Not the assassin part, but the batarian SIU part.Cyclone said:
Protoculture Effect (Robotech/Mass Effect
- Thread starter Cyclone
- Start date
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
I wouldn't necessarily say that their experiences make them any more innovative than the Citadel species. However, their different technological base does give them an advantage and make them the big monkey wrench in the Reapers' plans. Read Turtledove's The Road Not Taken for something comparable.RedWolff said:
And I wonder if you will ever stop pestering me about this when I post an update here. I'll post to FFN when I choose to. Not before.inuboy86 said:
Not a bad analogy.RedWolff said:
Most likely, this is what triggered the Sentinels to get involved in peace talks.RedWolff said:
Actually, I'm fairly sure that was the turians' motivation, both in canon and in this story. I'm far less convinced on the last idea, though. Certainly, there are some who believe that, however.RedWolff said:
You lost me. All we actually know about the SIU is that they're basically Movie Spetsnaz In Space, with very brutal training methods and a reputation for having no rules in combat. How do you get from that to it being hypocritical to be disgusted at turning sapient beings into cyborg zombie monsters?Iceblocks said:
Exactly.Nikas said:
13
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
I was a bit unsatisfied with the last few scenes, so here is a redo. And yes, obviously, I moved the mission itself to the beginning of the next chapter.
* * *
Kilika was a Special Intervention Unit commando. She was a soldier, a sniper, and a spy. And when the Hegemony needed it, an assassin. She was trained in stealth and intrusion, to kill quickly and efficiently with rifle or blade with equal proficiency.
She was most definitely not trained in demolitions.
The review of her skillset ran through her mind as she considered the massive threat looming before her. From second-hand reports passed on by the Turian Heirarchy, the Batarian Hegemony knew about the so-called "mecha" the humans used. A great many engineers and military theorists tried to envision what those machines -- and what fighting them -- would be like.
As she looked up at the colossus towering over her, Kilika strongly suspected that it would be an awful like what she was facing right now.
Her thoughts were broken as something large, heavy, and angular crashed into her, knocking her aside just as the colossus opened fire with its secondary guns; at this close range, its siege pulse cannon was uselessly unwieldy. She shook her head and frowned at Commander Shepard, who had tackled her out of the way.
"Hey, I owed you," he said. "Now, move!" He shoved her, and she stumbled away as the geth colossus unleashed a siege pulse. Shepard made it two steps before it struck the ground behind him and sent him flying.
The commander's world went black.
* * *
"-mander, do you copy?" Kaidan Alenko's voice screamed in his ear.
Shepard's head was ringing as his HMD -- scratch that, part of his HMD -- came into focus. He shook his head clear and realized he was lying face down in the dirt, and his face plate had been shattered, only some of it remaining in place and functional. He rolled over onto his back and noted that he was a considerable distance from where he had been, drag marks in the snow showing where someone had pulled him behind the cover of the Mako. The fact that the Mako was on fire and apparently abandoned did not put his mind at ease.
"I... I copy, Lieutenant," he said.
"I don't know how long I can hold this thing in place, sir, and I can't get a fix on it with my particle guns."
Shepard looked up and saw the geth colossus wrestling with the battloid-mode Thor. It looked like a stalemate, and the small arms fire coming from ground level didn't seem to have much effect. He frowned, then climbed onto the Mako. The particle cannon was slagged, its barrel melted, but that wasn't what he was looking for. He popped the hatch and dug around.
Disc grenades were similar to tech mines. They had a small eezo core and an encrypted receiver that gave its user a limited ability to control it with an omni-tool after throwing it. The eezo core also allowed the grenade to hover at a set altitude before detonating.
What he intended to do with it required nothing quite so fancy.
Scooping up the grenades, he charged the two wrestling titans, firing his thrusters and hopping up onto the colossus's back. He attached one of the grenades to the colossus's armor, fixing it in place, then slid back down and detonated it. The colossus let out a shriek, an alien sound that resembled nothing so much as a cross between tearing sheet metal and electronic feedback. It shook, trying to dislodge the Cyclone-clad human clinging to its back, but he managed to fire his thrusters and then grab hold of the breach he'd made in its armor.
He tossed the other five grenades into the breach, let go, and detonated them while he was still in freefall.
"That's it," he said, breaking the silence that followed. "From here on out, we're carrying demo charges on every ground mission."
* * *
Shepard was hard-pressed to keep his feet steady as he boarded the Normandy. For once, he decided, he wasn't going to try avoiding the post-mission physical. That colossus had rung his bell but good. Reconfiguring his Typhoon back to hovercycle mode, he paused to pull his helmet off. His hair clung to his head, glued in place by a mixture of sweat and something else.
He heard a gasp. "Shepard!"
He looked up and frowned. "What's wrong, Tali?"
"You... you're bleeding," the quarian said, pointing a hesitant finger at his forehead. "It... it's green."
"Huh?" he blinked and ran a gloved hand across his forehead, noting the green smear that appeared on it. "Oh, that." He shrugged. "That's easy enough to explain. I'm one quarter invid. On my mother's side."
"Oh."
"Yeah," he said with a shrug. "Invid have an uncanny knack for making different biochemistries work. The asari can eat their hearts out."
"Huh?"
"Sorry," he said, shaking his head. "Human idiom." He winced and stopped shaking his head. "And possibly a concussion."
* * *
Shepard stirred. It took him a moment to recognize where he was, the Normandy's medical bay. He looked around, trying to identify what had awakened him.
"Kaidan," he greeted the lieutenant. "How are you feeling?"
"Shouldn't I be asking you that, sir?"
Shepard sat up, then paused, letting his head clear. He looked at Kaidan and pointed out, "I'm not the one who nearly got eaten by my worst nightmare, Lieutenant."
Kaidan was too disciplined to flinch, but Shepard could feel the flare of dark energy. "I'm fine, sir."
Shepard considered that, then let it slide. "What did you find down there, anyway?"
"Looked like an independent survey or salvage team," Kaidan said. "Wounds showed signs of geth weapons fire. The geth, in turn, were trashed by the thresher maw."
Shepard sighed and nodded carefully. "Understood. Listen, Lieutenant, Doc says I'm off-duty while I recover from this concussion. I know it's going to be rough, new XO and all, but I trust Jane -- that is, Commander Hunter -- and I'm going to be relying on you to keep the crew from doing something stupid. To ease the transition, as it were."
"Will do, Skipper," Kaidan said. He had to give the commander credit; he certainly recovered quickly.
* * *
"This is not how I wanted to take my first command," LtCmdr Jane Hunter commented idly as she leaned against the railing near the CIC's command post.
"I get the feeling you knew the commander, ma'am," Kaidan said.
"Yeah," she nodded. "Back in the Academy, we were tight: me, John, and Jimmy Farmer."
"The Three Musketeers?"
"Hardly," Jane snorted, shaking her head. "More like the Three Terrors. We hogged the simulators and rode the training mecha to the breaking point. We just kept pushing the envelope."
"Wait," Kaidan frowned. "Wait, wait, wait. The Three Terrors? Of the Great Futility Raid?"
"Do not speak of that ever again," she warned him with a glare.
Kaidan snapped to attention and saluted. "Yes, ma'am!"
"Prep your fighter," she added. "You'll be providing the ground team with air support."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, turning to leave. He was halfway to the mecha bay when the thought struck him. Jimmy Farmer? he thought. It... no, it couldn't be. The commander would have mentioned that, wouldn't he?
For her part, Jane was looking over the readings distastefully. They were in orbit over the planet Maji, and there were signs of geth activity, which mean sending a ground team to investigate. John didn't play by the same rulebook as most Spacy officers, and neither did she. They were Special Operations Command N7 operatives, which meant that, unlike most Spacy officers, they got their hands dirty. Add in John's new status as a Spectre, and it was inevitable that he would take a more hands-on approach than was typical in the Spacy, which in turn led to the concussion that kept him confined to Medical.
Still, it left her with a headache. The ground team was short a team leader.
She couldn't, in good conscience, go and lead the ground team herself while John was still in Medical; that would be dereliction of duty, even if it technically fell within regs. The ground team itself, with its multi-species composition, required a delicate touch, which eliminated most of the regular Marine officers. Gunny Williams was a capable NCO, but with the batarian involvement and her own personal history, she was out of the question. John had benched her on the Casbin and Antibaar missions for that very reason.
Kaidan was a good officer, but his file indicated he was most comfortable in the cockpit of his fighter, and she was left wondering just how badly Akuze had really affected him. That left Taylor as the only remaining officer or senior NCO with experience dealing with the ground team John had assembled. Taylor got along well enough with Vakarian, bonding over the Mako, which was now undergoing repairs, but she wasn't sure he could deal with the krogan without getting his head bitten off, nevermind the batarian.
She could bench John's unconventional multi-species team and send a squad from the Normandy's regular Marine detachment -- it was an option she was seriously considering -- but the fact was, John's mismatched ground team was simply better than any regular Marine squad. If she had her druthers, she'd send an N7 SOC squad... but she and John were the only N7s on board. The best they had was an N5 Marine Force Recon team.
In the end, she decided, it would be Taylor's decision. If he felt he was up to it, he would lead John's ground team.
* * *
"Lead that crazy crew?" Jacob blurted out. "Uh, no offense, ma'am."
"None taken, Lieutenant," Jane said. "I needed your honest opinion on the matter. Dismissed."
She had certainly gotten it. She just hoped the Force Recon team could handle it. They were good -- anyone willing to drop into a combat zone from low orbit had to have a pair -- but the team was small, and they didn't know what forces the geth had on Maji.
* * *
"Hey, Skipper."
John looked up as GySgt Ashley Williams entered the sickbay. He'd read her file, and it made him glad to have her aboard, potential psychological consequences of Eden Prime notwithstanding. "Shit hot" -- which she had to be to make E-7 in only nine years -- didn't begin to describe it: She'd aced her fit-reps every time, and she had only one black mark on her record, namely the heavy losses her unit had taken at Torfan. The inquiry board had deemed those losses unavoidable, however, and she'd even received a medal for her actions during the incident. Still, he was a bit worried. She was pushing herself hard, and it wasn't going to be pretty when she finally burned out.
"Hello, Gunny," he said. "What brings you here?"
"Just checking up on you," she answered. "Getting a bit antsy lately, lot of time on my hands."
"You know why I benched you, Ash," he said, answering the unspoken accusation.
She ground her teeth and looked away. "I don't get it, Skipper. Why are we kowtowing to these... these aliens?"
John cocked an eyebrow. "You have a problem with non-humans, Ash?"
"What?" the NCO blurted out in surprise, looking back at him in shock. "No, sir! Karbarrans, invid, zentraedi, quarians, I've got no problem with any of them. Hell, I'm at least half zentraedi myself, and my grandmother's a Praxian. But turians? Asari? Batarians? We were at war with these people not that long ago, Commander."
"Are you forgetting how we met the zentraedi and invid, Gunny?" he asked, somewhat bemused.
"But we won those wars, sir," she pointed out as she started pacing. "We established ourselves; we earned their respect. We haven't really had a chance to do that with the Citadel races, and Parliament has us begging at the Council's table for scraps instead of standing on our own and showing them what we're capable of. We're better than that, sir, and we deserve a chance to prove it."
John had to admit, Ash had a point. The Relay War had lasted three years and ended inconclusively. A lot of bad blood lingered from that, leading to the cold war that followed. Even with projects like the Normandy to try and bring them together, things remained strained between the Citadel and the Sentinels.
"I understand, Ash," he said gently. "Believe me, I do, but we're not going to get far if we insist on kicking everyone's asses first." He paused, then added, "Okay, it would probably work with the krogans and maybe the turians, but probably not anyone else. As for the batarians... we have our orders."
She growled in frustration.
* * *
After Antibaar, taking out the next geth outpost they found -- on Maji -- had proven to be a much simpler task, almost routine, even with the Mako down for repairs and Shepard himself benched due to his concussion. Kaidan took down the heavy geth defenses with air-to-surface missiles, and the Marine Force Recon team had gone in with Cyclones to mop up, taking only light casualties and no fatalities. It made Shepard wary as they entered the Gagarin system.
It seemed he wasn't the only one concerned, either, as the batarian commando had joined him in the CIC, standing behind and to his left. "Something wrong, Lieutenant?" he asked.
"Rayingri," she murmured. "It's a rough planet, but promising in mineral content. A research team was sent out there a couple of months ago to do some surveys."
"And?"
"They went dark a week ago," she said, her voice clipped. "It's not uncommon for prospectors to lose touch for days or even weeks at a time, but..."
"But given the timing," Shepard continued, nodding in understanding.
"Precisely."
They lapsed into silence.
"Thanks, by the way," he added.
"Hmm?"
"For pulling me to cover while I was blacked out on Antibaar." It was a guess, but no one else had been in the right position to do it.
"Your death would have been a black mark against me and my people," she replied blandly.
"How's the head, John?" Jane asked, stepping up on right side.
"Better," he answered with a shrug. "The doc cleared me for bridge duty. You feel up to leading a ground mission? The Marines did fine on Maji, but with a batarian research outpost there, I'm sure Lieutenant Kilika would rather be going, and I'd be more comfortable with an N7 in charge down there."
"Not a problem. Something wrong?"
"Just a gut feeling."
* * *
Codex: Invid
The invid are perhaps the most important species in the Sentinels Alliance, crucial to the production of the Flower of Life and protoculture which allows the Sentinels exclusive access to robotechnology. Little of their history is known to outsiders, beyond the fact that they were driven from their original homeworld by the Haydonites long before Zor initiated first contact between the invid and the Tirolians. During the rise of the Robotech Masters, the invid's adopted homeworld of Optera was razed, and the invid split between the Regent and the Regess.
First contact between Earth forces and the invid occurred in late 2030, after the end of the Second Robotech War on Earth, when forces under the Regent's command engaged Expeditionary Force units in former Tirolian space. In 2031, the other half of the invid under the Regess successfully invaded and conquered Earth, one of the few planets known to be able to support the Flower of Life. The Regent and his forces were subsequently defeated by the Sentinels Alliance, and the Regess was later convinced to depart Earth during the Expeditionary Force's final attempt to retake Earth in July of 2044.
During the Fourth Robotech War which followed -- the Haydonite War -- the Regess's invid would return to assist humanity against the Children of Shadows and actually join the Sentinels Alliance originally formed to fight the Regent's invid in the 2030s. Since then, despite tensions with the other Sentinel members, the invid have remained a staunch ally of the United Earth Alliance, even interbreeding with humanity on a number of occasions.
* * *
Kilika was a Special Intervention Unit commando. She was a soldier, a sniper, and a spy. And when the Hegemony needed it, an assassin. She was trained in stealth and intrusion, to kill quickly and efficiently with rifle or blade with equal proficiency.
She was most definitely not trained in demolitions.
The review of her skillset ran through her mind as she considered the massive threat looming before her. From second-hand reports passed on by the Turian Heirarchy, the Batarian Hegemony knew about the so-called "mecha" the humans used. A great many engineers and military theorists tried to envision what those machines -- and what fighting them -- would be like.
As she looked up at the colossus towering over her, Kilika strongly suspected that it would be an awful like what she was facing right now.
Her thoughts were broken as something large, heavy, and angular crashed into her, knocking her aside just as the colossus opened fire with its secondary guns; at this close range, its siege pulse cannon was uselessly unwieldy. She shook her head and frowned at Commander Shepard, who had tackled her out of the way.
"Hey, I owed you," he said. "Now, move!" He shoved her, and she stumbled away as the geth colossus unleashed a siege pulse. Shepard made it two steps before it struck the ground behind him and sent him flying.
The commander's world went black.
* * *
"-mander, do you copy?" Kaidan Alenko's voice screamed in his ear.
Shepard's head was ringing as his HMD -- scratch that, part of his HMD -- came into focus. He shook his head clear and realized he was lying face down in the dirt, and his face plate had been shattered, only some of it remaining in place and functional. He rolled over onto his back and noted that he was a considerable distance from where he had been, drag marks in the snow showing where someone had pulled him behind the cover of the Mako. The fact that the Mako was on fire and apparently abandoned did not put his mind at ease.
"I... I copy, Lieutenant," he said.
"I don't know how long I can hold this thing in place, sir, and I can't get a fix on it with my particle guns."
Shepard looked up and saw the geth colossus wrestling with the battloid-mode Thor. It looked like a stalemate, and the small arms fire coming from ground level didn't seem to have much effect. He frowned, then climbed onto the Mako. The particle cannon was slagged, its barrel melted, but that wasn't what he was looking for. He popped the hatch and dug around.
Disc grenades were similar to tech mines. They had a small eezo core and an encrypted receiver that gave its user a limited ability to control it with an omni-tool after throwing it. The eezo core also allowed the grenade to hover at a set altitude before detonating.
What he intended to do with it required nothing quite so fancy.
Scooping up the grenades, he charged the two wrestling titans, firing his thrusters and hopping up onto the colossus's back. He attached one of the grenades to the colossus's armor, fixing it in place, then slid back down and detonated it. The colossus let out a shriek, an alien sound that resembled nothing so much as a cross between tearing sheet metal and electronic feedback. It shook, trying to dislodge the Cyclone-clad human clinging to its back, but he managed to fire his thrusters and then grab hold of the breach he'd made in its armor.
He tossed the other five grenades into the breach, let go, and detonated them while he was still in freefall.
"That's it," he said, breaking the silence that followed. "From here on out, we're carrying demo charges on every ground mission."
* * *
Shepard was hard-pressed to keep his feet steady as he boarded the Normandy. For once, he decided, he wasn't going to try avoiding the post-mission physical. That colossus had rung his bell but good. Reconfiguring his Typhoon back to hovercycle mode, he paused to pull his helmet off. His hair clung to his head, glued in place by a mixture of sweat and something else.
He heard a gasp. "Shepard!"
He looked up and frowned. "What's wrong, Tali?"
"You... you're bleeding," the quarian said, pointing a hesitant finger at his forehead. "It... it's green."
"Huh?" he blinked and ran a gloved hand across his forehead, noting the green smear that appeared on it. "Oh, that." He shrugged. "That's easy enough to explain. I'm one quarter invid. On my mother's side."
"Oh."
"Yeah," he said with a shrug. "Invid have an uncanny knack for making different biochemistries work. The asari can eat their hearts out."
"Huh?"
"Sorry," he said, shaking his head. "Human idiom." He winced and stopped shaking his head. "And possibly a concussion."
* * *
Shepard stirred. It took him a moment to recognize where he was, the Normandy's medical bay. He looked around, trying to identify what had awakened him.
"Kaidan," he greeted the lieutenant. "How are you feeling?"
"Shouldn't I be asking you that, sir?"
Shepard sat up, then paused, letting his head clear. He looked at Kaidan and pointed out, "I'm not the one who nearly got eaten by my worst nightmare, Lieutenant."
Kaidan was too disciplined to flinch, but Shepard could feel the flare of dark energy. "I'm fine, sir."
Shepard considered that, then let it slide. "What did you find down there, anyway?"
"Looked like an independent survey or salvage team," Kaidan said. "Wounds showed signs of geth weapons fire. The geth, in turn, were trashed by the thresher maw."
Shepard sighed and nodded carefully. "Understood. Listen, Lieutenant, Doc says I'm off-duty while I recover from this concussion. I know it's going to be rough, new XO and all, but I trust Jane -- that is, Commander Hunter -- and I'm going to be relying on you to keep the crew from doing something stupid. To ease the transition, as it were."
"Will do, Skipper," Kaidan said. He had to give the commander credit; he certainly recovered quickly.
* * *
"This is not how I wanted to take my first command," LtCmdr Jane Hunter commented idly as she leaned against the railing near the CIC's command post.
"I get the feeling you knew the commander, ma'am," Kaidan said.
"Yeah," she nodded. "Back in the Academy, we were tight: me, John, and Jimmy Farmer."
"The Three Musketeers?"
"Hardly," Jane snorted, shaking her head. "More like the Three Terrors. We hogged the simulators and rode the training mecha to the breaking point. We just kept pushing the envelope."
"Wait," Kaidan frowned. "Wait, wait, wait. The Three Terrors? Of the Great Futility Raid?"
"Do not speak of that ever again," she warned him with a glare.
Kaidan snapped to attention and saluted. "Yes, ma'am!"
"Prep your fighter," she added. "You'll be providing the ground team with air support."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, turning to leave. He was halfway to the mecha bay when the thought struck him. Jimmy Farmer? he thought. It... no, it couldn't be. The commander would have mentioned that, wouldn't he?
For her part, Jane was looking over the readings distastefully. They were in orbit over the planet Maji, and there were signs of geth activity, which mean sending a ground team to investigate. John didn't play by the same rulebook as most Spacy officers, and neither did she. They were Special Operations Command N7 operatives, which meant that, unlike most Spacy officers, they got their hands dirty. Add in John's new status as a Spectre, and it was inevitable that he would take a more hands-on approach than was typical in the Spacy, which in turn led to the concussion that kept him confined to Medical.
Still, it left her with a headache. The ground team was short a team leader.
She couldn't, in good conscience, go and lead the ground team herself while John was still in Medical; that would be dereliction of duty, even if it technically fell within regs. The ground team itself, with its multi-species composition, required a delicate touch, which eliminated most of the regular Marine officers. Gunny Williams was a capable NCO, but with the batarian involvement and her own personal history, she was out of the question. John had benched her on the Casbin and Antibaar missions for that very reason.
Kaidan was a good officer, but his file indicated he was most comfortable in the cockpit of his fighter, and she was left wondering just how badly Akuze had really affected him. That left Taylor as the only remaining officer or senior NCO with experience dealing with the ground team John had assembled. Taylor got along well enough with Vakarian, bonding over the Mako, which was now undergoing repairs, but she wasn't sure he could deal with the krogan without getting his head bitten off, nevermind the batarian.
She could bench John's unconventional multi-species team and send a squad from the Normandy's regular Marine detachment -- it was an option she was seriously considering -- but the fact was, John's mismatched ground team was simply better than any regular Marine squad. If she had her druthers, she'd send an N7 SOC squad... but she and John were the only N7s on board. The best they had was an N5 Marine Force Recon team.
In the end, she decided, it would be Taylor's decision. If he felt he was up to it, he would lead John's ground team.
* * *
"Lead that crazy crew?" Jacob blurted out. "Uh, no offense, ma'am."
"None taken, Lieutenant," Jane said. "I needed your honest opinion on the matter. Dismissed."
She had certainly gotten it. She just hoped the Force Recon team could handle it. They were good -- anyone willing to drop into a combat zone from low orbit had to have a pair -- but the team was small, and they didn't know what forces the geth had on Maji.
* * *
"Hey, Skipper."
John looked up as GySgt Ashley Williams entered the sickbay. He'd read her file, and it made him glad to have her aboard, potential psychological consequences of Eden Prime notwithstanding. "Shit hot" -- which she had to be to make E-7 in only nine years -- didn't begin to describe it: She'd aced her fit-reps every time, and she had only one black mark on her record, namely the heavy losses her unit had taken at Torfan. The inquiry board had deemed those losses unavoidable, however, and she'd even received a medal for her actions during the incident. Still, he was a bit worried. She was pushing herself hard, and it wasn't going to be pretty when she finally burned out.
"Hello, Gunny," he said. "What brings you here?"
"Just checking up on you," she answered. "Getting a bit antsy lately, lot of time on my hands."
"You know why I benched you, Ash," he said, answering the unspoken accusation.
She ground her teeth and looked away. "I don't get it, Skipper. Why are we kowtowing to these... these aliens?"
John cocked an eyebrow. "You have a problem with non-humans, Ash?"
"What?" the NCO blurted out in surprise, looking back at him in shock. "No, sir! Karbarrans, invid, zentraedi, quarians, I've got no problem with any of them. Hell, I'm at least half zentraedi myself, and my grandmother's a Praxian. But turians? Asari? Batarians? We were at war with these people not that long ago, Commander."
"Are you forgetting how we met the zentraedi and invid, Gunny?" he asked, somewhat bemused.
"But we won those wars, sir," she pointed out as she started pacing. "We established ourselves; we earned their respect. We haven't really had a chance to do that with the Citadel races, and Parliament has us begging at the Council's table for scraps instead of standing on our own and showing them what we're capable of. We're better than that, sir, and we deserve a chance to prove it."
John had to admit, Ash had a point. The Relay War had lasted three years and ended inconclusively. A lot of bad blood lingered from that, leading to the cold war that followed. Even with projects like the Normandy to try and bring them together, things remained strained between the Citadel and the Sentinels.
"I understand, Ash," he said gently. "Believe me, I do, but we're not going to get far if we insist on kicking everyone's asses first." He paused, then added, "Okay, it would probably work with the krogans and maybe the turians, but probably not anyone else. As for the batarians... we have our orders."
She growled in frustration.
* * *
After Antibaar, taking out the next geth outpost they found -- on Maji -- had proven to be a much simpler task, almost routine, even with the Mako down for repairs and Shepard himself benched due to his concussion. Kaidan took down the heavy geth defenses with air-to-surface missiles, and the Marine Force Recon team had gone in with Cyclones to mop up, taking only light casualties and no fatalities. It made Shepard wary as they entered the Gagarin system.
It seemed he wasn't the only one concerned, either, as the batarian commando had joined him in the CIC, standing behind and to his left. "Something wrong, Lieutenant?" he asked.
"Rayingri," she murmured. "It's a rough planet, but promising in mineral content. A research team was sent out there a couple of months ago to do some surveys."
"And?"
"They went dark a week ago," she said, her voice clipped. "It's not uncommon for prospectors to lose touch for days or even weeks at a time, but..."
"But given the timing," Shepard continued, nodding in understanding.
"Precisely."
They lapsed into silence.
"Thanks, by the way," he added.
"Hmm?"
"For pulling me to cover while I was blacked out on Antibaar." It was a guess, but no one else had been in the right position to do it.
"Your death would have been a black mark against me and my people," she replied blandly.
"How's the head, John?" Jane asked, stepping up on right side.
"Better," he answered with a shrug. "The doc cleared me for bridge duty. You feel up to leading a ground mission? The Marines did fine on Maji, but with a batarian research outpost there, I'm sure Lieutenant Kilika would rather be going, and I'd be more comfortable with an N7 in charge down there."
"Not a problem. Something wrong?"
"Just a gut feeling."
* * *
Codex: Invid
The invid are perhaps the most important species in the Sentinels Alliance, crucial to the production of the Flower of Life and protoculture which allows the Sentinels exclusive access to robotechnology. Little of their history is known to outsiders, beyond the fact that they were driven from their original homeworld by the Haydonites long before Zor initiated first contact between the invid and the Tirolians. During the rise of the Robotech Masters, the invid's adopted homeworld of Optera was razed, and the invid split between the Regent and the Regess.
First contact between Earth forces and the invid occurred in late 2030, after the end of the Second Robotech War on Earth, when forces under the Regent's command engaged Expeditionary Force units in former Tirolian space. In 2031, the other half of the invid under the Regess successfully invaded and conquered Earth, one of the few planets known to be able to support the Flower of Life. The Regent and his forces were subsequently defeated by the Sentinels Alliance, and the Regess was later convinced to depart Earth during the Expeditionary Force's final attempt to retake Earth in July of 2044.
During the Fourth Robotech War which followed -- the Haydonite War -- the Regess's invid would return to assist humanity against the Children of Shadows and actually join the Sentinels Alliance originally formed to fight the Regent's invid in the 2030s. Since then, despite tensions with the other Sentinel members, the invid have remained a staunch ally of the United Earth Alliance, even interbreeding with humanity on a number of occasions.
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
I will say this. Contrary to popular belief, Ashley's comment about Earth's Parliament "kowtowing" to the Citadel Council is actually not true. They are making compromises, signing treaties that do not effectively impact Earth's policies or which they agree with anyway in order to allow the Citadel Council to save face. A clear example of the former is the Treaty of Farixen, which has no effect whatsoever on the UEDF, because the UEDF does not and never has relied on spinal mass accelerator cannons; the Citadel Conventions, on the other hand, are an example of the latter, as Earth is gunshy about planet busters due to the Neutron S missile fiasco that nearly destroyed Earth.
Most turians believe they would have defeated Earth had the cease-fire not happened. Most humans believe the opposite. Neither knows for sure, and that ambiguity is what bothers most people; both sides want to prove it. Parliament wants to avoid a war with the Citadel not because they don't think they can win, but because the costs would far outweigh any benefit.
Most turians believe they would have defeated Earth had the cease-fire not happened. Most humans believe the opposite. Neither knows for sure, and that ambiguity is what bothers most people; both sides want to prove it. Parliament wants to avoid a war with the Citadel not because they don't think they can win, but because the costs would far outweigh any benefit.
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
I wouldn't say that the Robotech Wars are precisely fresh in their minds -- it was over a hundred years ago, after all -- but it's something that's difficult to forget regardless, especially given they were largely fought on Earth.
The turians, on the other hand, haven't faced a serious war, one which threatened their very civilization or their species since the Krogan Rebellions nearly 1,400 years ago.
But yeah, it's a matter of pride, largely.
Now, why did it take three years instead of three months to get a cease-fire? Panic, mostly. They got disjointed reports that someone was opening up dormant relays willy-nilly, then suddenly, they're at war with a species that can hold its own against the turians. Initial thought is that they've got their hands on a new Rachni War.
Specifically, at the three month point which the Citadel Council intervened in the OTL, the turians were pushed back out of Shanxi space by reinforcements from Space Station Freedom in Arcturus. Admiral Drescher pursued the turian fleet into the fringes of Citadel space, intent on destroying their forward supply bases. This resulted in a bit of panic. The Turian Heirarchy gears up for war, the salarian Special Tasks Group is trying to infiltrate and get more intel, while the asari by and large take a wait-and-see approach. After destroying the nearby facilities and running head-long into a much more impressive turian border fleet, Admiral Drescher withdraws back to Alliance space to regroup. The turians strike back at Shanxi, and the war basically continues both in orbit and on the ground there.
The turians, on the other hand, haven't faced a serious war, one which threatened their very civilization or their species since the Krogan Rebellions nearly 1,400 years ago.
But yeah, it's a matter of pride, largely.
Now, why did it take three years instead of three months to get a cease-fire? Panic, mostly. They got disjointed reports that someone was opening up dormant relays willy-nilly, then suddenly, they're at war with a species that can hold its own against the turians. Initial thought is that they've got their hands on a new Rachni War.
Specifically, at the three month point which the Citadel Council intervened in the OTL, the turians were pushed back out of Shanxi space by reinforcements from Space Station Freedom in Arcturus. Admiral Drescher pursued the turian fleet into the fringes of Citadel space, intent on destroying their forward supply bases. This resulted in a bit of panic. The Turian Heirarchy gears up for war, the salarian Special Tasks Group is trying to infiltrate and get more intel, while the asari by and large take a wait-and-see approach. After destroying the nearby facilities and running head-long into a much more impressive turian border fleet, Admiral Drescher withdraws back to Alliance space to regroup. The turians strike back at Shanxi, and the war basically continues both in orbit and on the ground there.
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
That time will come, and when it does, someone will be in for a very big surprise.Gyre said:You know, I just have this vision of Soverign, or Harbinger being on the wrong end of a reflex cannon.
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
I'm fairly certain the SDF-1 didn't actually fire its main gun during the battle in Force of Arms at all. I remember that being something that puzzled me for the longest time.
And I'm quite familiar with the Centaur. It plays a rather large role in Closer to Home.
And I'm quite familiar with the Centaur. It plays a rather large role in Closer to Home.
I think they may have fired it at the very beginning of the battle. At least, there is a beam that matches the main gun in the initial barrage.Cyclone said:
Harry Leferts
Suave Shadow Cabal Kaiju
That was the Grand Cannon I believe. And one idea why they never fired the main cannon being that they couldn't fire the secondary guns (secondary to the main cannon anyways) for a few split moments after and they wanted to do as much damage as possible in as wide an area as possible. Then there was the Pin-Point Barriers and the engines (which were redlining) sucking up power.Rolfson said:
No. Watch Force of Arms again. When Gloval gives the order to fire for the first time, we see a barrage of energy from the Allied fleet. Most is the light blueish color of Zent weapons, but at the center is a bright orange beam that looks like the main gun.Harry Leferts said:
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
...RedWolff said:
I spent over three paragraphs on that when they made their first appearance in chapter three and another paragraph in chapter four. What more do you want?
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
I work with what I've got. Babylon 5 gave us a lot of data on the various ships and how they fared against each other. In the Beginning actually showed us the Earth-Minbari War. That gives me something to build on.RedWolff said:
Mass Effect, on the other hand, gives us very little footage and data on ship to ship combat or even the names and capabilities of the various ship designs. What little info we have is bland and generic, a lot of "broad strokes" effect. And the only thing they have showing anything of the First Contact War is... well... Evolution, which is largely inapplicable (for various reasons) and shows nothing of the space battles.
I just don't have enough hard data on the ships, the tactics, the people, or the doctrines that would remain unchanged from canon. We know the name, all told, of one turian ship, as far as I can recall, the Verrikan.
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
Since you brought it up, the heretics haven't fielded any mecha-scale platforms because they have not seen a need to do so. Yet.
The Salarian Union and the Asari Republics have analyzed the data on mecha and pretty much discarded the idea. They simply do not mesh with their military doctrines.
The Turian Hierarchy, on the other hand, is split down the middle. Some are quite interested, and they've got a few projects going, but others scoff at the idea, convinced that traditional combined arms tactics are quite sufficient. They do have a few prototypes, but nothing battle-ready, as the tech is too new to them, and they're being cautious on it.
At the opposite extreme, the Batarian Hegemony would love to get their hands on mecha, but their prototypes are... flawed, to say the least, with somewhat explosive results, hence their focus on theoretical anti-mecha infantry tactics. They're a bit too ambitious and reckless, hence the problems they've run into.
That answer your questions?
The Salarian Union and the Asari Republics have analyzed the data on mecha and pretty much discarded the idea. They simply do not mesh with their military doctrines.
The Turian Hierarchy, on the other hand, is split down the middle. Some are quite interested, and they've got a few projects going, but others scoff at the idea, convinced that traditional combined arms tactics are quite sufficient. They do have a few prototypes, but nothing battle-ready, as the tech is too new to them, and they're being cautious on it.
At the opposite extreme, the Batarian Hegemony would love to get their hands on mecha, but their prototypes are... flawed, to say the least, with somewhat explosive results, hence their focus on theoretical anti-mecha infantry tactics. They're a bit too ambitious and reckless, hence the problems they've run into.
That answer your questions?
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
Yes, I was thinking of the scene from Iron Man 2 when I was thinking of batarian research into mecha.
Mind you, none of them are united, monolithic governments. Of them all, only the salarians have completely discarded the idea of mecha, as their military doctrine relies on making all forms of unsubtle combat completely unnecessary. There is a very small minority of asari who are working on mecha -- and let's just say some of the ideas they've got are very, very scary; imagine a battloid control interface built with biotic implant technology, for example -- just as there is a small minority of batarians who think of mecha as a useless boondoggle and waste of resources. Side note, the volus are rather interested in mecha as well.
Mind you, this is about full-scale mecha, not powered armor. Everyone is interested in powered armor, as evidenced by the Predator P. Everyone is pretty much convinced that veritechs are probably outside their tech range until they can get the basics of mecha down... well, everyone except the batarians, which is something else that's causing them problems.
The quarians have been tinkering with arming and armoring small-scale civilian mecha purchased from the humans, but that's about it. Their R&D is still focused on anti-geth weaponry and electronic warfare.
One final note: All of what I say that isn't in-story or in a codex entry is subject to change at my whim.
Mind you, none of them are united, monolithic governments. Of them all, only the salarians have completely discarded the idea of mecha, as their military doctrine relies on making all forms of unsubtle combat completely unnecessary. There is a very small minority of asari who are working on mecha -- and let's just say some of the ideas they've got are very, very scary; imagine a battloid control interface built with biotic implant technology, for example -- just as there is a small minority of batarians who think of mecha as a useless boondoggle and waste of resources. Side note, the volus are rather interested in mecha as well.
Mind you, this is about full-scale mecha, not powered armor. Everyone is interested in powered armor, as evidenced by the Predator P. Everyone is pretty much convinced that veritechs are probably outside their tech range until they can get the basics of mecha down... well, everyone except the batarians, which is something else that's causing them problems.
The quarians have been tinkering with arming and armoring small-scale civilian mecha purchased from the humans, but that's about it. Their R&D is still focused on anti-geth weaponry and electronic warfare.
One final note: All of what I say that isn't in-story or in a codex entry is subject to change at my whim.
I can see them more or less dropping "mecha" per say, and just integrating the stuff straight into their suits. Most of the Volus in the game have various levels of a Napoleon complex anywayCyclone said:
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
Well, to be fair, Shepard's human, and the volus as a whole have... issues... with humans.SotF said:
14
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
Interesting how all the talk about the Mass Effect species' research has been focused on mecha. But the Robotech species have a lot of other technology the Mass Effect species would love to get their hands on just as much.
The batarians aren't completely hopeless at R&D, and please remember, unlike the OTL, the Batarian Hegemony is still part of the Citadel. Here's what chapter eleven looks like right now:
* * *
John Shepard resisted the urge to pace the Normandy's CIC as he waited on the ground team's report.
"Commander, we've got incoming!" Negulesco called. "Two ships just dropped out of FTL, cruiserweight. Profiles are geth."
The Spectre's eyes widened as he ran through their options. He couldn't abandon the ground team, but a heavy cruiser and a frigate didn't stand a chance against two cruisers. That was assuming the batarians would even-...
"Incoming transmission from the Ashar, Commander. Patching it through."
"Commander Shepard, I hope you don't mind if we take care of this little problem, do you?" The batarian captain's voice was almost gleeful.
"Go right ahead, Captain," Shepard said cautiously.
"With pleasure."
When the transmission ended, Shepard frowned. "Negulesco, monitor the Ashar with everything we've got. Let's see what they're up to."
"They're orienting their bow toward the geth ships, sir, and... it seems to be separating. Now they've cut their engines; they're drifting sir. Wait! I'm reading energy building up- oh my God!"
Shepard's eyes darted to the video feeds of the external cameras, flicking across until he saw the Ashar, a brilliant beam of energy forming between the separated bow sections before lancing out at the geth cruisers, annihilating them both.
"My God," he echoed. "They have a reflex cannon."
* * *
There were times when Jane Hunter really hated John Shepard's gut. It had an annoying tendency to be right at all the wrong times. She was United Earth Spacy Special Operations Command, an N7 operative, a veteran who had seen more than her fair share of bloody battlefields and had proven her ability to remain cool under fire. That didn't mean she couldn't get nervous, however, and the spooky atmosphere as they approached the research outpost wasn't helping.
When she got back to the Normandy, she was going to have to spar with him a bit so she could hit him a few times. Or more than a few times. In the fabled gut.
Kilika followed the human woman to the research outpost. She was armed, as always, with a sniper rifle, a machine pistol, and her knives. The knife blades were mass effect compressed alloys, and small mass effect generators in the hilts automatically adjusted the blades' mass on the fly, allowing her to wield them as though they were light as a feather while striking with the weight of a full-grown man behind each blow.
"This is Lieutenant Kilika, Special Intervention Unit," she radioed again as they approached. "If anyone can hear me, please respond."
No answer.
"Commander." That was the other human woman, the medic. "Those things near the building. We saw those before, on Eden Prime. The geth were using them to turn people into... into zombies."
Kilika did not know what a zombie was, but she felt her insides knot up anyway. This could not be good.
"Understood, Corpsman."
They continued on in silence, entering the underground research facility, only to be confronted with a horror the batarian commando couldn't have conceived of.
They had once been batarians, that much was obvious, but their bodies were twisted and broken, yet they moved with an unnatural speed, twitching and jerking in a mockery of life, and their eyes and mouths glowed with an unholy blue light.
"Put 'em down, people." Hunter's voice was tight, controlled, hard. She had barely given the order when Kilika drew her machine pistol and opened fire -- it was too tight for her sniper rifle -- and when it beeped a complaint, she holstered the overheated weapon and charged in, blades flashing.
She was SIU. She knew the most efficient ways to use her blades to kill just about every species known to batariankind, but it was her own people she was most intimately familiar with, and she used that knowledge to deadly effect. Between that and the gunfire from the rest of the squad, the room was clear in seconds.
Kilika turned and frowned. One of the... creatures... was dragging itself feebly across the floor toward her. Or more accurately, toward the body lying at her feet. Its legs had been blown clean off, and it was leaving a trail of its own insides behind. It should have been long dead from blood loss... but then again, whatever was leaking from their wounds, it wasn't blood.
All four of her eyes widened in shock and disgust as the lone survivor started tearing off parts of the body in front of her and stuffing them in its mouth. The blue glow seemed to grow brighter, and she could see its guts slowly stitching themselves back together as it fed. She took two steps over and crouched by the pitiful looking creature. She stabbed down with both blades, then scissored them, decapitating it, and the blue glow finally died. She took a closer look at the body and reached out to touch it, then snatched her hand back when she realized it was trembling.
"Who would do this?" she demanded, looking up at the humans. "They were surveyors! Researchers!"
It was then that one of the doors leading out of the room slid open, disgorging more of the twisted cannibals. Kilika turned, drawing her machine pistol again, and opened fire from where she crouched. Behind the creatures were geth, led by a pair of grey-and-yellow destroyers, but Kilika held her ground. She locked down her emotions and stuck to short, controlled bursts to keep her pistol from overheating.
She needn't have bothered, as a swarm of Recluse-D micro-missiles soon rendered the point moot.
Kilika stood up, looking down at what had become of the researchers stationed here. A hand touched her shoulder, and she shrugged it off. Taking the hint, Hunter backed off. Good. She needed no comfort from a human.
* * *
Shepard rubbed his eyes as he reread the mission report in front of him. The facility on Rayingri had been just another victim of the geth incursion, and they still hadn't found the geth's forward operating base in the Skyllian Verge. At the moment, they were working on triangulating the signals the various outposts were receiving with the incoming vectors of the two geth cruisers, but it was a slow-going affair, and it would be a while before they got any results from it.
At the moment, though, he had other concerns, concerns which the EIA was most assuredly going to shit a brick over. Like the fact that the batarians had a working reflex cannon and decided to demonstrate that fact to them. Like the report of the husks on Rayingri actually eating their fallen comrades and apparently regenerating from it. Like the request before him now which he was trying to distract himself from with the aforementioned mission report.
"You want to what?"
"I wish to continue assisting your mission against Saren after you leave the Skyllian Verge," Kilika answered, her voice clipped. "Saren and the geth are a threat to batarian and human interests alike. Whatever they are planning must not be allowed to succeed."
John wondered just when the hell the Normandy flew into the Twilight Zone.
"I'll have to clear that with the Alliance," he answered finally. "This ship is technically on loan, and there may be security concerns."
"Understood, Commander."
"You've cleared this with your chain of command, right? I don't want there to be any mix ups."
"I will, sir."
* * *
Notanban was a gas giant in the Grissom system, and according to their signal analysis, the source of the transmissions coordinating geth activity in the Skyllian Verge was nearby. A fragmentary transmission allowed them to localize it to a section of Solcrum, Notanban's largest moon. Aerial reconnaissance marked out a probable structure, and the team went down, still under its temporary leadership.
Jane scanned the defenses around the geth facility. It was larger than the others and heavily defended. The watch towers were manned by geth, too far away for her to identify the specific type, but of larger concern were the two geth colossi stomping a patrol circuit around the compound and the geth fighters overhead, currently dueling with Kaidan's fighter.
John had been wrong about Rayingri. She should have known better than to relax before the other shoe dropped.
"Bhatia," she said, "you're with me; we'll be taking the demolition charges. Urdnot, Jenkins, head to this waypoint," she marked the location on the terrain map in her omni-tool and transmitted the data over, "then on my signal... make some noise, focus on whichever colossus is closest. Vakarian, Kilika, I want you two on overwatch, providing sniper cover; let me know when you're in position, then wait for my signal and hit the tower guards first."
Jane kept a watchful eye on Bhatia, but the corpsman was holding together pretty well, all things considered, as she gingerly handled the CT-39 demolition charge. About the size of a dinner plate, the military demolition charges were designed with a cobalt-thermite charge for various purposes, ranging from combat engineering to the destruction of sensitive technology. It would also do nicely for bringing down one of those colossi.
Moving quickly and rapidly from cover to cover, they positioned themselves on the far side of the compound, near the colossi's patrol circuit. "Jenkins?"
Jenkins's indicator light on her HMD winked green. "Vakarian, Kilika, go."
Suddenly, two of the geth in the watch towers collapsed, tumbling from their perches as the two snipers engaged. Two more geth platforms soon fell, followed by two more. The two colossi turned to investigate, the one closer to the snipers lumbering toward them. The other seemed content on completing its patrol, still stomping toward Jane and Bhatia's position. She eyed the two giant geth platforms, trying to time things just right.
"Jenkins, go."
The colossus which had moved toward the snipers suddenly came under fire as Jenkins and Urdnot opened fire. Even a colossus couldn't ignore Jenkins's heavy weapons -- as clearly demonstrated when a shot from the MAC-95 mangled one of its leg joints -- and the ponderous geth turned to face the larger threat. The other colossus, the one bearing down on Jane and Bhatia, finally turned, stomping toward its brother, and that was when the two women made their move. Jane signaled Bhatia to hold position, then bolted out of cover and charged the colossus from behind, using her Cyclones' thrusters to bound up the back of the geth mecha before attaching her demolition charge to its back.
Rocketing away, Jane triggered the detonator as soon as she was sure she was clear of the kill zone. The CT-39 detonated, ripping the colossus in half and sending her bowling over from the shockwave alone.
"Bhatia! Go!"
The corpsman charged the other colossus, the one Jenkins had disabled earlier, lugging along her own CT-39 cobalt-thermine demolition charge. Distracted by the incoming heavy fire from Jenkins and Urdnot -- supplemented by sniper fire from Vakarian and Kilika, who had finished off the geth infantry -- the immobile colossus presented little challenge to Bhatia's attempt to place the charge.
Within minutes, the team gathered to breach the geth facility, but after the two colossi, even the destroyers and juggernauts they found waiting for them withing were a relief.
* * *
Shepard stood stiffly, looking the image of the batarian captain in the eyes.
"Commander," Taban said, "I fear this is where we part company, but I've been informed that Lieutenant Kilika will continue to represent batarian interests in the ongoing pursuit of Saren and the geth, pending authorization from your government."
"Yes," John said, nodding. "Permission has been granted for her to remain aboard the Normandy and assist, if certain conditions are met." Honestly, he was surprised, but the EIA apparently wanted to run some counterintelligence.
He hated spy games.
"Understandable," the batarian captain said, a trace of smugness in his voice. "I've reviewed those conditions, and if Lieutenant Kilika has no objections, neither does the Hegemony."
Damn, John thought. "I see. Well, here's hoping this improves the relationship between our two peoples."
"Indeed."
When the connection cut out, John signed, grinding his teeth.
"You handled that well."
He turned and cocked an eyebrow at the unfamiliar man. He was fairly nondescript, with brown hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a business casual suit. "Who are you?" John asked guardedly.
"Daniel Belmont," the man said, extending his hand. "Earth Intelligence Agency."
John shook his hand. "How long have you been here?"
"If you mean 'here' as in this specific spot, watching you, about twenty minutes," Agent Belmont answered. "If you mean 'here' as in on board this ship, since you resupplied at Freedom Station." John scowled, and Belmont held his hands up in a warding gesture. "Come on, Shepard; it's a big, bad galaxy out there. Going around with a Spectre, free access to every port in Citadel space... you think we get an opportunity like this every day? We'd be idiots not to have someone on board, Shepard, especially with your new guest."
"I'm with SOC, Agent Belmont," John growled. "I know how the game is played; that doesn't mean I like it, and that sure as hell doesn't mean I like spooks sneaking onto my ship."
"Then you need better security, don't you?" Belmont countered. "I take it we're heading to Feros now?"
"Excuse me?"
"The geth activity in Attican Beta," Belmont elaborated. "I've been going over the intel since, and I think it's safe to say that, whatever the geth want in the Attican Beta cluster, it's on Feros."
"Oh, this is going to be so much fun."
"Of course it is, Commander!" Belmont said cheerfully. "Look at it this way: At least everything you do from this point on will now be on record." Belmont grinned at the sour look on Shepard's face.
Later, Shepard would be loathe to admit it, but those recordings would come in handy.
* * *
Codex: Earth Intelligence Agency
The Earth Intelligence Agency is, as the name implies, the United Earth Alliance's intelligence and counter-intelligence organization, tasked with gathering information on alien governments and other potential threats as well as countering foreign intelligence efforts in Earth space. The EIA's mandate focuses primarily on foreign powers but also includes dangerous non-governmental organizations, primarily terrorist groups such as Earth First and the Batarian Anti-Liberation Front.
The EIA has divisions dedicated to various different forms of intelligence gathering, but the bulk of their work is in personal intelligence (PERSINT; the current evolution of what was once known as HUMINT or human intelligence), signals intelligence (SIGINT), measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), technical intelligence (TECHINT), and counter-intelligence (CI).
Although the EIA is a civilian agency, it often works closely with the United Earth Spacy's Special Operations Command and other Earth forces, drawing on them for additional manpower and firepower as needed to handle direct action, in contrast to the Salarian Special Tasks Group, which, as a military organization, handles direct action itself. As the other major espionage network in Citadel space, the EIA has established a working relationship with the STG, and reputedly, the two organizations share a mutual respect, despite their differing approaches to direct action.
The batarians aren't completely hopeless at R&D, and please remember, unlike the OTL, the Batarian Hegemony is still part of the Citadel. Here's what chapter eleven looks like right now:
* * *
John Shepard resisted the urge to pace the Normandy's CIC as he waited on the ground team's report.
"Commander, we've got incoming!" Negulesco called. "Two ships just dropped out of FTL, cruiserweight. Profiles are geth."
The Spectre's eyes widened as he ran through their options. He couldn't abandon the ground team, but a heavy cruiser and a frigate didn't stand a chance against two cruisers. That was assuming the batarians would even-...
"Incoming transmission from the Ashar, Commander. Patching it through."
"Commander Shepard, I hope you don't mind if we take care of this little problem, do you?" The batarian captain's voice was almost gleeful.
"Go right ahead, Captain," Shepard said cautiously.
"With pleasure."
When the transmission ended, Shepard frowned. "Negulesco, monitor the Ashar with everything we've got. Let's see what they're up to."
"They're orienting their bow toward the geth ships, sir, and... it seems to be separating. Now they've cut their engines; they're drifting sir. Wait! I'm reading energy building up- oh my God!"
Shepard's eyes darted to the video feeds of the external cameras, flicking across until he saw the Ashar, a brilliant beam of energy forming between the separated bow sections before lancing out at the geth cruisers, annihilating them both.
"My God," he echoed. "They have a reflex cannon."
* * *
There were times when Jane Hunter really hated John Shepard's gut. It had an annoying tendency to be right at all the wrong times. She was United Earth Spacy Special Operations Command, an N7 operative, a veteran who had seen more than her fair share of bloody battlefields and had proven her ability to remain cool under fire. That didn't mean she couldn't get nervous, however, and the spooky atmosphere as they approached the research outpost wasn't helping.
When she got back to the Normandy, she was going to have to spar with him a bit so she could hit him a few times. Or more than a few times. In the fabled gut.
Kilika followed the human woman to the research outpost. She was armed, as always, with a sniper rifle, a machine pistol, and her knives. The knife blades were mass effect compressed alloys, and small mass effect generators in the hilts automatically adjusted the blades' mass on the fly, allowing her to wield them as though they were light as a feather while striking with the weight of a full-grown man behind each blow.
"This is Lieutenant Kilika, Special Intervention Unit," she radioed again as they approached. "If anyone can hear me, please respond."
No answer.
"Commander." That was the other human woman, the medic. "Those things near the building. We saw those before, on Eden Prime. The geth were using them to turn people into... into zombies."
Kilika did not know what a zombie was, but she felt her insides knot up anyway. This could not be good.
"Understood, Corpsman."
They continued on in silence, entering the underground research facility, only to be confronted with a horror the batarian commando couldn't have conceived of.
They had once been batarians, that much was obvious, but their bodies were twisted and broken, yet they moved with an unnatural speed, twitching and jerking in a mockery of life, and their eyes and mouths glowed with an unholy blue light.
"Put 'em down, people." Hunter's voice was tight, controlled, hard. She had barely given the order when Kilika drew her machine pistol and opened fire -- it was too tight for her sniper rifle -- and when it beeped a complaint, she holstered the overheated weapon and charged in, blades flashing.
She was SIU. She knew the most efficient ways to use her blades to kill just about every species known to batariankind, but it was her own people she was most intimately familiar with, and she used that knowledge to deadly effect. Between that and the gunfire from the rest of the squad, the room was clear in seconds.
Kilika turned and frowned. One of the... creatures... was dragging itself feebly across the floor toward her. Or more accurately, toward the body lying at her feet. Its legs had been blown clean off, and it was leaving a trail of its own insides behind. It should have been long dead from blood loss... but then again, whatever was leaking from their wounds, it wasn't blood.
All four of her eyes widened in shock and disgust as the lone survivor started tearing off parts of the body in front of her and stuffing them in its mouth. The blue glow seemed to grow brighter, and she could see its guts slowly stitching themselves back together as it fed. She took two steps over and crouched by the pitiful looking creature. She stabbed down with both blades, then scissored them, decapitating it, and the blue glow finally died. She took a closer look at the body and reached out to touch it, then snatched her hand back when she realized it was trembling.
"Who would do this?" she demanded, looking up at the humans. "They were surveyors! Researchers!"
It was then that one of the doors leading out of the room slid open, disgorging more of the twisted cannibals. Kilika turned, drawing her machine pistol again, and opened fire from where she crouched. Behind the creatures were geth, led by a pair of grey-and-yellow destroyers, but Kilika held her ground. She locked down her emotions and stuck to short, controlled bursts to keep her pistol from overheating.
She needn't have bothered, as a swarm of Recluse-D micro-missiles soon rendered the point moot.
Kilika stood up, looking down at what had become of the researchers stationed here. A hand touched her shoulder, and she shrugged it off. Taking the hint, Hunter backed off. Good. She needed no comfort from a human.
* * *
Shepard rubbed his eyes as he reread the mission report in front of him. The facility on Rayingri had been just another victim of the geth incursion, and they still hadn't found the geth's forward operating base in the Skyllian Verge. At the moment, they were working on triangulating the signals the various outposts were receiving with the incoming vectors of the two geth cruisers, but it was a slow-going affair, and it would be a while before they got any results from it.
At the moment, though, he had other concerns, concerns which the EIA was most assuredly going to shit a brick over. Like the fact that the batarians had a working reflex cannon and decided to demonstrate that fact to them. Like the report of the husks on Rayingri actually eating their fallen comrades and apparently regenerating from it. Like the request before him now which he was trying to distract himself from with the aforementioned mission report.
"You want to what?"
"I wish to continue assisting your mission against Saren after you leave the Skyllian Verge," Kilika answered, her voice clipped. "Saren and the geth are a threat to batarian and human interests alike. Whatever they are planning must not be allowed to succeed."
John wondered just when the hell the Normandy flew into the Twilight Zone.
"I'll have to clear that with the Alliance," he answered finally. "This ship is technically on loan, and there may be security concerns."
"Understood, Commander."
"You've cleared this with your chain of command, right? I don't want there to be any mix ups."
"I will, sir."
* * *
Notanban was a gas giant in the Grissom system, and according to their signal analysis, the source of the transmissions coordinating geth activity in the Skyllian Verge was nearby. A fragmentary transmission allowed them to localize it to a section of Solcrum, Notanban's largest moon. Aerial reconnaissance marked out a probable structure, and the team went down, still under its temporary leadership.
Jane scanned the defenses around the geth facility. It was larger than the others and heavily defended. The watch towers were manned by geth, too far away for her to identify the specific type, but of larger concern were the two geth colossi stomping a patrol circuit around the compound and the geth fighters overhead, currently dueling with Kaidan's fighter.
John had been wrong about Rayingri. She should have known better than to relax before the other shoe dropped.
"Bhatia," she said, "you're with me; we'll be taking the demolition charges. Urdnot, Jenkins, head to this waypoint," she marked the location on the terrain map in her omni-tool and transmitted the data over, "then on my signal... make some noise, focus on whichever colossus is closest. Vakarian, Kilika, I want you two on overwatch, providing sniper cover; let me know when you're in position, then wait for my signal and hit the tower guards first."
Jane kept a watchful eye on Bhatia, but the corpsman was holding together pretty well, all things considered, as she gingerly handled the CT-39 demolition charge. About the size of a dinner plate, the military demolition charges were designed with a cobalt-thermite charge for various purposes, ranging from combat engineering to the destruction of sensitive technology. It would also do nicely for bringing down one of those colossi.
Moving quickly and rapidly from cover to cover, they positioned themselves on the far side of the compound, near the colossi's patrol circuit. "Jenkins?"
Jenkins's indicator light on her HMD winked green. "Vakarian, Kilika, go."
Suddenly, two of the geth in the watch towers collapsed, tumbling from their perches as the two snipers engaged. Two more geth platforms soon fell, followed by two more. The two colossi turned to investigate, the one closer to the snipers lumbering toward them. The other seemed content on completing its patrol, still stomping toward Jane and Bhatia's position. She eyed the two giant geth platforms, trying to time things just right.
"Jenkins, go."
The colossus which had moved toward the snipers suddenly came under fire as Jenkins and Urdnot opened fire. Even a colossus couldn't ignore Jenkins's heavy weapons -- as clearly demonstrated when a shot from the MAC-95 mangled one of its leg joints -- and the ponderous geth turned to face the larger threat. The other colossus, the one bearing down on Jane and Bhatia, finally turned, stomping toward its brother, and that was when the two women made their move. Jane signaled Bhatia to hold position, then bolted out of cover and charged the colossus from behind, using her Cyclones' thrusters to bound up the back of the geth mecha before attaching her demolition charge to its back.
Rocketing away, Jane triggered the detonator as soon as she was sure she was clear of the kill zone. The CT-39 detonated, ripping the colossus in half and sending her bowling over from the shockwave alone.
"Bhatia! Go!"
The corpsman charged the other colossus, the one Jenkins had disabled earlier, lugging along her own CT-39 cobalt-thermine demolition charge. Distracted by the incoming heavy fire from Jenkins and Urdnot -- supplemented by sniper fire from Vakarian and Kilika, who had finished off the geth infantry -- the immobile colossus presented little challenge to Bhatia's attempt to place the charge.
Within minutes, the team gathered to breach the geth facility, but after the two colossi, even the destroyers and juggernauts they found waiting for them withing were a relief.
* * *
Shepard stood stiffly, looking the image of the batarian captain in the eyes.
"Commander," Taban said, "I fear this is where we part company, but I've been informed that Lieutenant Kilika will continue to represent batarian interests in the ongoing pursuit of Saren and the geth, pending authorization from your government."
"Yes," John said, nodding. "Permission has been granted for her to remain aboard the Normandy and assist, if certain conditions are met." Honestly, he was surprised, but the EIA apparently wanted to run some counterintelligence.
He hated spy games.
"Understandable," the batarian captain said, a trace of smugness in his voice. "I've reviewed those conditions, and if Lieutenant Kilika has no objections, neither does the Hegemony."
Damn, John thought. "I see. Well, here's hoping this improves the relationship between our two peoples."
"Indeed."
When the connection cut out, John signed, grinding his teeth.
"You handled that well."
He turned and cocked an eyebrow at the unfamiliar man. He was fairly nondescript, with brown hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a business casual suit. "Who are you?" John asked guardedly.
"Daniel Belmont," the man said, extending his hand. "Earth Intelligence Agency."
John shook his hand. "How long have you been here?"
"If you mean 'here' as in this specific spot, watching you, about twenty minutes," Agent Belmont answered. "If you mean 'here' as in on board this ship, since you resupplied at Freedom Station." John scowled, and Belmont held his hands up in a warding gesture. "Come on, Shepard; it's a big, bad galaxy out there. Going around with a Spectre, free access to every port in Citadel space... you think we get an opportunity like this every day? We'd be idiots not to have someone on board, Shepard, especially with your new guest."
"I'm with SOC, Agent Belmont," John growled. "I know how the game is played; that doesn't mean I like it, and that sure as hell doesn't mean I like spooks sneaking onto my ship."
"Then you need better security, don't you?" Belmont countered. "I take it we're heading to Feros now?"
"Excuse me?"
"The geth activity in Attican Beta," Belmont elaborated. "I've been going over the intel since, and I think it's safe to say that, whatever the geth want in the Attican Beta cluster, it's on Feros."
"Oh, this is going to be so much fun."
"Of course it is, Commander!" Belmont said cheerfully. "Look at it this way: At least everything you do from this point on will now be on record." Belmont grinned at the sour look on Shepard's face.
Later, Shepard would be loathe to admit it, but those recordings would come in handy.
* * *
Codex: Earth Intelligence Agency
The Earth Intelligence Agency is, as the name implies, the United Earth Alliance's intelligence and counter-intelligence organization, tasked with gathering information on alien governments and other potential threats as well as countering foreign intelligence efforts in Earth space. The EIA's mandate focuses primarily on foreign powers but also includes dangerous non-governmental organizations, primarily terrorist groups such as Earth First and the Batarian Anti-Liberation Front.
The EIA has divisions dedicated to various different forms of intelligence gathering, but the bulk of their work is in personal intelligence (PERSINT; the current evolution of what was once known as HUMINT or human intelligence), signals intelligence (SIGINT), measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), technical intelligence (TECHINT), and counter-intelligence (CI).
Although the EIA is a civilian agency, it often works closely with the United Earth Spacy's Special Operations Command and other Earth forces, drawing on them for additional manpower and firepower as needed to handle direct action, in contrast to the Salarian Special Tasks Group, which, as a military organization, handles direct action itself. As the other major espionage network in Citadel space, the EIA has established a working relationship with the STG, and reputedly, the two organizations share a mutual respect, despite their differing approaches to direct action.
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
That's what the EIA would like to know.bullethead said:
Well, the whole Batarian Reflex cannon was a shocker. Good surprise there. However, from the description, theirs seems to work like SDF-1's, meaning in a fight between them and an Earth Reflex cannon ship, I'll bet on the Earth, since I don't think they have to wait for a charge period first.
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
The Leviathan of Dis is not a Tirolian ship of any sort. It's an organic ship, quite unlike anything the Tirolians or even the invid came up with.
The Sentinels are largely off-screen because, frankly, our story is set in the wrong part of the galaxy for them to make much of an appearance. That, and I'm not comfortable writing them.
As for the KSS Ashar's main gun... hmm... looks like a reflex cannon, kills like a reflex cannon, yeah, Shepard's gonna call it a reflex cannon. Doesn't mean it is.
Finally, I find it interesting that no one has yet to inquire as to what losses the Spacy suffered during the three years of the Relay War, especially seeing as how I've mentioned they had to pull a full retreat back to Shanxi after running into a major fleet...
The Sentinels are largely off-screen because, frankly, our story is set in the wrong part of the galaxy for them to make much of an appearance. That, and I'm not comfortable writing them.
As for the KSS Ashar's main gun... hmm... looks like a reflex cannon, kills like a reflex cannon, yeah, Shepard's gonna call it a reflex cannon. Doesn't mean it is.
Finally, I find it interesting that no one has yet to inquire as to what losses the Spacy suffered during the three years of the Relay War, especially seeing as how I've mentioned they had to pull a full retreat back to Shanxi after running into a major fleet...
You indicated that Spacy didn't do anything in the war, that it was all the Sentinels as far as I remember.Cyclone said:
Edit: From page 2.