Crescent Nebula - Tasale System

0900 Hours - Epsilon Shuttle - On Approach to Reaper Wreck Sierra 234

Dictation by 2nd Lieutenant Emily Johnson

"Yo, Johnson! Are we there yet?"

I sighed and called back over my shoulder at the marines crammed into the back of my shuttle. "Oh, shush back there or you can walk home, Ramirez."

I couldn't see it, I could just imagine the boyish grin Carlos Ramirez always seemed to have plastered on his face. "Oh, you wouldn't do that to me, chica. You love me. "

I rolled my eyes, though a smile fought its way onto my face. Damn boyish charm. "Keep wishing, pretty boy. Now sit down and hang on."

Our small formation of shuttles swept in a high orbit over Illium, sweeping around the edge of the planet's atmosphere. I slid my hands over the controls, adjusting the power flow to keep us lined up in formation with the other five shuttle craft.

"This is Alpha. Target in sight. Starting our approach."

I glanced at the sensors, watching as the lead shuttle in our formation, Tobias's shuttle, accelerated and peeled off. I watched as he began his descent towards the massive wreck, and a shiver ran down my spine. I stared at the readout, still unbelieving of the scope of the ship. The Reaper vessel dwarfed it's smaller cousins by a factor of five, even Harbinger or Sovereign, the largest Reaper ships on record.

Until we had found these.

This shape differed from the other Reapers as well. If they were based on the shape of a squid, this thing was a spider. Ten huge limb like structures were curled under the superstructure, stretching down it's length. Small protrusions stuck out from it over the rest of the body, lending it almost a porcupine quality.

"Dio, that thing is bigger than the Citadel," Carlos said as he dropped into the copilot seat.

A little part of my mind knew I should tell him off, but I couldn't pry my eyes away from the scanners, or keep the awe out of my voice. "Yes it is. What do you think it's for?"

He looked at the readings, scanning the information there. For a moment, I didn't think he was going to answer at all, stunned by the sheer mass of the thing. "Ants."

I blinked at that, and turned so I could look at him. "What?"

"Ants. Ants have a queen that they keep protected and gives them orders and makes more of them. This is … a Reaper Queen. Or something."

I looked back at the screen. As blind guesses went, that seemed as valid as anything I could come up with. And not a comfortable thought either. A shiver ran down my spine. We were going to land on a Reaper Queen. Oh joy.

" … We are down. Not reading anything like life support on this thing, but we are getting power readings. I repeat, this thing still has power. All teams, exercise extreme caution."

"Ooooh, boy," I whispered, half to myself. "Alright, you heard them. Starting approach."

"This is Delta. I'm getting a little turbulence here. This things got an active mass effect field."

The words had barely crystallized into meanings when the shuttle rumbled under my hands, bouncing me up off the seat. Behind me, someone swore aloud, but my job had just become more complicated. I punched my transmit key. "This is Epsilon. I just hit turbulence as well, though I wouldn't have said little."

"That's cause you do all your flying in simulations, Emily. Welcome to the big leagues," said Delta's pilot. You could just hear the condescension in his voice.

"If the big leagues mean I have to listen to assholes like you all day, I'll happily stay in the minors," I quipped back, as I began to drop our trajectory away from the rest of the group.

"Epsilon, Delta, cut the chatter for when we are back on the Edinburgh," snapped Tobias, his voice thick with irritation.

"Yes, Sir." I said, then mashed my finger down on my personal mute button before I let fly with anything that would get me court martialed.

Ramirez leaned back in, eyeing the red blinking mute light. "Thank god for that button, eh?"

"Now If I just had a mute button that worked on him," I grumbled, before I turned my focus on the scans of the ship in front of me.

"Tobias or Delta?"

I couldn't keep the disgust out of my voice. "Lt. Christopher Cain, aka, Delta. He thinks he's God's gift to the galaxy. Tobias might be a hardass sometimes, but he's also right. "

The shuttle rattled and hummed as I accelerated, swooping around the side of the colossal thing's hull. On the view screen, the image just showed me kilometers of dark, lifeless metal. The sensors on the other hand told a different story. I tapped a window, expanding the one of the scans. The flickering image widened into a view of a dip in the ships hull, thinner than the rest of the superstructure.

I took in the spot in with a professional eye. Just large enough for the shuttle to set down, and if the scan results were accurate, we could drill through and make our own airlock with no problems.. "Alright, found a spot I think.

Ramirez slapped the back of my seat, but instead of going back with the rest of the marines, he flopped into the empty c-pilot seat "Let's do it, chica."

The Kodiak shuddered as we slowed, and came to a stop above the thin spot. I eased the shuttle down, and the gear hummed and then thumped as the magnetic charge locked us to the hull. I leaned back and let out a low slow breath. At least no one had shot at us yet. That was good, right?

Light and sound screamed into from the cabin behind me and I flinched before I recognized the sound of the plasma torch in use. The marines had started burning their way through the reapers hull. Carlos watched me with evaluating eyes as I reached for my helmet.

"You okay, chica?"

I nodded, and tucked my braid into my helmet, sealing it into place as I avoided his eyes. He doesn't need to see my frayed nerves. "I'm fine. Let's get this done."

Fine. Freaked out, insecure, neurotic, emotional. Yeah, that's about right. I'm getting ready to board an unknown kind of reaper, with a dozen marines for backup. My boyfriend is in the hospital with a dozen broken bones, and doesn't even know I'm out here on this mission. I'm just peachy.

I jammed those thoughts away. Mission first.

"This is Spectre Williams. All teams, be advised. We have detected movement. I repeat, we have movement. Combat teams, stand ready."

Fear spiked through me, sidling up to its old friend paranoia. I looked over at Carlos, and before he pulled his helmet on, I got a glimpse of the fear that had rocketed through me. He knew how to play the crowd better than I could though, so when he spoke, there wasn't a trace of the fear.

"Alright, you damn cupcakes, you heard them. Fire team, lead off." He jammed his helmet into place and took his place standing over the improvised airlock. "Ready? Breach in five."

I closed my eyes and averted my gaze, mentally counting down. The charge thundered, a cascade of sound that washed over me like a distant thunderclap. When I dared to open my eyes, I could just see Carlos jumping down through the airlock.

"Clear. No contacts."

My hand tightened around my kit as I made my way towards the improvised airlock. Of the thirteen marines who had been crammed into my shuttle, only three remained, waiting on me to lead off.

Fuck leading. Let's go home.

I shoved the little voice down again, despite the compelling desire to do exactly that. I shut my eyes, took a step and dropped into the darkness below me.

I thumped into the floor, pain rocketing up my legs and I bit back a cry. Someone pulled me to my feet, and Carlos's voice echoed through my helmet. "You okay L.T.? "

"Yeah, just landed bad. I'm fine." I looked around at the cluster of soldiers and took a cleansing breath. "Alright. You all got briefed before we launched, but let's reiterate. This is the first kind of reaper ship that we have encountered that still has even partially functioning systems after the Crucible fired. We don't know why. We don't know what this thing was for. We are here to get as much data as we can, and get out. Clear?"

The marines shared some uneasy glances but nodded. I tried to keep my voice from quavering. "Alright. Lets find me a console or something and so we can get this party started."

The ship swallowed us, like some massive leviathan. No interior lights, meters and meters of empty corridor. We moved down nearly sixty meters before the comms clicked open.

"This is Alpha. We have movement. I repeat movement in the superstructure. All teams, be advised. Contacts detected."

I froze, and jolt of panic screaming through me. I wanted nothing more than to turn around and go back to my nice safe shuttle and fling myself away from this freakishly terrible place.

Just go home, retire from the fleet. That would be nice.

"Order's, L.T.?"

I flinched at Carlos's voice, trying to hide my own thoughts. Words incongruous to my mind spilled out. "We move up. We need to find a spot to plug in. Then we yank all the data we can find, and retreat back to the airlock."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

The darkness swallowed us. I could feel my blood pressure rising with every step, even with the marines ranging in front and behind protectively. It's one thing to read about Reapers, and their effect on your mind and personality. It's entirely different to feel those creepy spiders crawling around in your head, trying to worm their way into your memories.

The hall finally opened out into a larger room, with something like consoles around the edges. I looked around, forcing the strangeness away. "Alright, lets see what we get. Jenners, move ahead and secure the halls. Carlos, you have the rear."

I barely heard the two of them as they moved, taking their squads with them, leaving me with Michael and his team.

"Order's, ma'am?" the big colonial asked, looking this way and that, obviously uncomfortable even behind the mask of his armor.

"Just make sure nothing surprises us. I'm gona see if any of these are active."

Even as I said it though, I wasn't sure I would be able to tell. The console in front of me had no defining characteristics. The cables were all the same shade. I grabbed a few, and started trying connections. If I got anything, it would be a miracle.

The portable computer flared to life in blaze of green light that nearly made me drop the connection. I stared at it, startled, as I spoke into the comms. "Um … this is Epsilon lead. I have what appears to be a secure data connection to the vessel."

I pulled the portable computer core over and eyed the readouts. Thousands of files were linked to this console, but none of them were related to any other, or so it seemed.

"Epsilon, this is Spectre Williams. What have you got?"

Gulp. That won't make me nervous or anything.

"Not sure yet, ma'am. It's all jumbled up. It's just a guess, but I'd say the Crucible didn't just do physical damage, I think it also damaged the data in the memory cores."

"Alright, get what you … what was that? Epsilon, was that on your end?"

I froze, listening, trying to hear what she had.

Nothing. Is she hearing things? Or am I missing-

Screams echoed over the comm unit, horrible, guttural cries that sent chills through me. I jerked away from the console, even though the voices were right in my ear.

"This is Spectre Williams to all teams, fall back to your ships, I repeat, fall back to -"

The comms cut off. I stared at the console, comprehension not really dawning on me. The comms had cut off. The only thing that could do that was if the Commander had moved into a shielded area, or if the channels were being jammed.

Jamming is bad. Very, very, very bad.

"Chief, get Jenner's team back here now," I said, trying to keep my voice from quavering. Less than ten minutes on this thing, and I was losing my cool. Good bye, command positions. I started pulling the connections from the console one by one, my hands shaking with every motion. Just as I started to pull the last one, the console in front of me flared in a red-orange haze, words burned across the surface.

We shall all burn together.

I stared at the words on the screen for a moment, my heart thumping in my chest, pounding like someone driving in a railway spike on one of those old monorails. Now would be a very good time to leave.

I grabbed the last connector, and pulled.

Pain. Stunning, dazzling pain. The kind of pain only endured by heroes in fairy tales. Someone screamed in horror, in agony. My mind swam as the electricity tore through me, through my hands, rippling over me like a wave.

And then it was gone. The pain vanished, leaving me shaking, quivering on the deck plating. I curled up around my stomach, trying to keep from getting sick in my own suit. Dimly, I drew on the fact the I had been the one screaming. That horrified noise had come from me.

"This is Gunnery Chief Ramirez. The lieutenant has been injured, and I'm taking command of Epsilon. We are falling back to the shuttle." Carlos's voice was cool and calm in my ear, even as someone lifted me. Pain rocketed through me for a moment before vanishing into the numbness again. A part of me resented being picked up like a child, but I could barely feel my own body. "Hang in there chica. Not sure what you set off there, but I've got you now."

Oh. Booby trap. That would make sense, in a demented way.

And at least it was Carlos, not one of the other marines. I leaned into my friend, shivering as just the afterimages of the pain caused me to start shaking again, my teeth chattering. My vision in my helmet swam like the last time I had gotten drinks with Vega, and everything grew darker.

"Multiple contacts, I repeat, multiple contacts. This Lieutenant Castle, if you can hear me, all teams fall back to shuttles. Edinburgh, stand by to commence bombardment."

Tobias's word's echoed inside my skull, and felt like they should have worried me more, but they just seemed garbled, like baby talk. The hall whirled around me, and I wanted to be sick, to just stop moving for a moment. Suddenly, I felt myself being lifted, and someone else taking me under the arms, pulling me up to … somewhere.

Shuttle. Right. I'm on the shuttle.

Whoever had pulled me up, had left me so I was right on the edge of the airlock. I could see Carlos as he clambered up the and hurried into the shuttle. Another marine followed him, all dark blue armor. The second marine had just started to lever himself out of the airlock when a sickening shunk echoed in the shuttle's interior. He gurgled, just inches from me. Through slot in his helmet, I could see the panic in his eyes, the confusion. And then whatever had skewered yanked him back down with an inhuman scream of fury.

"T-take off! Take off!" I tried to scream. It came out though as a rasp, but Carlos must have heard me. He glanced back, eyes wide and mashed the release for the mag-gear.

Air screamed as the shuttle tore away from the airlock, howling out of the hole in the floor. I just managed to hook my foot under one of the seats, wedging it there as the atmosphere tried to pull anything and everyone that wasn't bolted down out the hole. I got a glimpse of blazing blue eyes and claws as whatever thing had been coming up the airlock was sucked out into space with a screech that would give me nightmares.

I shuddered as the last of the cabin's atmosphere vanished, and lay there, exhausted, hurting. Everything seemed to echo as dimly and darkness slid in to replace the thoughts of fear and pain. A single thought stuck in my mind as peacefully sleep washed over me: I am still alive.

Author Note: Hope you guys enjoy this! This was inpsired by the game "Space Hulk" in part, and I might take this and run with this a bit more. Emily was originally an OC in a RP, and demanded her own stage fora little bit. Hope it's not too dreadful, because I doubt that this is the last time you'll see her if you read the rest of my stories.

Addendum: Right, so, general consensus from people is that I should do more on this one. So why not XD