"I'm afraid I can't say." Miranda sighed and shrugged, grimacing and flicking her eyes around the crowded, hot train car, "Everyone here understands why. Would one of you care to explain it?"
"In case one of us is a Reaper plant." A Trooper beside him said quietly, adjusting his weathered Harrier between his legs uncomfortably, "If she says how it's disguised, or details the proper evac plan, then one of us could leak it."
"We'd fuck 'em up right after we caught the signal," Jack added beside him, "but by then they'd already have the info. So, fun as it would be to brain a racist twat…"
"It wouldn't be effective." He sighed, turning a contemplative stare on his lap and sighing. His shoulder ached, as did his rib and his wounded leg, but he ignored it and nodded, "I understand, Miri- Miranda."
"Once we get there," she finished quietly, "stick with your little technician friend and follow directions. You won't be expected, or wanted, to fight when we exfil."
"I understand." Adding variables, even manpower or assets, to planned defences could be bad, he knew. Looking around he asked, quietly, "Where is Eclaire, anyway? I don't see her, and I didn't see her board."
"Behind you." A Trooper grunted, pointing over his shoulder, "Settled in with the wounded and Engineers, to lend a hand in transit. And make space for the orderly loading, when we pulled out."
'Gods, it's weird to be having a conversation with that helmet…' Regardless of his internal problems he nodded understandingly and asked Miranda, "Anything else?"
"Yes." She nodded, smirking amusedly, "Your ribs aren't broken, are they?"
"No…" He blinked, "Why?"
She didn't deign to answer and after a few minutes they came to a stop at last, in a massively overcrowded and rail station with shipping and storage crates spanning up to the ceiling around them. Around it, the area was mostly featureless grey walls like everywhere else, lit up by hanging white lights a hundred feet up. Around the metal plating, he could see the walls of what seemed to be a natural cave formation.
And it made a lot of sense that he would, building something like Sanctuary in and around a cave network would be far easier than tunneling it out.
As soon as he stepped off the ramp he heard an indistinct shout of excitement and turned in time for a bloodied, muddied, vaguely woman shaped missile to intercept his path. He grunted, staggered back, and fell off the ramp and onto the ground with the woman on top of him, though her hands caught her before she could land on him. Still, he grunted as his sore back hit the floor, and then smiled and sighed.
"Shepard." He murmured, "You're covered in blood."
"Doe." She smiled, rolling off of him and standing, offering him a hand up once she had, "And what? Saying you're afraid of a little dirt and blood?"
"No." He answered, brushing the dirt she'd gotten on him off anyway and smiling, "I hear you got lost on the way-"
"Hey!" A familiar voice called, muscling between them and then when Shepard had backed up enough glaring at him, of all things. "John, you have to be careful of your leg, damn it!"
"You're hurt?!" And then there were two women glaring at him, Shepard and Eclaire both. The former spoke next, asking, "I thought Miri asked if you were hurt! I wouldn't have tackled you if I'd known you were hurt!"
"You asked me to ask if his ribs were hurt." The woman clarified, standing on the ramp above them all with Jack at her side, smiling roguishly as always.
And there was the headache from calling on memories that weren't his again, right on cue…
"I got shot. A little." He explained, giving them both a look and sighing quietly, "But I'm fine. Just a bit- Ah!"
"Fine, are we?" Shepard remarked as she let go of his leg, "I barely squeezed and you hissed like I'd burned you. Miri," she turned to the woman, "where are we sitting to wait for evac?"
"I'll show you the way." She said quietly, turning and heading down the ramp with Jack behind her, hands clasped on the back of her head as she followed.
They were led through winding hallways made of shipping crates converted to rudimentary housing, prefab shelters hanging off of them, and smaller boxes stacked higher than walls being slowly torn down for the work going on around them. Troopers, Guardians, Centurions and even a few of the Biotics and wire wielding Dragoons paid them nods as they passed them by. Alongside them were hundreds of dirty, exhausted looking Humans, loading up crates and packs with food, supplies and clothing. Those that weren't packing things were either resting or toting them away, in the same direction Miranda was leading them.
It was a slum, he decided after a very short while. A camp set up until the evacuation and now being broken down in the interests of it.
Finally, they were let out of the slum and into what could only be described as a rudimentary shuttle port.
It had been set up at the edge of Sanctuary's construction with dozens to hundreds of long, thin walkways spanning out for at least half a mile in either direction. From the curved platform, dozens to hundreds of long, relatively thin walkways protruded like giant fingers. At varying distances along each were shuttles, from little Kodiaks to goliaths he couldn't identify and even, in the distance, and outright cargo ship, albeit a small one, docked and waiting.
"Once everything is loaded up, we're going to make a run for it." Miranda explained to them quietly, "We'll all be riding together, in one of our few stealth vessels, with the first wave. Once we reach the Relay, I have a fleet waiting to Relay in and pick us up."
"The Reapers will notice."
"They will, but they won't care." Shepard smiled, paying him a generous, gentle pat on the back, "Don't you worry, John, Mama's got a plan."
"And that is…?"
"A surprise!" She laughed, turning a look on Eclaire on his other side, "Gonna introduce Mama to your cute little friend, though?"
"I… She's…" he gave the small woman a look and then finally shrugged and sighed, "She's part of my team. We escaped the destruction of our fleet together, and have been trying to keep ourselves intact ever since we landed."
"Y-You can call me Technician Beau." Eclaire offered meekly, offering her hand for the armored woman to shake in spite of the blood and mud. Shepard took it and she added, sheepishly, "I, um, also intend to, um, put in a transfer to the Normandy, Commander, Ma'am."
"Commander Ma'am?" Shepard chuckled, cocking her hip and her head both, "My you must want that transfer. Miranda?"
"I'll have our shuttle prepped." The raven-haired woman nodded, turning and walking away in her too-perfect, annoying way while Jack trailed along behind.
"So," Shepard grinned in that way he just knew he'd come to regret, "why do you want to be on my ship so badly?"
"Because-"
"I-I want to stay with John." He answered anxiously, fidgeting with her thumbs, "My, um, ship got destroyed. And he helped me, s-so I just wanna, you know, be around to… Pay him back. For… Everything."
"Uh-huh." She was grinning beneath her helmet, he knew, as she turned a look on him, "What do you think, Casanova?"
"Commander…" He sighed, ignoring Beau stammering and arguing beside him.
"What?" He offered only a simple, curt shake of his head and she sighed, turning as Miranda called for them and answering more seriously, "Let's get out of here, then. I want to end this war so we can get on with the real one already."
"We do, too."
"Mhm." She nodded, "And you didn't hear it from me, but Hackett sent a message over QEC, before I left."
"And?"
"Once we're done with Cerberus," she answered low enough not to be heard over the people, their work, and the shuttle engines nearby, "we're launching a maneuver to reclaim Batarian space. And Earth. One broad stroke, across Alliance and Batarian space, to cut off what Reaper industry there is and liberate the worlds there."
He smiled, "Finally."
Suddenly, as if prompted by their words, an alarm began to chime overhead. Or rather, dozens of them did, a hodge-podge of seemingly whatever sirens could be found. Under it, barely audible beneath the mixture of screams and chimes, he could hear a distant but very definitely familiar staccato of weapons fire. Small arms, mostly, but alongside a handful of other, heavier weapons booming alongside them.
The civilians panicked, abandoning their work and starting to bustle towards the shuttles. The Cerberus Rebels didn't take kindly to that, forming up shield lines and rifle lines between the steadily panicking civilians and the shuttle pads. He could already see things starting to turn sour as a few souls, more afraid of the battle they could hear than the Cerberus soldiers, pressed against the shields to get by.
Then, Miranda spoke.
"Be calm." Her voice carried throughout the area, the sirens silencing as their broadcast ports turned to carrying her voice, "We knew this was a possibility and planned accordingly! I am ordering that supply shipments be finished early. Cargo shuttles already docked and loading will finish loading and depart, the last of the shuttles being moved in for cargo! Centurions, begin final evacuation protocols!"
"We can do this!" A young woman beside her that she didn't recognize, but who had Jack's hand on her shoulder, called out. "The Reclaimers saved me and my friends from Grissom Academy, right out from under the Reapers and Cerberus! Stay calm, follow directions, and you'll get out alive!"
"And if you don't," Jack added, crackling blue, "I'll talk to you."
Threats or promises, they worked, the civilians calming down as the Guardians altered their formations. Some stayed to direct traffic and, probably, withdraw with some of the civilian loads. But at least half slipped by, jogging off towards the sounds of fighting while the civilians filed by them towards the waiting shuttles.
"C'mon." Shepard grunted, shouldering through civilians with him behind her, his good hand tugging Beau along by her much smaller hand.
They were led to a sleek black and white Kodiak, unblemished by damage or even basic wear. Zaeed was already waiting inside, his chest bare of his armor but absolutely swaddled in bandages. Like half his head and his left arm, which was wrapped tight and practically taped to his chest. He took one look at them boarding and buckling into seats, grunted a hello and a few swears, and said nothing else.
Beau sat next to him, on his right side, and refused to let his hand go even when Shepard smirked and murmured, "Casanova~"
"Plan's simple." Miranda said shortly once their shuttle sealed and moved away to make space for another. "We make a run en masse while last defenders distract the one destroyer currently stomping around. Then, before it or nearby forces can react, the entire facility will self-destruct, and collapse."
"It won't kill the Reaper," Jack added, "but the bastard will at least fall down for a minute."
"What about other Reapers?"
"Distracted." Miranda said simply, frowning and adding, quietly, "Don't ask me how. You don't want to know."
Believing her, and trusting her whether the memories making him do it were his or not, he nodded. Shepard had no issue either and, following both their leads, Zaeed and Eclaire didn't offer any arguments. The latter did squeeze his hand, twenty minutes later, when the shockwave of Sanctuary collapsing slammed into them, though.
Frowning, he squeezed it back and then tugged his hand free, putting an arm around her and murmuring, "You'll be fine. You made it."
He heard her choke on a sob, hiding her face in her hands and leaning into him as best she could in the seat's harness. Everyone else did, too, in the silent Kodia shuttle.
But not a soul commented on it.
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Idea Boi (Guest) :
I would need to do a LOT to justify it, but I'm sure I could Forerunner BS my way to making something like that happen in a separate story if a Supporter wanted it. Or if I did.
Fuck it, I can be fickle.
Also, Hood would totally just stand up in the meeting I envision with, like, the fucking Librarian and calmly tip his hat and go, 'Unacceptable. Give me three days.'
The Twins (Guest) :
I can't guarantee I won't kill him, but I won't kill him in nearly so flippant a manner if I decide to. He dies in this and he'll die like an absolute BAMF, I guarantee you that. Again, no guarantee he will, I have the ending planned but not necessarily to the extent of who dies and lives, but it'll be a grand event if he does.
Predator 1701 :
See earlier responses, lol.
Also, so swift to ship 'em. Por que?
Smokey Panda :
Lol.
Dr Killinger :
Probably not in this story, no, lol.