Gentlemen.

Chapter seven, ready for reading. Not much to say quite yet, so let's just get right to it.

June 26, 2181

Camala

Hegemony territory

The unfortunate man was hanging upside-down, dangling from a support beam by chains wrapped around his legs. He was the chief surgeon of the largest medicae on Camala, and therefore the closest thing Balak had to a new lead in his investigation.

Balak gave him a few seconds to come to terms with his situation. It always took a bit of time. Being tranquilized, abducted, and hung upside down in a dilapidated warehouse was hardly a common experience. Balak could practically see each new observation and conclusion as he came to it play across the chief surgeon's face. When he finally turned his head to face his captor and winced at the movement, Balak spoke.

"The pain you're feeling is from an outdated control implant at the base of your skull. You know the sort. Gangers like to use them instead of legally buying slaves, so the implantation process is a bit crude," Balak gestured to the small table at his side, and the array of tools and containers on it, "But as a gesture of good faith, I actually used anti-bact gel and washed my hands."

"I…what?" the surgeon asked blearily. Balak ignored him.

"Unfortunately, the older, cheaper models rarely have the sort of safety measures official implants do," he glanced at his omni-tool, though only for show, "I'm on a tight schedule, so answer my question quickly and honestly, or I'll trigger your implant and leave. In a few hours, you'll be found with your nervous system burnt out in a bad part of the city, the victim of a cheap control implant that malfunctioned. Probably just gangers who thought collaring a surgeon of your status would net them free medical care for any less savory injuries they needed treated."

"Hm. This is surprising," he continued, glancing at his omni-tool, "You're quite the model citizen. I don't see anything illegal here. At least nothing out of the ordinary. I'd expect you to be abusing your status a bit more," he spread his arms and shrugged, "So, to reward your service to the state, I'll let you ask me three questions before I ask you mine."

There was a moment of silence, and Balak took a look at the surgeon's situation. The agent sighed, then pulled out his sidearm and fired a single shot.

The chain broke, dropping the surgeon none-too-gently to the concrete floor. Balak waited again, this time for some of the blood to drain from the surgeon's head. After a few seconds of groaning and pushing himself into an upright position, he asked,

"Are…are you with Special Interventions?"

"Yes."

"Then all of this…" he gestured vaguely at the chains and tools, "…is state-sanctioned?"

"I am granted quite a degree of autonomy to carry out my duties. If I were being dramatic, I'd call it a license to kill."

"I was asking more about this specific instance."

"Ah," Balak shrugged, "In that case, no. History will either exonerate me, if it ever finds out about this."

"Then why me? If I'm not involved with anything illegal, how can I-"

"You're using your third question to ask my first," Balak nodded, "You're smart. Or at least you can still see what's important past all the…distractions." As if on cue, the surgeon ran a hand over the implant site behind his head. It itched to high heaven, but he avoided scratching it. Old, low-tech implants like what he assumed was stuck to the base of his skull were nicknamed 'agonizers' for a reason.

"I could break into the files on your office terminal, but to do that, I'd need to do a few things I'd rather not need to do. Sneaking in would take time. Flexing my rank would draw the kind of attention I wouldn't like to draw. And remotely picking the information I want would either cost me tech I can't readily replace, or run the risk of being detected. I could kill my way to your office, but there are some lines I wouldn't like to cross."

"So, the current plan: you give me the data I want, and we both get out of this quietly and unscathed. In your case, relatively unscathed. I'm sure you can either get that collar off discreetly if you wanted to."

"What do you need?"

"A location," Balak called up several shipment codes on his omni-tool, "You received multiple shipments of dead and wounded soldiers from several frontline worlds. They arrived here and they didn't stay. But their destination was scrubbed from official records and I have…" his teeth ground slightly, "…insufficient access to find out where they went."

"Do you have the shipment tags?"

Balak nodded, gesturing with his omni-tool. The chief surgeon's omni-tool lit up in reply.

It wasn't that he'd forgotten the shipments in question, or even that he'd paid much mind to them at the time they'd passed under his jurisdiction. Being of high-rank in any area of the Hegemony meant occasionally looking the other way when something beyond your pay grade came along. It wasn't a matter of being legal or illegal: if it was beyond your caste, you counted yourself lucky to simply helped it continue. You didn't ask why, and you certainly didn't ask for details.

"Adek. These were bound for Adek."

"You're sure of that?"

"Positive. I had to authorize their destination, but I couldn't see why."

"And that's not normal?"

"For me? Absolutely. We get plenty of bodies passing through here, usually more dead than alive. They're just tagged as bound for some R&D facility in the core. The dead ones are for testing new weapons, or for autopsies if they died to some kind of new enemy tech. The ones you want were alive, badly damaged, and all of them on ice. Special orders said I had to scrub the destination personally."

"And you know they were bound for Adek?"

"See for yourself. Saved myself a copy in case someone like you came calling," the surgeon finished inputting his personal codes, then sent the unmodified shipment documents back to Balak. The SIU agent confirmed the contents, then stored a copy aboard his omni-tool and erased the original.

"The Hegemony thanks you for your service," Balak nodded. Then he turned his back to the surgeon and began making arrangements for the next leg of his journey as he walked.

The chief surgeon watched him leave. He half expected a bullet to the head or an offhanded activation of his control implant. Instead, he received nothing. He didn't know why the SIU agent wanted the information, or what the information even represented.

In later months, he could make a few reasonable guesses. But for now, he was more than content to arrange for the removal of the control implant and forget about everything that had just transpired. The former was easy, given his position and resources. The latter was easy because 'willful ignorance' made Hegemony life much more bearable the higher you were on the social ladder.

Adek: Death's Garden. The nickname was remarkably accurate, for all its apparent melodrama. It was a garden world, certainly, but it was also densely humid and overgrown. Worse was the plethora of bacteria and viruses that were highly lethal to batarian physiology. For such a potentially prosperous planet, it had apparently peaked at a population of six million. Most of the labor was provided by mechs.

Apparently, Adek was his next stop. It was clearly not going to be viable to continue in the commercial freighter he'd been riding along with thus far, so Balak's first priority was finding a new ship, one that he could actually control the direction of.

From the capitol's shipyard, Balak scrolled through the current roster of docked vessels. It took seconds to find a ship suitable for his purposes, minutes to fabricate the necessary digital 'ticket' to authorize its departure, and a few seconds more for his one-shot STG codebreaker to open the ship and rewrite the security protocols to accomodate his biometrics and his omni-tool.

It was a nice ship, Balak reflected. As with most things genuinely volus-designed instead of merely volus-fabricated, it was expensive, but it had two things that made it perfect for Balak's purposes. It was capable of FTL travel, and almost just as importantly, it could be operated by a single person.

No doubt some high-ranking officer or government official would be rather upset to find his expensive Elkoss Combine spacecraft missing, but Balak had just tortured, killed, and blackmailed his way across three planets. If all of this went south and Balak actually found himself brought up on formal charges (as unlikely as it would be), he doubted grand larceny would even be remembered among his list of offenses.

He'd have a few days of transit before he'd be within range of Adek to get any further idea of the situation there. Plenty of time to reflect and, more importantly, prepare.

The autopilot took over, and he decided to start thinking.

The trail:

Innocuous files and locations, locked away as if they were state secrets.

A fleet commander, killed in the narrow window of time between Balak's initial contact and when the agent had actually arrived to pump him for information.

A frigate load of dead pirates. Probably unrelated. They were either unlucky enough to waylay the same ship carrying Balak, or a wetwork group of such skill and experience that they perfectly replicated the mannerisms of a highly unlucky band of pirates even as they were systematically wiped out by their target.

Again, Balak thought as he leaned back, remembering the clash fondly, Probably unrelated.

Two false leads on two different planets. Plenty of property damage and over a dozen bodies, sure, but none of them had actually relevant.

A high-caste civilian directing a set of invisible shipments, all while under the full belief that he was merely facilitating a state-sanctioned operation, more than willing to surrender the information he had to an SIU agent upon identification and (relatively) little duress.

A deathworld with a population composed largely of slaves and mechs, overseen by a small staff of highly skilled specialists. The last location provided by his trail of clues thus far.

In Balak's favor, he had a heavily modified shotgun, a metaphorical bag of less direct (but no less deadly) tricks, the authority of an SIU agent, and what could loosely be called 'probable cause.' For what crime, exactly?

That was It. Balak still wasn't sure what 'It' was, but Adek seemed most likely to either explain what It was, or kill him. Possibly both.

Then again, he was just one man in an unarmed ship. As long as the planet saw him as thus and nothing more, maybe he'd get a chance to find out what It was before It tried to kill him.

June 28, 2181

Ra'Ghul

Batarian Territory (contested)

"How are they performing?"

"So far, so good, commander," Lieutenant Murphy replied, walking Commander Mitchell through the confines of the Archon Command Crawler for the second time. Four of the eight pilots were in their seats, hooked up to gear trailing wires and cables that Mitchell couldn't even begin to discern the exact roles of. The other four were munching on ration bars, watching video feeds of their comrades' maneuvers and talking quietly over their headsets. Each made their own informal gesture of respect for Mitchell's authority as he walked in. They were used to the battlefield rule of making no such indicators of rank for fear of enemy snipers, but inside the confines of the Archon, such measures were relaxed.

"Control's gotten a whole lot more seamless," Murphy continued, gesturing to several screens. The REV10 'Hounds' were in motion some distance from the crawler, but their guns were offline and their enemies simulated. Digitized Hegemony tanks and infantry fought against the four Hounds, and on screen, the Hounds fired back, the feedback simulated for the pilots.

Murphy was right. When he'd first seen the Hounds in motion, they'd been far more mechanical than he'd have liked. Walker pilots were usually much more fluid in their movements, in no small part because they were physically inside their mechs and partially mimicking the motions via control harnesses.

But now, the Hounds moved with something actually resembling grace, even if it was a distinctly inhuman kind. Unlike the comparably sized and roughly humanoid Wolverines, the Hound had reverse-jointed legs like downsized Titans, and a 'torso' that was far too small for any human pilot to comfortably sit. The arms were short and parallel to the flat body, clearly only intended to mount the two weapon systems rather than simulate actual limbs.

"The main obstacle was getting used to the controls," Murphy scratched the back of his neck, "Never seen anything quite like it before. It doesn't use neurohelmets 'cause, well, y'know." Mitchell nodded for him to go on. The neurohelmet had undergone severe scrutiny following pilots across GDI's military structure succumbing to disproportionately high rates of suicide, mental breakdowns, and varying degenerative mental disorders. Now, after they had been all but phased out, most modern solo pilots of more advanced crafts had to endure months of mental conditioning simply to stand a chance of certification, but months of migraines was preferable to the alternative.

"Most of it's in the hands and legs, but since they don't match up like they do on REV12s, it's…it's a bit tough to describe, sir," Murphy shrugged apologetically, "But they checked out in combat during last week's action, and they've only gotten better in simcom."

"I don't mind if they're different, lieutenant," Mitchell smiled as a simulated tank detonated from two direct ion impacts immediately before the rotary autocannon turned a swath of infantry into digital mist, "Just as long as they work."

"Yessir."

"What if they lose their signal?" Mitchell asked.

"They default to the remote command of highest rank within line-of-sight, or to your command rig," Murphy replied, "They're nothing to write home about when they're running autonomously, but you can direct them like they're drones or automechs. They can pick up targets without you needing to do it, but they're just fancy security mechs without direct control."

"Give me some details on those differences, lieutenant."

"They're bigger, tougher, and better armed than any security bot on the market, but they can't take initiative when it comes to dodging heavy fire or prioritizing infantry targets. They're big targets, but they're easier to kill with anti-tank weapons than a Predator, so we gotta rely on movement."

"Any way we can ensure the signal stays live?"

"Yeah," Murphy snorted, "Move the crawler closer." Mitchell didn't look amused, so Murphy continued.

"Nothing as of right now, or the immediate future. Sorry, commander."

"This is the first world they've seen action. By the time we see anything good enough to stand a chance of jamming them, we'll have something to fix it," Murphy smirked, "You know Hege tech, sir. Always kind enough to keep a step behind us."

The Commando called Liddell needed to sleep.

Mere rest couldn't cut it anymore, nor could the 'wakefulness promoters' that were modern stimpacks. She'd been putting it off for days, but she could no longer. War was coming. Not the periodic raids and pushes of the past few weeks. Real war. An all-out attack against a heavily fortified position.

She welcomed it, but she feared what she needed to do to prepare.

Her medication was provided free of charge by the Initiative, and it had no noticeable effect on her performance in the field. All it did was let her sleep. That was more important for her than most others, military or otherwise. She had nearly killed three people before the medication was prescribed.

The first had been her foster mother. Liddell was found by first responders collapsed in a fetal position, crying and begging for something unseen to leave her alone.

The next was a drill instructor. Liddell responded with cold detachment. The more perceptive of nearby troopers had realized that Liddell wasn't so much detached as confused. She genuinely didn't seem sure what exactly she'd done wrong.

The third was one of her fellow trainees in the Commando program. She'd visited her fellow Commando-aspirant in the on-site medical facility for weeks. It didn't end the quiet notion somewhere in her mind that she should feel remorse for the eight bones she'd broken purely on instinct.

And now, on the eve of the biggest offensive in weeks, Liddell couldn't find the pills that kept her sane. Even the backup supply she'd gradually built during her more stable periods was gone. Maybe...maybe she'd planned for this. Maybe she'd hidden more, on top of her conscious reserve.

She was on the verge of cutting open her mattress when a motion caught her-

-no, 'motion' was the wrong word. It was a lack of motion, but a lack of motion that was being made by something that had not been in her peripheral vision a few seconds ago suddenly Being There. Surprises like that didn't happen to Commandos. They especially didn't happen to Liddell.

The Commando called Hong was leaning against-

-nothing. He was leaning against nothing. He simply extruded the sensation of Leaning because it was how he stood when he wanted to look casual and relaxed.

Hong confused Liddell on too many levels for her to be comfortable. He smiled too easily and too often. He talked too much, but by Liddell's standards, that wasn't saying much. And he was too handsome. He didn't have a Commando's face. In her mind, a veteran Commando should have been a mass of scar tissue and ugly GDI cybernetics.

With his damnable smile, Hong announced formally himself.

"So I guess these are awfully important," Hong turned the pill bottle over in his hand, "Shame I couldn't just figure it out from the name, but I didn't have much to work from." He nodded to the blank label wrapped around the container.

Liddell said nothing. Hong took it as a signal to continue.

"They're probably legal. You don't strike me as an addict. But that's not what I'm worried about. I've never seen you take them right before a drop, and you look more desperate than I've ever seen you before."

Liddell still said nothing.

"What would happen if I took one of these right now?"

Liddell finally mustered her disused voice, used to speaking in a perpetual whisper during missions.

"You would not dream."

Hong took a long moment to actually examine Liddell.

The second half of Easy's Commando attachment watched the first half with unconcealed amusement. Atkins and Cadigan were like that. They'd watch the galaxy burn if they weren't expected to do anything about it, and if it provided them a few minutes of entertaining banter.

"He's got a deathwish, that one," Atkins smirked, "Or he's hiding a hell of an ace."

"Nah. He doesn't need one," Cadigan raised his index finger, "She's not gonna do anything. Doesn't need to."

"You don't say," Atkins glanced at his friend, "What makes you think so?"

"Depends. What do you guess?" Cadigan shrugged.

"Depends. What do you bet?"

"A day's wages?"

"What are you, hourly?"

"Yearly pay over three sixty five. A day's wages," Cadigan gestured to Atkins and closed his eyes, "You can have first go."

Atkins shrugged. It was as good as a handshake between the two.

"She's tall for a girl," Atkins began their contest of deduction, "Not spacer-tall, though. Built like she grew up with real gravity, so born and raised planetside. Your turn."

"Hair looks natural blonde. Could be pretty if she tried to be," Cadigan took over, "Cuts her hair real short, and regularly. Carries herself like a Marine brat, but never seen her call home. No family heirlooms of a KIA parent, either. Your turn."

"Broke her nose at least a couple times," Atkins observed, "Minor scarring on the knuckles, but no really bad scars anywhere else."

"How the hell can you know that?" Cadigan interrupted, furrowing his brow.

"Showers."

"And she didn't notice you inspecting her for scars?"

"She didn't seem to care," Atkins shrugged, "May I finish?"

"Go ahead."

"She's had a few broken noses and plenty of brawling scars, but no knife wounds or serious ribwork. She grew up fighting someplace where there isn't much real fighting."

"Hmm…shit," Cadigan muttered. Atkins smiled.

"Got anything?"

"No, I'm out," Cadigan raised both palms in defeat, "You got me."

"Damn right I did," Atkins glanced back at the duo just in time to see Hong say something and toss an unlabeled pill bottle to Liddell. If he and Cadigan hadn't seen her with it previously (or seen her searching for it a minute before), it would've looked like some kind of amateur narcotics deal. Cadigan made a low, thoughtful sound. Atkins turned back to him.

"Double or nothing?" Cadigan raised his eyebrows. Atkins gestured for him to continue.

"She only takes those before she sleeps. And she doesn't sleep much."

"Meaning…?"

"Meaning something," Cadigan shrugged, "She usually leans on wake-ups when she hasn't slept…"

"…so she only needs them when she sleeps, but not to sleep," Atkins finished, not disappointed that he was out of observations himself. They always broke even during their bets, one way or another.

With that matter settled, they swept their gaze over the rest of those members of Easy Company who were within eyeshot.

"Alright then."

With an easy smile Liddell refused to think was natural, Hong tossed the pill bottle with a soft underhand. Liddell caught it. She did not return the smile. Hong wondered when she had last smiled.

He was satisfied with her answer. And it provided a better option than letting her walk into their upcoming mission sleep-deprived and strung out on stimpacks. She'd be functional. Not healthy, though. Hong was surprised she hadn't already eaten the barrel of a gun before the war started. A few more years and that was likely her end, but until then, she was functional. And useful. Hong couldn't deny that she was a good soldier. She was one of the best he'd ever met. Her problem was that she'd make a terrible civilian if the Initiative ever ran out of wars for her to fight.

Truthfully, Hong was in the same boat as her, but he knew how to appear functional, and he was content with the knowledge that there would never be real peace. He was a Commando, same as Liddell, same as Atkins and Cadigan. There was always a need for soldiers like them.

Trooper Melissa Palmer was alone in a corner of the barracks. Most of the other members of Easy were outside, in the mess, or on the other side of the barracks. There wasn't anyone within earshot, at least. It's not that she was ashamed of what she was doing. Far from it. It was simply that she liked privacy for this sort of thing.

She felt herself pass beneath the twin gaze of Easy's most sociable Commandos, but she ignored them. It passed as quickly as it came, and it wasn't as if she could stop them from watching if she wanted to. Atkins and Cadigan didn't strike her as the sort to eavesdrop on just any old conversation.

She opened up her long-distance comms and keyed in a familiar citizen's identification. A few seconds later, a face appeared on the holoscreen over her omni-tool.

"Hello?"

"Mom? Can you hear me?"

"Ah. Sorry, Mel," Sergeant Laura Palmer (retired) laughed, shaking her head, "Frontline encryptions always mess with caller ID. How are things?"

"Not too bad. Word from Top McCourt is that we're going to be moving soon. Finally gonna take the city."

"So that's why you're dressed for a night on the town."

Melissa was already wearing her Zone armor, minus the helmet. Melissa had tried to narrow the view of her camera so that it didn't show, but her mother was a veteran. Laura had once said that the day she couldn't tell if her daughter was calling from inside her armor would be the same day she decided her eyes were weak enough to warrant turning in her driver's license.

"Heh. Yeah. Sorry, mom. Just wanted to be-"

"Hey, no need to apologize. I once wen….days witho…..etting a chance to….my armor."

"Mom?" Melissa frowned as the video jumped several times, audio cutting out in time, "Mom, you still there?"

"Still here, Mel. Got some interference from your end, I think." A notification blinked into view in the corner of the video feed with an accompanying chirp. Laura smiled mirthlessly.

"I recognize that sound. Go get 'em, Mel. Talk to you soon."

"You too, mom," Melissa ended the call, then checked the notification.

It took her no more than ten seconds to grab her helmet and weapon, double-check the equipped modules, and make it to the barracks door with armor-lengthened strides. The rest of Easy's members who were still in the barracks were making similarly hasty preparations.

It was time.

"Exiting FTL in three, two, one, mark. Drift is marked at…" the helmsman paused as he checked the necessary readings, "Forty three kilometers."

Admiral Miles Von Bach smiled warmly. It was an excellent start to the operation. Exiting an FTL jump ending less than fifty kilometers off their mark was stupendous, given the size of his ship.

"Begin satellite deployment," he ordered, still smiling to himself. Forty-three kilometers. Von Bach was not a superstitious man, but that was a good omen if he ever did see one.

"Communication relays are out now," an ensign announced, "Damocles cannons entering final launch preparations. And…they're away, admiral."

"Excellent. EVA, establish contact with…" he double-checked the name in the corner of the HUD provided by his optical implants, "…Commander Mitchell. And inform our 'passengers' that they're to be prepared for a combat deployment within the hour."

"Orders sent, admiral."

By now, the support fleet had already finished warping in. Most of them had orbital and planetside assets to deploy, but others were simply for security. Admiral Von Bach doubted the escorts would be needed, but he was not foolish enough to dismiss them. His Tunguska was powerful, but it couldn't engage the massive numbers typically mustered in engagements that warranted its deployment.

Right now, the space around Ral'dan was firmly in GDI hands. But if anything came to contest it, Von Bach's Tunguska would be there to meet them. And nothing short of a god could move a GDI dreadnought.

"Keep it moving!" Master Sergeant McCourt barked, waving along troopers and ship crews as they rapidly emptied the contents of the latest cargo ship, "Land, unload, and take off! Three simple steps, people, and we only have to handle one of them!"

This was the third ship in the past hour to land at Firebase Easy. Others were landing at similar facilities around the city, but McCourt didn't have to concern himself with them. He had his assigned landing pads, and that was all that mattered. Crate after crate of supplies came out of the massive cargo ships, and when they ran out of crates, engines that had barely begun to cool reignited, taking it back into the sky just as the next ship became visible.

The crates were filled with guns, fabrication equipment, vehicle parts, ammunition, canisters of compressed omni-gel…anything they might need to keep an offensive in motion.

Other ships also dropped additional troops. Firebases Baker and Charlie had a company's worth of Marines manning each of them, and additional elements of the 12th Armored Battalion had been pouring in from surrounding areas, having dealt with a few stray batarian holdouts. That gave them dozens of Predator MBTs, which were already being refitted for urban combat. Larkin's Special Operations company was mostly concentrated at Firebase Easy, but several squads were at Baker and Charlie to ensure that they were never far from their Spider ADTs.

The reinforcements were mixed groups pulled for this offensive. The 99th Heavy Infantry Battalion was providing one company of Zone Troopers, designated Dog Company. They were reinforcing Baker across the city from Easy.

A wing of newly-launched Firehawks screamed overhead. McCourt took mental note of them. It meant that their Nightmares would finally have uncontested control of the skies, and that the ground forces would only need to worry about hostile close air support.

There were other assets he couldn't name off the top of his head. There were plenty of rumors bouncing around, and more than a few comm channels he could tap into to get a better idea of what was going to happen, but McCourt had a job to do here and now. He had a briefing to attend later, and if there was anything he didn't already know that needed knowing, he'd find out about it then.

Judicator Thule Yan'ful watched his 'deputies' dry-fire their new weapons. They'd already been given adequate time to fire them against solid targets down the hallways of abandoned apartment buildings or in alleyways alongside the enforcer HQ, and they'd performed just fine. Better than fine. The Observer hadn't been lying, or even exaggerating, when he sent the specs and fabrication codes. The new weapons were universal upgrades over their current kit.

The beauty was in their simplicity: after you took a few parts off, they were all the same basic model. Thule had taken an assault rifle, a light machinegun, and a marksman's rifle, and by removing a few simple pieces, they were all identical. His armory's fabricators could produce any of a half-dozen variations from submachine guns to sniper rifles with nothing more than the necessary materials and the fabrication code.

They were cheap, too, but not in the traditional BSA manner. They cost laughably little in resources to fabricate. Thule had no reason now to doubt what the Observer had told him, and upon testing, the assault rifle was more accurate, more reliable, and packed a stronger punch than the standard-issue Terminator. And even with improvements across the board, they still cost less to produce than the weapons they were replacing!

Each of the guns shared a machine-gray body with a few ceramic-beige highlights. If not for the moving parts that became visible when fired, folded or unfolded, they appeared to be stamped in a solid piece, like they were chiseled from the wall of some fabled weapon-mine and simply polished by the fabricator.

All of his enforcers and fully half the ganger deputies were armed with these new guns already. Low production cost alone wasn't going to save them. The fact that their normal firing range was filled with refugees and wounded was proof enough of that. They needed as many edges as they could get.

According to the Observer, they simply needed to hold out a bit longer. Help was on its way, he'd told the judicator. He hadn't said how, and even admitted that he didn't know how, or exactly when. He'd only gleaned the information from an SIU terminal before it sensed 'foreign intruders' and attempted a violent self-destruct protocol. Thankfully, the Observer had already located the physical explosives intended for such a purpose, and the terminal simply fizzled and broke.

The Observer was arming his own bastion, mostly composed survivors from various garrisons around the city. There weren't many of them, but they were trained soldiers with good weapons in their hands.

"Any of you ever handled one of these?" Thule shouted, hefting a large weapon from the table beside him, taken from the enforcer armory. Two men stepped forward.

One had a gnarled scar across his throat where Thule guessed someone had tried to slit his throat. The other with only two working eyes. The latter grinned as they both stowed their new weapons.

"Show me," Thule tossed the one in his hands to Two-Eyes while Cutthroat picked up another. They both went through their own routines of checking ammunition, system indicators, and scope calibrations, then turned back to Thule.

"Give me a target," Cutthroat said, his voice requiring a bit more force just to rasp the short sentence. He'd clearly not had the money for a proper medicae to mend his vocal chords, but he still managed to sound confident. Thule picked up a broken data slate and gestured with it. The two understood.

With a swing of his arm, Thule sent the data slate spinning away into the air. Thule didn't watch it. Instead, he watched the two shooters. Both men squeezed their triggers immediately, but did not release them as they tracked the slate. Then, nearly simultaneously, they released the triggers, and both weapons fired.

Two-Eyes' shot hit first. The slate barely changed its path as the round passed through, then fell to the ground with two big, ugly holes torn through it.

Even with the new spin Two-Eyes had put on it, Cutthroat loosed his bolt an instant later. It broke the data slate completely.

The Kishock Harpoon Gun was a devastating weapon in the right hands. If the heavy bolts didn't kill the target outright, then the shape of the round would ensure that bleeding and internal injuries would do the job. The only reason Thule had any at all was because gangers often used them in lieu of traditional anti-armor rifles. The Kishock was much easier to obtain than more traditional alternatives, but in the right hands it just as effective.

Reports from troops under the Observers command had reported large numbers of GDI Zone Troopers, and if that was the case, Two-Eyes and Cutthroat would be earning their pardons with every shot.

The glow of the command computer was a familiar sight to any Battle Commander. It didn't do any favors for Commander Mitchell's pale spacer complexion, but it was an invaluable tool for any commanding officer who hoped to preside over an operation this large without the delays of relaying all orders vocally.

The city had been extensively mapped from above, and tiny recon drones had weaved their way through the twisting maze of alleys without detection. Building interiors were problematic, but drones were small enough to be deployed on a squad-to-squad basis if storming them became necessary. When storming them became necessary.

Each unit had its own symbol, and all of them were a healthy, friendly blue. Mitchell opened the general frequency.

"Final check-in. All presiding officers, confirm."

High above the city, beyond the pollutant-thickened cloudlayer and further cloaked by the darkness of night, Larkin's operators were ready to jump.

Major Saul Larkin himself would not join them. His days of leading from the front were long-since over, though he remembered them fondly. Instead, he received unspoken confirmations from each squad leader within seconds of the commander's request.

"Larkin. Suited up and ready to drop."

But even if he would not jump, he had still dulled the natural shine of his uniform badge and anything even vaguely reflective on his uniform. Old habits died hard. With just a little bit of work, even those things that should have caught light became dead and midnight blue, like all the rest of him.

Master Sergeant McCourt was closer to the city than he'd ever been before now. With the optics of his helmet alone, he could even make out the occasional tiny figure of a batarian in motion. The Hegemony troops had imposed a civilian curfew in the early stages of the invasion, so the only ones out now were soldiers or outlaws. Both were fair game for GDI guns.

The Warden was a part of his command team, along with two of his own men. The other COs were attached to Easy's squads as extensions of the Warden's authority. Thankfully, Warden Massani had thus far proven himself more than tolerable to work with. McCourt hadn't expected a commissar, but it was certainly a possibility, and he was thankful it was not the case. McCourt shifted his eyes over to the Warden, years of experience not shifting any part of his body or armor to betray the gaze.

Massani was wearing a factory-gray version of Mark VI Marine combat suit. It was probably provided as part of his commission. McCourt doubted that it was the same suit he'd worn during his days with the Corp. For one thing, the model had changed since then. And for another, it wasn't nearly worn enough. McCourt had done the legwork to confirm what stories had drifted his way. Every rumor of the Warden's reputation had checked out.

Every.

The living tank hurled a fist at him. What would have shattered his ribcage was barely enough to clip him after he threw himself away, but it sent him spinning.

He had a Hydra disposable-launcher in his hands with one shot left, and a window of maybe a quarter-second to fire what had to be the last shot.

He squeezed the trigger.

Single.

Three men forced him to his knees as the traitor pressed a gun to his head.

"It's just business. You understand, partner."

"I'll hunt you to the end of the goddamn universe," he hissed.

"It's what you do," the traitor shrugged, "Goodbye."

One.

A man greater than him lay dying in agony, covered in the grotesque scars of warp-burn.

"It's the anger. Shoots into your blood. Turns everythin' you feel into rage. An' rage..."

The stimpacks had yet to wear off, and he grabbed the closest Marine in an iron grip.

"...it's a hell of an anesthetic."

He would have been terrifying if he weren't on their side.

"Top. My men are ready," Massani called over, voice insulated by his sealed helmet, "Waiting on you."

McCourt nodded, then did a quick check of his sergeants. Nothing but steady blue signals.

"Commander, McCourt. Easy is in position."

Lieutenant Murphy didn't have the privilege of taking one of the eight seats in the Archon. But it was his Archon, and thus his responsibility to ensure remained operational, even if it didn't let him pilot any of its Hounds.

The eight Hounds were divided between Baker and Charlie companies as fire support for the Marine platoons. They wouldn't see much of one another, but it'd be a chance to show the Hounds' worth as heavy weapon platforms and magnets for fire that would otherwise be killing living soldiers.

"Murphy here, commander."

With thundering footsteps that could only be felt to their pilots by EVA automatic feedback, they marched to war.

"Hounds are out and hungry."

Baker and Charlie companies were neither as heavily mechanized as the 12th Armored nor as heavily outfitted per soldier as Easy company. But they were Marines, and they were ready. They had a Hound attached to each platoon, and the 12th would be providing heavier armored support as needed.

They were the most numerous GDI force in the offensive at the moment, though that would only be the case for a short while longer.

"Ready, Commander," Captain Ellen Duvall replied. Her Marines stood ready.

"Awaiting your orders, Commander," Captain Eric Sunderland followed quickly thereafter.

Admiral Von Bach nodded in response to the readiness request sent from the planetside Battle Commander.

"EVA, confirm the status of all auxiliary forces and deployment vessels."

"Completed, admiral. All units prepared for deployment on your mark."

"EVA, Inform Commander Mitchell of our status," he sat back in his command couch, "Align satellites with obvious enemy retreat paths. Inform Commander Mitchell of this asset."

"Completed, admiral."

It might've been petty and often dangerous, but Wrex didn't like wearing helmets. They made combat feel uncomfortably distant, like he was some worm wired up inside a krogan-shaped tank. Filters scrubbed the air clean of the smell of spilled blood and cooked flesh, of burnt cordite and choking dust, of…everything that made a battlefield something more than just a place where people happened to die.

But orders were orders. Frankly, Wrex would've worn it anyway. The Hegemony troops had a penchant for chemical weapons, and a gas attack could prove deadly even to a krogan constitution. He'd smashed plenty of things with his head before, and he'd have plenty of other chances to do it after this. Better to just wear the damn thing and survive to fight without one.

Besides, he knew the sort of reinforcements that were soon to be dropping in. Wearing his helmet meant keeping his anonymity for a while, at least until he could have a 'talk' with any of the up-and-coming types who might want to put a bullet in his back, thinking it would win him fame and fortune.

It wouldn't change the fact that he'd be dealing with a different breed of moron in a few hours or so. That was a bridge for later. For now, all he needed to do was wear a helmet.

He wrenched the priming-lever of his Grinder.

A problem for later.

"Dropping."

The four Commandos began their fall in unison. It was made all the more impressive by each soldier being in a separate deployment craft at the opposite corners of the city, but they were Commandos with a timetable to follow.

First was freefall. Terminal velocity would ordinarily require the deployment of airfoils, or at least a continuous hard burn from their jump packs. The former was far too low-tech by even GDI standards, and the latter tended to be loud and bright.

Inside her armored shell, Liddell could not feel the wind's claws. Most primary systems were powered down to minimize her EM signature. The armor might've had some of GDI's finest stealth technology, but it was leaving nothing to chance. Liddell was a firm subscriber to the Havoc school of Commandos. Tech can fail. Tech can be fooled. Tech is useful, but it is not to be trusted over your own senses.

Nonetheless, she activated her mass effect field at the same time as her three comrades without a moment's hesitation.

Next came her wings. Normally, the bulk of a Commando's powered armor, no matter how compressed it may be, would be too much for any subtle means of gliding. Nod shadow teams had utilized wingsuits to great effect during the Third Tiberium War, but they used personal cloaking devices in lieu of any substantial body armor.

But just as mass effect technology had allowed jump packs to spread like wildfire through the GDI military and beyond, their mass-altering fields would allow the four Commandos to glide with the same deadly silence as a Shadow Team.

They glided in silence, eyes and passive sensors programmed to make rapid microadjustments to ensure that they would remain on their projected courses. Liddell let the endoskeleton of the armor handle them. She had no problem letting it do the work for her. It was easy. Being in a combat zone didn't even factor into it. She could just go limp and it would work as designed. Her eyes and ears remained razor-sharp. She would know when it was time to take over.

It was just a matter of waiting.

And when the time came, she had a homing beacon strapped to her hip. The numbers scrolling past her vision told her how close the drop point was. It was close. So close. Maybe Death was close, too.

She rolled, wings unfurled. She went from comet to feather within seconds.

Half the city was dark. From what she understood, a large part of the city's power came from within, but virtually all exterior energy sources had been cut off or otherwise destroyed by the GDI offensive. What remained was overtaxed and vulnerable. Several squad from the Special Operations company were dropping in using similar wingsuits to do a bit of sabotage while the Commandos worked.

Liddell found her rooftop…empty. Nothing came up on scanners, or on her own two eyes, as she alighted on what had once been a landing pad atop an abandoned medicae.

She turned back to the operation at hand. The batarians below her were using jamming devices to prevent GDI aircraft from getting an accurate readout of the city below them. They could navigate purely by sight, of course, but why bother when the issue could be remedied by a handful of Commandos placing homing beacons to overwhelm the interference?

Liddell unbuckled the circular device and placed it on the pad. Nothing would be landing here, but the vantage point ensured that the op would be as successfully as possible without any unnecessary risk. She stepped back as the device expanded to the size of a hubcap, and a confirmation light on her HUD winked in rely.

She didn't send confirmation vocally. She was close enough that even a souped-up civilian receiver could pluck encrypted signals out of the air. It couldn't decipher them, but it could provide a starting point for a tracing effort, and enemy signals coming from within your supposedly-sealed city is an alarm in and of itself.

Now she waited, melting into the shadows and watching.

Her three comrades completed their own missions quickly thereafter. And a few minutes after that, two housing blocks on opposite ends of the city went dark. Larkin's operators were good. The blackouts weren't even accompanied by the muffled sound of distant explosions.

Liddell looked up and saw new stars appear in the night sky. Her beacon was working as intended, and the battle was starting.

"That's the last one, boss. The beacons are loud and bright."

"Good. Take us in," the warlord turned his attention to his assembled troops. Their blood was up already, and the tremors of atmospheric entry only made them more eager for combat.

He spread his arms and roared,

"Sons of Heshtok! Make yourselves known!" The response was near deafening. Hundreds of voices howled in reply.

The Chant had no real name. It was a force in and of itself. Where it was roared, death followed.

To the uninitiated, it would have been merely patterned noise alongside a tribal war dance. But the sons of Heshtok lived short and violent lives, and what did not kill them literally made them stronger. Savagery was in their blood. It had to be. Tuchanka at least had resources worth fighting for. Heshtok had long-since exhausted what it had to offer.

The Chant was a thousand generations old. The sons of Heshtok had reached the peak of their evolution long ago, and tradition was even stronger for them as a result. The Chant had weight. Translated, it spoke of death and chaos, blood and fire. It was not mere boasting. For the sons of Heshtok, the Chant was a promise to be fulfilled. It screamed for blood, even if it was theirs. Calling it a 'war dance' would have offended them, if the phrase could be translated properly. To them, dance was an art, and their culture had no time for art. Strictly speaking, they would not like the term 'culture' either, but languages can only be translated so far.

Arms sheathed in factory-new gauntlets pounded against equally new armor on their chests. The other races of the galaxy saw nothing but savagery in the sons of Heshtok, and they were correct. Their only fault was not seeing that savagery could be honed and refined. Naked savagery was something that few could even aspire to.

"Death calls out!" the warlord roared over the din, "Does it call for you?"

"NO!"

"Why do you live?"

"WE LIVE TO KILL!"

"When will you die?"

"WHEN WE CAN KILL NO MORE!"

"What are your orders?"

"KILL!"

"Who will you kill?"

"THE SONS OF KHAR'SHAN!"

"When will you stop?"

"ONLY IN DEATH!"

The warlord had worked with them long enough to know how to follow the natural pathways of the Chant. With vows came obligations, and that naturally endeared itself towards mercenary work. It was frighteningly organic. Krogan could live for up to a millennia. As far as the sons of Heshtok were concerned, that tainted them. Their lifespans only gave them time to develop weakness.

The sons of Heshtok lived long enough for war and little else. Evolution had spent millennia after millennia breeding them for war, and then it had decided that they were as ready as they would ever be. Generation after generation bred War into their bones, and that was considered civilization. 'Violence' was for savages. War, on the other hand…

The warlord had switched off his omni-tool before addressing them. Technological wonder though it was, it never seemed to accurately portray the people it set out to represent. When it had tried to interpret the voices of the sons of Heshtok, it had failed to grasp anything beyond the literal. Worse, it simplified. The warlord knew better than to rely on it at times like this.

"Three minutes," the pilot announced. That was more than enough time. The troops were as ready as they would ever be. The Chant reached its pitch. There would be blood enough to make new rivers.

"Seal your masks!" the warlord barked, "We hunt in silence!"

And with a cacophony of pneumatic hisses, the Chant was silenced within hundreds of helmets. The danger they posed to their prey was increased a hundredfold.

"Dropships! Mantis are scrambling, but-"

"Shit! Auto-AAs are cutting us apart! Don't touch the city limits! Don't-fuck! Incoming! Brace for impact! Brace for-"

"This is Observer Geralt Nar'koru," Geralt opened a universal frequency, "Take defensive positions immediately. We have incoming hostile forces, GDI and Blood Pack. Repeat, GDI and Blood Pack."

Like iron-shod meteors, the dropships were streaking down to Ra'Ghul's surface, well within the city limits. It shouldn't have been possible, not without massive casualties. Hot-drops simply weren't intended to land so close to urban environments unless-

Geralt cursed himself a fool. Homing beacons. Commandos. In just a matter of hours, they'd been set up for one of the worst situations imaginable for a defender.

And to top it off, painted on the motley assortment of dropship chassis were stenciled spraypaints of krogan skulls, colored a bloody crimson.

There was only one group that identified themselves with such an emblem, or at least only one that could muster the sort of numbers that were bearing down on them.

"Dropships incoming, markings indicate-"

"Enemy infantry! Holy shit, switch loadouts! They're not armor, repeat, not-"

"-too close for mortars, repeat, too close for mortars. Close-air support is-"

"-you fucking heard me! Set them off! The bastards won't trip the wires-"

"Forward units are disappearing faster than…correction, gone. Forward units are-"

"Hold your ground, troopers!" Geralt ordered, "Enemy troops are not, repeat, not standard GDI infantry. VX deployment approved and encouraged. Sealed suits are required of all regular and auxiliary troops."

One by one, acknowledgement lights of those units that had not simply vanished winked green. Anyone alive was as ready as they could ever be. They had the guns and the willpower, but now, nothing resembling the numbers. But even the motley assortment of Hegemony soldiers, Enforcers, and conscripts that they were, they would fight.

And, more than likely, Geralt thought, They would die.

Blood Pack. They were fighting the Blood Pack. It had been a few weeks, but Geralt's intelligence had indicated that the Blood Pack were conducting off-the-books privateer work against GDI forces. Something had changed that. Probably something financial. Whatever it was, it was sending Blood Pack dropships by the dozen onto his city, driving their entire situation from 'hopeless' to 'dead on their feet.'

"CAS is inbound!" Flight Commander Jaeger Vult shouted, dragging the control sticks of his Mantis to pull it into a steep dive. The gunship could fire accurately from above even the skyscrapers of the city, but Hegemony soldiers were dying in droves down below, and he couldn't afford that delay, nor did he want that detachment. Most importantly, it would keep them below the killzone established by GDI rocket launchers.

Two of his wing was already down, victims of marauding Firehawks. Intelligence was spotty, but the GDI fighters hadn't appeared until now.

The tide of GDI reinforcements surged across the early-warning outposts with little trouble. Vult's flight of Mantises were outfitted with close-air-support in mind, and that was exactly what the desperate second-line defenders needed.

Thankfully, GDI anti-air support wasn't so accurate that they could reliably annihilate gunships without risking the lives of the troops immediately below them, and the Firehawks wouldn't fly this low or risk shooting the gunships when they'd crash atop their own infantry.

Dumb-fire rockets streaked from the GDI troops. None of them connected, thankfully. Vult twisted his Mantis into a steep dive, giving him a close angle on the surging troops. GDI didn't cluster their men so closely on any other operation he'd ever seen. This was a rare opportunity to wreak havoc among such elite-

-oh, no.

Vult let loose a volley from his chin-mounted mass accelerator. The heavy rounds tore a swath through the light-armored infantry. Vult took no satisfaction in the kills. They weren't worth the ink for fresh kill marks on his fuselage.

When vorcha wanted to sprint, they took to all fours. In the age of firearms, this was a problem, but right not now. Their weapons were stamped out with full knowledge of who would be using them. They could be hauled through mud and submerged in the murkiest of waters and still be fully operable. After all, while they were technically shifter weapons, they had only two modules: an assault rifle and a shotgun, the latter activated by an old-fashioned pump.

The vorcha sprinted across no-man's land without hesitation as soon as the dropships had hit the ground, oblivious to the sheets of fire that poured from defensive positions. Dozens died, cut to pieces by artillery and machineguns. A wing of Mantises streaked overhead, firing all the while. They had free reign over the skies, despite the air cover they'd been promised. But there were hundreds already on the ground, and thousands more still touching down.

Their armor helped a great deal against the machineguns and shrapnel. Most vorcha went into combat clad in little more than ammo bandoliers, but working for GDI had a great many perks, one of which being actual body armor. It only covered their torsos, but it was more than they were used to by a long shot. Coupled with their new helmets and vambraces, every stray round that failed to kill them was like a fresh shot from a stimpack.

One was called Sagev. He was informally promoted among his kin for gaining the first kill of their landing.

It had been in a camouflaged position that GDI recon had missed, just outside the area of the city that let airstrikes be permissible. A heavy machinegun was blazing away, three men behind it, two for tending to the gun and a third for-

Sagev hurled himself at the emplacement without any further thought. He had targets.

Sagev was nearly twelve years old. Four on Heshtok, eight with the Blood Pack. He knew enough about guns to know that practically every gun ever made was designed to be fired one way: standing still and aiming properly. A few of his comrades were already shooting, but the shoots all went wide, and it only slowed down their charge.

Instead, Sagev triggered his vambraces as soon as he saw his reflection in the visors of the batarian gun crew. With a metal schick, two pairs of jagged blades shot out of the arm guards.

As a GDI representative had espoused, they were modeled after the weapons of a dreaded Earth predator. One who would hunt and kill the most veteran of human soldiers for no reason other than personal satisfaction.

One of humanity's most revered warriors, Shwars'Negar the Terminator, had killed such a predator. And even in death, the predator had laughed at him. Sagev longed for more access to human historical documents. There was video documentation of the entire conflict, or at least a well-researched recreation. It made little difference for a vorcha. To have such a death at the hands of a Commando like Shwars'Negar would be an honor beyond Sagev's wildest dreams.

With his metal claws outstretched, Sagev leapt. One of the batarian gun crew raised a rifle against him, but chance favored Sagev. That soldier was already his prey.

One set of blades plunged into his throat. The other went below his armpit, where his hardsuit's armor stopped to permit free motion of the arm. It was not a flaw that could be easily corrected in unpowered armor, and one set of twin blades ravaged the artery the armor could not protect while the other tore out his throat. Either would have been lethal, but Sagev did not live to twelve by taking chances.

Sagev's comrades hit the emplacement a moment later. The suppressive fire faltered as the gunner was distracted by the brutal death of his fellow soldier. It only hastened their deaths by few precious seconds.

Sagev's prey was already dead when the others hurled themselves over the makeshift walls of the emplacement. The remaining two batarians were dead in the seconds thereafter.

No trophies. That was one of the few terms of their contract. No trophies while the enemy still stood.

Sagev had the honor of first kill. His comrades immediately respected him as their superior, at least until their official superiors arrived. The krogan had yet to catch up.

"Kill!" he screamed, "Kill them all!"

Judicator Thule Yan'ful had been operating on a minimal amount of sleep for days now. He knew somewhere in his mind that the attack would come as soon as he was asleep and he'd be caught fumbling with his armor when GDI powered armor kicked down his door.

He was half-right. Thankfully, it was the half that didn't involve Zone Troopers. Adrenaline took off the last edge of drowsiness as he buckled his armor into place. Forty-some years in the Enforcer Corp made it quick even under pressure and the haze of a recent wake-up.

At least it wouldn't take much time to get to his improvised command center. He was living out of a spare room adjoining his peacetime office in the Enforcer HQ. Three doors and two flights of stairs later, he was another body in the chaos of the command center.

"Observer, Enforcer Actual," he said breathlessly, already sweeping his eyes over incoming data feeds, "My units have yet to engage the enemy. Can you give me unit compositions?"

"Regiment-strength numbers, more touching down by the minute. Dropships have Blood Pack markings, and troops are overwhelmingly vorcha."

"You heard the observer," Thule relayed the orders, "Get ready for light infantry, and a lot of it. Anti-armor is secondary. The humans will send in their heavy units after the fodder, and there's at least a company's worth of powered armor out there."

"Forward bunkers are going out like candles in a hurricane, Enforcer. Minimal damage to enemy forces."

"Mechs are prepped and loaded. Just give me locations to send them." Thule looked to his tech officer to confirm this. The man looked up from the array of haptic interfaces to nod.

"Thanks, Enforcer. I'm forwarding my communication codes to you now."

That was unexpected, even with an observer as comparatively easy to work with as Geralt Nar'koru. An observer's communication frequency was all but universal: not only could it tap into virtually any official communication, but knowledge of the observer's unique signature could let someone create undetectable transmissions. In essence, Geralt had just given Thule the means to have an observer's range of hearing while rendering him undetectable to any other observer in the system.

"Yeah, I know. We'll sort that out later," Geralt read Thule's mind and replied before the judicator could get in a word,"You've got the mechs, and you know how to deploy them best. I'd just be stalling things if I made you relaying everything through me."

Enforcer Assault Wagon came with hover turbines by default. Many rapid-response vehicles in the Enforcer Corp were the same because of the nature of transportation in Hegemony cities. Most citizens either used land-bound transportations, automated public transit, or (if they could afford it) high-end skycars.

The hovertech let assault wagons circumvent most forms of potential traffic, and the sort of people who owned skycars rarely strayed into areas that would warrant assault wagons. On top of that, the assault wagons had their bows built to allow them to batter through up to twelve inches of reinforced ferrocrete with sufficient speed. Anything that got in their way short of that would be reduced to scraps on the pavement below.

But far more deadly was their payload. Thirty urban-control pattern automechs, modified for war. It was a quick job, to be sure, but the modifications were practically standard-issue knowledge. The Enforcer Corp knew how to modify their gear for conflicts that could compare to continental civil wars. The LOKI paled by comparison. Some terraphile had looked up 'Loki' on the extranet and given the modification he'd made a name fitting with human mythology: Orcus. Loki was a trickster, a deceiver. Orcus was the keeper of the dead. He was their jailor. He was the prison warden to Loki's con man.

The assault wagon slammed to the ground, digging a trench in the pavement as it did. Its armored sideskirts snapped back into their recesses. The automechs hit the ground without delay. They were rigged to fall without even the sensors designed to show the wagon's impact, in the even their landing was delayed somehow.

Impact failed to even stall their startup sequences. They rose from their folded, impact-dampening positions to grasp the biggest part of their chassis that had no moving parts whatsoever: a riot shield nearly as tall as they were. It was possible to make collapsing shields, but that would have defeated the purpose. Such complex measures would've done nothing but given it structural weaknesses.

They hefted the massive shields with one deceptively strong arm while the other carried a twin-barreled rifle.

Sagev skidded to a halt when he saw them hit the ground. He saw the danger that his younger comrades did not.

"Units online. Commencing pacification."

Sagev spun into the light cover provided by an abandoned landcar. A storm of assault fire justified his decision. Two of his fellows were cut down immediately afterward as their meager barriers broke and armor failed.

"No! Hold!" he screamed, but too many of the others failed to heed his words. Three more died to precise fire before the rest took the hint and took whatever cover they could.

Sagev hissed under his breath. The others fired blindly over their barricades, peppering the enemy with rounds. The targets were almost completely exposed, but they were firing too accurately to risk exposure for long enough to get a solid shot off, and their armored shields may as well have been indestructible for all the good the vorcha's small arms did.

He risked a glance out from behind the vehicle. He'd instinctively chosen his cover based on its orientation to the targets and the apparent caliber of their weaponry. He'd had approximately three seconds to do it, but Sagev was nearly twelve years old. His brain was hardwired to dissect combat situations to their base components and respond without regard for conscious action. It had taken him a full two years, many scars, and many more deaths of his fellows to develop that ability.

It served him well. Sagev had taken cover at the rearmost point of the landcar, giving him as much of the vehicle as possible to serve as a barrier for incoming fire.

Two others were not so lucky: heavy rounds punched through both sets of doors of a civilian landcar, killing them both. Sagev hissed, cursing his weapon's lack of versatility. He would correct it after this day, if he lived to see another.

Then their Commander caught up.

The red-armored krogan fired his grenade launcher one-handed. The mechs' shields were virtually immune to small arms and provided protection against shrapnel. Unfortunately, the heaviest explosives they were used to were pipe bombs and other improvised explosives. The Blood Pack's heavy weapon of choice was the M-100 grenade launcher. It packed a considerably bigger punch than the average pipe bomb.

The blast took three mechs with it. A fourth and fifth went down as soon as fire from the vorcha troops poured into the new hole in the shield wall.

The Commander laughed as he let loose another grenade. Two more mechs exploded, and a third was exposed and cut down by vorcha rifles.

"Move, cowards!" he bellowed, "Don't just sit there and di-"

A heavy bolt pierced the krogan's chest. He stumbled, but did not fall. Such an injury would kill a lesser creature, but he was krogan. He would survive. There was barely even any pain.

A second bolt pierced his helmet. He would not heal from that wound.

The deputized ganger nicknamed Cutthroat pulled back the bolt of his Kishock.

"Kill," he rasped. Across the street, Two-Eyes snorted.

"Yeah. My kill, jackass. Got his heart with that shot."

"Krogan," Cutthroat replied, "Two hearts. One brain. My kill."

Their elevated positions gave them free-reign over the vorcha below. With the exception of a single krogan, there didn't appear to be any heavier units. That made the two batarians and their mech support lucky, even if a half-dozen mechs were littering the ground in more parts than they were manufactured in.

Cutthroat took the head off a vorcha with a well-placed harpoon. They'd need that luck to hold.

"Hostiles targets acquired. Defensive protocols engaged."

With synthetic strength, the mechs drove their shields into the pavement, creating a wall in the middle of the street. Their vulnerable legs vanished behind their new cover, and the devastating fire from the dead Commander seemed all for naught.

But Sagev and his comrades were vorcha. Even the inexperienced fodder saw the same thing Sagev did.

The enemies were virtually invulnerable. Their heavy shields could withstand anything that the unit could throw at them, and their weapons had accuracy and firepower to spare. They took up their standard defensive positions when faced with potentially superior firepower and hunkered down.

It would have worked against nearly any other foe armed as the vorcha were. But it would not work against vorcha, for they were no ordinary foes.

Their new helmets only had short-range comms, but that was more than enough.

"Half stay here. Fight proudly," Sagev hissed, sweeping his free hand to designate numbers, "Half-of-half, flank the machines. Destroy them all." That left a quarter of what began the day as a company-sized force. But fifteen vorcha were more than enough for Sagev.

"The rest, with me. Hunt in silence," he pressed the side of his helmet, sealing it with a pneumatic hiss. He glanced at the remains of the proud Commander, felled by rounds thrown by something other than the mechs.

"Kill the snipers."

There was too little noise behind him. Cutthroat was at the fifth-story window of a building that he knew still had occupants who refused to leave their habs and simply laid low when the enforcers came through for evacuations. They provided a steady stream of background noises while they tried their damndest to stay quiet amidst the sounds of movement in the halls and gunfire on the streets.

After his throat had been cut, Cutthroat had gotten-

He was just another Omega ganger ten years ago. He could've tried for a position in the Blue Suns, but with Madman Massani in charge, that could mean a 'personal' initiation. He'd be lucky if he was dead or crippled at Massani's hands. But he was trying to work up the courage for it nonetheless.

And so, he was drunk. He'd even taken a small hit from a human stimpack on a dare. He didn't hear her come up behind him. He certainly felt the knife as it dragged across his throat. He fell to his knees, choking on his own blood.

-good at listening. It came with the loss of his voice. When it took more effort to speak, he spoke less, and he'd hardly been a motormouth to begin with. And curiously, people took what he said much more seriously. The scar was impressive, sure, but-

The aspiring Eclipse Sister was practically squealing with glee. Her first kill!

He lay still for a moment, thinking quickly. Even drunk, she shouldn't have been able to sneak up on him so easily. Then again, asari mercs usually spent a few decades as a dancer before they changed their line of work. It made them remarkably light on their feet.

She was talking to someone on her omni-tool. Distracted. Through the haze of pain, he fumbled for his holdout pistol folded in the fake canteen on his hip.

-it was a botched job by an unblooded killer. Nothing to be truly proud of surviving.

He listened to the silence again. There was a muffled cough and a not-so-muffled gasp.

Cutthroat twisted in place, squeezing the trigger of his Kishock as he did. A humanoid form barreled through his door as he did, breaking the lock and sending it rolling to the ground.

He waited only for it to end its roll before-

She had barely begun to turn when he lunged into her, forcing the small pistol against the small of her back. Barriers couldn't stop anything that close. He fired until the small six-shot heat sink scorched his hand.

It was enough. She would never walk again, assuming she was mere seconds from a team of experienced emergency Citadel trauma surgeons.

This was Omega.

She was not.

-he released it. The high-tech harpoon tore through the lightly armored…

…vorcha.

"Shit," he rasped, squeezing the trigger and jerking the barrel towards the door again. It was not without reason. A second body lunged through the doorway, but this one died more quickly than the first. Cutthroat took a small measure of satisfaction when the body fell back into the door, impeding the only viable path into the room.

He dropped the Kishock. It was-

She was crying for her mothers as she died. She was barely more than a teenager, though her physical years would've placed her among the seniors of most other races.

It sickened him. So many years, and yet they could still die so badly, so unskilled in the art of killing. He would have passed out by now if she'd gotten his arteries properly.

She had not.

-only luck that had given him the time and window to fire off that second shot. Counting on that luxury for a third bolt would be pushing his luck.

A high-capacity submachine gun unfolded in his right hand while he drew his worn holdout pistol with his left. Vorcha had light barriers by default (generally lacking anything resembling armor to fit stronger generators), and these were no exception. The chestplates and helmets were disturbing, though. Far too uniform for vorcha.

His submachine gun hiccuped, spitting out a three-round burst before he even felt the recoil of the shots. Whoever it was at BSA who had designed these new guns, they deserved a medal. A second burst tore through his new target's upper chest and neck, and a third made sure that it would-

With once clumsy hand, he slapped a handful of medigel onto his throat. It would at least keep him from bleeding to death, and that was all this wannabe-Eclipse bitch had put him in real danger of.

The painkillers left him room for a little more hate. That was enough to force the barrel of his gun against the back of her uncovered head and blast her brains out onto the pavement.

She was still sobbing when he pulled the trigger. It was a mercy.

-stay dead. Annoying and buglike as they looked, vorcha were hard to kill with anything less than a solid shot to the head. At this range, Cutthroat's gunfire pierced its helmet with no trouble.

He kept his pistol aimed at the doorway, and as soon as he was sure his submachine gun had killed its target, it was pointed in the same direction. Nothing else came through the doorway.

That was bad. Vorcha never traveled in anything less than overwhelming numbers, particularly when they were beneath the banner of the Blood Pack. They could be wearing rags and bandoleers or shiny new gear, but there were never just three vorcha. It went against their very nature to-

The wall beside the door was perforated by automatic fire from at least a half-dozen guns. Cutthroat dove aside-

He lay in silence. He didn't have much choice. The medigel barely had his wound sealed and the bleeding slowed. The painkillers kept him from screaming in pain, which would likely make him choke on his own blood.

Omega had good emergency services. It was a surprise for even longtime residents. They always waited until after the gunfire had subsided, and they were largely automated, but Aria had seen fit to install state-of-the-art autodocs in their response trucks and well-stocked facilities at their destinations. It was a deceptive act of kindness. There were a lot more gangs on Omega than the major mercenary powers, and none of them liked the idea of bleeding to death in the backstreets and alleyways, alone and unattended. So as long as they backed Aria where it counted and left alone the things she wanted left alone, they would have state-of-the-art emergency medical services when they needed it most. Assuming they lived long enough to receive it. They always waited for a few minutes after the shooting stop before showing up. That was too long for a lot of people.

The EMDs had blank glass faces and cold hands. They may as well have been angels from where he was lying. Something was shot into his arm, and the pain was dragged off him kicking and screaming, executed alongside the dead asari.

He might have been hallucinating. But then again, it was some really good painkillers. The asari didn't need them. She was long gone. She'd be completely gone within the hour, too. Asari corpses were a hot commodity. Their organs were compatible with most Citadel species, and they could be considered 'fresh' enough for a viable harvest several hours after death.

She'd be picked clean within minutes. The 'freelance' vorcha and feral varren would eat the rest. They knew not to come out until the gear and salvageable organs were gone. Otherwise, they'd be shot like the scavengers that they were.

-just in time to avoid the bulk of it. A few clipped his barriers, but they held. Barely.

Vorcha shouldn't be laying suppressive fire.

More followed. Some of it was shotgun fire. That was wrong, too. It required that a handful of troopers pause long enough to swap such between an assault rifle and a shotgun. That was impossible for a vorcha. Switching weapons took too long. Switching weapon modules took too long.

The fusillade of fire slackened.

Then he heard two hisses, followed by the snarls of slain beasts.

"Hah! That's two more for me. And krogan only count as one!" Two-Eyes laughed. For a long instant, Cutthroat thought him simply ignorant of the danger. Then he realized what a life he must have led, even before losing two of his eyes. To keep brawling and killing even with only one eye to spare was something not many batarians would have done. That was the sort of thing to force a man into monastic orders. The Word Bearers had their share of men with fewer eyes than they had been given in birth.

Then there was the present to worry about.

Cutthroat had a few military grenades rigged for lightning-fabrication in his omni-tool. One of them shot from his outstretched arm and hit the wall to his left. Civilian habs were cheaply built. They had to be, for the bulk that they were constructed in. It caved immediately.

The gunfire slackened for an additional instant, thanks to the detonation. It was enough to dive through before assault fire resumed, this time covering everything below waist-height, too. These shooters either weren't vorcha, or they were deceptively smart.

Shotgun blasts punctuated automatic rifle fire.

Cutthroat's shields flared and broke. His cover was a doorframe, thick but woefully underbuilt for absorbing military or even sustained civilian-grade fire.

The fired slackened some more, but it did not quiet. They were firing across the street where Two-Eyes was holed up. His laughter echoed through Cutthroat's comms.

"Come on, you bastards! Come on, if you think you're hard enough!"

Cutthroat hear the crack of a harpoon firing and the piercing flesh, followed by the sound of a modular submachine gun's muffled thunder. All the while, Two-Eyes roared with the laughter of the fearlessly mad.

And Cutthroat realized Two-Eyes was covering his counterpart while defending himself from a similar attack at once.

Cutthroat ripped an autoinjector from his belt and slammed it under his bicep. His blood caught fire in seconds. If he lived, he'd have a few sprains and possibly fractures in his forearms from firing his submachine gun and holdout with one hand apiece.

Thanks to the stimpack, he wouldn't need to care at all unless he lived.

With a howling cry that he'd not thought possible since his throat had been slashed, he launched his next grenade into the hallway. Cries of death announced his success. With the stimpack to guide him, he fired wherever his instincts told him there was a target.

Then the ceiling exploded.

A living body landed-

-on top of his prey. Sagev roared, silenced by his sealed helmet.

His left vambrace hissed as his twin blades shot out on oiled arms. The hooked blades quivered inches from the batarian's neck.

But Sagev hurled himself off the batarian as another harpoon screamed through the room, narrowly missing him. It would have killed him, even with his armor. The second sniper was proving difficult for the others to subdue. But if nothing else, the new sense of caution helped him avoid the fire his current prey was laying down.

One semi-automatic, one automatic. Even two small caliber semi-autos were hard to sustain accurately for a shooter without advanced armor and aiming software.

Sagev slid to the floor with nothing more than a split and a twist of his hips, his weapon clenched in both hands. He pumped the slide and fired the underslung shotgun again and again. The heavy shot cored the cheaply built walls. But Sagev was not satisfied. His prey still lived. Even as he fired, the batarian cut down another of his dwindling unit.

But this time it had taken longer, and the dead vorcha was a few feet closer to the batarian shooter.

Three more. It would take three more bodies for him to claim his prey.

"-can't hold here for much longer," the transmission shouted, "Too many of them and too few of us. Mechs are holding steady, but they haven't got long. Even roaches can figure out how to beat automechs."

"Then give us some bloody cover!" Two-Eyes barked, punctuated by more gunfire.

"Agreed!" Cutthroat growled, firing again. Combined fire from both his weapons brought it down, but a bit too close for comfort.

Two more bodies.

"Redirecting CAS to your location."

"CAS won't do us much good while we're inside," Two-Eyes grunted. His situation was worsening. He didn't inject nearly as much sarcasm into his words now. "We're both in civ habs. Gunships would be-ah, fuck!" He broke off for a moment, a detonation rocking his building, then resumed.

"Fuck it, send 'em in! Just try not to hit us!"

Cutthroat silently seconded the motion. A lightning-fabricated grenade fired from his omni-tool. A charging vorcha fell in pieces to the ground.

Sagev cursed himself. He'd forgotten the grenades. Another body, yet his count could not be changed. Two more bodies remained. Still.

Flight Commander Jaeger Vult evaded dumb-fire rockets with nothing more than a twitch of his control yoke. A third member of his wing went down.

He told himself they were acceptable losses.

He would have time to question that later.

"I can't give support without friendly signals."

"Solution inbound, Flight Commander."

Vult stiffened. That was the Observer's voice. Two observer signals blossomed in the nearby buildings. Powerful signals, by default. The Observer had gained a reputation for uncustomary generosity and Vult could see why. There had been…'occasions' where an observer had found so many of a unit wanting that they simply ordered air support to wipe out any who lacked their own IFF signal.

Yet another sacrifice by the famed Observer Actual.

Two clear outlines appeared to mark the besieged troopers. With an Observer's signal, they'd be visible through any potential barriers the city could put between Vult and the troopers. He could gauge their distances to the nearest millimeter. Unless he deliberately targeted them, there wasn't a chance they'd be victims of friendly fire.

"Flight Commander, I suggest you do what needs doing as fast as you can. Those mechs are going to fold like cardboard once the powered armor gets here."

"Vult to all units. You heard the Observer. Accuracy and precision," he released the safeties on his weapons and let the targeting VIs highlight areas most likely to contain enemy targets, "No friendly fire. This is a rescue mission, people!"

Sagev saw his end as the gunships opened fire. They couldn't know where he and his comrades were, so they'd just sweep the entire floor to be sure.

Death was four meters away.

There was no surviving the barrage. The speed of the sweep and the sheer rate of fire did not give any space between the heavy rounds. He and his would be blasted apart alongside their dual-wielding prey-

Death was three meters away.

-wait. The prey was not merely a batarian. He was a Hegemony trooper. The Blood Pack would gladly kill their own to dig out entrenched targets. The Hegemony would not.

Death was two meters away.

Retreat was out of the question. The heavy rounds would pierce further than he could travel in the precious few moments that he had. And he had no cover that could hold against such munitions. And diving forward would only deposit him in the street.

Death was one meter away.

One chance to live. A vorcha to his left was mulched from the waist up. Sagev discarded his rifle and leaped forward, taking him towards his would-be prey. The timing had to be perfect. But Sagev knew that it would be perfect. Battlefield mathematics simply did themselves for him.

He stiffened his body and rolled in mid-air.

Death was upon him.

His hunting cadre was dead. Any of the heavy rounds swarming around him could break his meager barriers and reduce his body to a bloody mess. He hung in the air, waiting for any one of thousands to find him.

Death was one meter away.

Sagev hit the ground in time with six corpses. Death did not make a second pass. He waited only a few seconds before he rose to his feet and retrieved his rifle.

He'd survived by hiding in his prey's shadow, and now he would become that shadow. Sagev could be patient when he needed to be.

His blades had been drawn, but went unused. He'd make up for the failed hunt by bagging an even bigger prize.

The batarians were on the run, but the city was surrounded. They needed to go to ground in a city with very few options left given the number of civilians and soldiers estimated to still be present. And unlike the Blood Pack, they did not leave their wounded to die. Instead, they let themselves be burdened by those who could no longer fight.

Sagev followed the batarian in silence, traveling in the shadow of his eyes.

Death's Garden loomed in Balak Ka'hairal's forward view.

Balak had no reason to criticize Adek as the site for a covert research station. Nobody came to Adek unless they were being paid to be there. Then again, it was hardly a 'covert' facility. Nothing was off the records. Just…restricted.

That bothered him. What the Hegemony didn't want its populace to know, it hid behind layers of screens and fronts. Those who slipped past those defenses were dealt with…well, people like Balak. Agents of the Special Interventions Unit. They conducted operations with such frequency that it had become a part of batarian culture, just as much as the social castes or enforced servitude. You didn't snoop in affairs beyond your caste. You simply didn't. To ask the average Hegemony batarian to do so would elicit confusion. It was tantamount to asking them to breathe underwater: their lot in life did not give them that ability, and if they tried they'd likely end up dead.

"Present authentication or you will be fired upon."

Balak had his SIU identification ready. He forwarded it wordlessly.

"I'm sorry, agent. Your clearance doesn't permit you to land here."

He'd been expecting that. A second set of codes was sent to the planet's surface. They were scooped from Fleet Commander Kent Ga'Dul's omni-tool after Balak had found his body. Balak's line of work and general demeanor did not make him many friends, but he had considered Kent to be as close to one as he generally got. The agent knew he'd approve of the use of his identification codes.

"You're clear to land," a voice, different from the first, said, "Took you long enough."

Balak's eyes widened. Now he was certain Adek was the destination he'd been seeking. He had the ear of someone important, someone who had actually followed Balak's path.

Perhaps fear should have been appropriate. He was setting down on a planet that could kill him if he so much as breathed the atmosphere, and on it was a well-hidden faction with ties to the Hegemony government and military that knew full well who he was and that he was coming.

And yet Balak did not hesitate to direct his ship's VI autopilot to dock at the location provided. Maybe it was confidence in his abilities and the resources at his disposal. Maybe it was a deep-seated desire to find his own death among all the others he had caused.

But far more likely was the simple fact that Balak Ka'hairal was arrogant.

The Director watched the Elkos Combine ship coast into Adek's atmosphere. Stolen, obviously. Its ship-ID had been scrubbed and replaced with a fake. A good fake, too. He had to dig for a few seconds before finding the original (long since scrapped) ship the ID had belonged to.

Besides traditional mass effect anti-air cannons, Adek had heavy missile launchers and a few GARDIAN turrets at its disposal. They were programmed to shoot down any spacecraft that entered within a designated range around the facility. The spacecraft was well within the range of Adek's defense cannons, but it hadn't entered the zero-tolerance killzone.

The Director sent a signal to countermand the turrets' preset orders. They let the ship pass.

The facility had a wing of Mantises configured for atmospheric combat. They weren't the standard A-58s that the regular Hegemony military employed. They were cutting-edge A-61s. Unless GDI came knocking with Firehawks, the facility Mantises could burn them out of the sky.

The flight commander already had his request in to the Director to take his birds into the air and kill the spacecraft once it entered Adek's atmosphere. He denied the request.

The ship followed the landing lights into one of the docking bays. Expensive as it was, it made only a low hum as it settled into its docking cradles. The heavy blast-doors closed behind it. The docking cradles were all designed with Adek's toxic atmosphere in mind. They were two-tiered: a heavy set of blast doors on the outside, and a second set separating the cradle and the ship from the main bay.

Automatic decontamination protocols sucked out the spore-laden air from the preliminary bay. White clouds sprayed from the wall, floor, and ceiling, killing what toxic bacteria remained behind. The Director could have killed the ship and its pilot there, too. The ship was the private craft of some high-caste somebody. It didn't have guns of any sort, and the pilot was unlikely to have any kind of ordinance that had even a prayer of breaching either sets of blast doors. Both could stand up to an interceptor ramming them at full speed. Even Command-tier det charges had little chance of causing anything more than superficial damage.

The Director let the second layer of doors cycle open without interference.

A ten-man squad of troopers had their rifles trained on the pilot when he stepped onto the deck. Most of them visibly flinched when he did. He had a shotgun of some kind on his back and a pistol on his hip, but nothing in his hands. And still, the troopers could sense the veritable aura of death that he radiated. It was justified. The Director had traced the trail of bodies he'd left behind him on his way to Adek.

He keyed open the bay's intercom.

"Stand down. Send him to my office," he ordered. The security feed showed the troopers parting to allow the pilot to pass, but not lowering their rifles. The Director didn't fault them. The pilot strode past them as though their rifles would not dare fire on one who led such a charmed life.

There were heavy defensive guns in place in the docking bay, too. They swiveled on the ceiling to track the pilot as he walked to the elevator. They were rated to kill even vehicles, but they did not receive their orders to fire.

The elevator opened and closed. The pilot was inside now. Given that it was the only elevator that could even reach the Director's office, it was also at his direct control. It was soundproof, too. He could have simply frozen it and ordered the squad to perforate the doors with their rifles. He did not. And so, the pilot lived.

Once it as ascended to the highest floor, it was within the indirect line-of-sight of the dual auto turrets that the Director had installed in the deepest corners of his office, flanking his desk. They had more than enough firepower to pierce the elevator doors. They were fixed on the closed doors, but they did not fire. And so, the pilot lived.

The doors opened. There was one thing the Director wanted to do before dealing with this nuisance once and for all.

The pilot stepped forward with a boldness few could match. He was the sort to demand the entire universe stop to explain itself rather than accept that some things were out of his control.

His name was Balak Ka'hairal. Born Q3, 2154. Agent of the Special Interventions Unit. Enlisted at-

The Director skipped forward. He didn't need to further analyze the details of the agent's life. The details had created him, yes. But they were irrelevant when faced with the complete picture. The Director switched to details of the current picture.

A particularly hardy vorcha had given him a name in his native tongue: The Last Door. The vorcha were surprisingly observant when it came to minor details. They had to be. It was the minor details that tended to be the ones that were fatal. But they saw a trend among galactic religions and faiths: portals. Gates, tunnels, and doors were all recurring imagery. Life was but a succession of doors, and death the last of them.

The Director half-wished he had a means of tracking that vorcha. He had met Balak Ka'hairal and been given sufficient reason to brand him the Grim Reaper, yet survived to tell of it.

The agent was a harbinger of death in the Hegemony and Terminus System, sometimes subtle but sometimes overt. A randomized natural disaster that struck without warning and without discrimination. The Last Door through which you would ever pass.

The Director reflected on all the doors he could have made Agent Ka'hairal's last to enter.

The agent walked through the door and onto the beautiful imported carpet.

It was asari-made. Their race had centuries of experience with subtly manipulating other sentients. Even their written language was designed to draw the eye. It was as alluring as their physical forms and body language.

This carpet was a great work. It had taken a considerable cost to make, but its message was blissfully simple, woven so intricately in its plainness that it could not be consciously seen.

The agent stepped forward, almost justified in his confidence. He had STG programs, bought and stolen, accessible with but a twitch of his fingers. He had a weapons and tech to slay a dozen men at close quarters and the moral compass to do it without a second thought.

And of course, he had his Last Arrow. SIU agents who lived beyond their first few years all found some form of Last Arrow. It was a final resort that they only invoked when death was certain, or a welcome alternative to their current situation. A man like Balak wouldn't think twice about taking a garden world with him in death. Within a week, Adek would be so ravaged by virus-bombs and nuclear ordinance that it couldn't be inhabited for centuries.

His armor was crafted to be nonthreatening, too. It looked far too generic to be befitting of a veteran SIU agent. That was a mistake in and of itself. Anyone who could afford the time and expense to see Balak's record would know that it held far more than it implied by appearance.

Yet despite all this, he failed to read the fine script of the carpet under him that subtly suggested,

'Stand here.'

The agent stepped forward with complete confidence.

For all his advantages, that confidence was 100% unwarranted.

The Director did not speak. Instead, he sent a command that triggered the neutrino plate beneath the carpet contained by the grounding pegs embedded in the ceiling.

It was the equivalent of an organic EMP. For seconds that lasted eternities, the agent was frozen it place. Then he fell facedown on the floor. If he were human, he'd have broken his nose.

He could not so much as blink during the pulse's effect. He would fall unconscious soon enough, but until then, he was frozen.

The Director stood and walked over to the fallen agent, crouching to put himself closer before speaking.

"I won't kill you. I want you to understand what you tried to destroy in your arrogance."

Feeling began to return to the agent's body, but it was alongside an increasing blackness creeping into his vision. He wouldn't be awake long enough to even reply. The Director input several commands into his omni-tool as he continued.

"Perhaps when you are Vigilant, you will be cured of that arrogance."

R&R, anon accepted. Same deal as usual.

I postponed this chapter more than I should have. A lot of proofreading coupled with a good number of additions made for a chapter that didn't get done in anything resembling a timely manner. The final product isn't as polished as I'd like, but that's a perpetually-increasing standard, so what the hell. If you see straightforward errors, call 'em out. They'll get fixed, and you'll get an acknowledgment.