Chapter 15;
Blood of Elysium
Elysium
3040 (2176)
The blitz had been an error from the moment they arrived in the system with the human world. The mad Turian bastard who had proposed this idiotic plan would have a lot to say for it if Eluam Ran'perah had anything to do with it. His Frigate was now on the ground, its main drives damaged, and crew of skilled slavers already disbarking and entering the colony of Elysium. But the resistance they were facing was already far above what that fucking idiot Haliat claimed that they would have to face.
Elysium was newish. Elysium was far from the heart of the Star League. Elysium did not rate the Clans Militant patrolling it.
The first and second might have been true. The last was so utterly wrong that... FUCK FUCK FUCK! Eluam dived behind a thick concrete divider. People moved in the distance and bolts of light burned molten holes through the concrete divider he and others were sheltered behind. He looked around... all four eyes locked on a structure that looked more hardened than the rest.
"Go! There!" He pointed and ran for the doorway, firing a grenade from his launcher that blasted the door open, he surged through into.. a nightmare. Row upon row of tanks. Glass tanks full of growing children... fear filled his very soul as he looked on at the Star League's growing babies, babies grow...
He fired his grenade launcher once. Twice. More. He fired it until nothing remained in its magazine. As his people came in behind him, they looked on with horror at the scene. One of them showed a few more braincells than average. "What have you done boss?"
"Get moving. Get moving!" He said charging through a door opposite, searching for something that he wasn't sure they would be able to find, and they found themselves in another chamber full of babies in growth tubes. But something darkened the corridor ahead. A child, couldn't have been more than ten or twelve.
"NYAH NYAH, NYAH NYAH, YOU CAN NOT CATCH ME!" The kid shouted and ran. The kid was freakishly muscled and he was not going to be outdone by some little tank-grown shit.
"After him!" He shouted and surged after the kid with his men in tow, some had switched out their guns for net rifles and stun guns. He ran through the corridor after the fucking leggy little shit, a real sprinter and.... he stumbled to a halt. The corridor was long. Like too long.
"THIS IS FOR THE SIBKO YOU JUST MURDERED FOUR EYES!" The kid shouted back. And Eluam's balls rose clean back into his body and made their way into his throat as half a dozen of the human freaks appeared at the end of the too long corridor... with a pair of crew-served weapons. He didn't even feel the first dozen bullets from the support machinegun ripping through his torso. His head had already turned into vapour from the support laser the other team had fired first.
---
Another ship fell from the skies as five of the enemy walkers moved in and opened fire with pulse lasers and mass salvos of missiles from shoulder racks, or even more exotic weapons. Haliat cursed his ambition for a moment as he debated pulling his ship up another fifty thousand feet. They had gotten past the enemy ship which continued to bring down anything coming too near, and the fighter craft it had launched were now crashing down into the atmosphere to make strafing runs. "How many slaves have we managed to take so far?" He asked his officer in charge of managing the ground battle.
"Uhm."
"Is that a human number I am unfamiliar with?" The Turian pirate asked with deep sarcasm.
The Batarian pirate looked distinctly uncomfortable and Haliat turned to face him, frowning. "Are you telling me that we don't have any confirmed slaves taken?"
The lack of answer for a few moments was in and of itself an answer. And one Haliat really didn't like. "NOTHING. WE HAVE TAKEN NOTHING!?"
"Well.. uhm... I'm not the one who needs to take them boss, I'm just reporting what they are and... well, people are just not reporting back." Came the honest and frank appraisal.
"Get the fuck out of my way." Haliat said as he moved to examine the console closely. "This is Haliat. Report on produce taken." For five minutes he listened to garbled reports of demons of fire and smoke moving through. Lead by a giant in black and red with the elements themselves with him.
---
Vivek leapt, the jump jets of his armour hurtling him towards the Batarians who had formed a fortified position, they had managed to round up a group of prisoners and herd them into cages. They were a sibko of younger children, five or six, and they had fought hard with the weapons they had, but they were still just children. Landing on the high ground he levelled and fired the small laser in his armours right arm burning down one pirate with a missile launcher. A Mars Combat vehicle had rolled into the square and levelled its weapons. "This is Abtahka Vivek to Mars in Kerensky Square. Hold fire. Enemy strongpoint as captive Sibko."
"Holding Abtahka." Came the response as a pair of missiles flared out from the encampment towards the tank. More jets flared and looking up Vivek followed. Shepard wasn't taking chances. He had targeted a place around the cages. The kids heard the jumpjets and crashed to the floor of the cages, trying to shelter themselves. As he crashed into the ground crushing a pirate beneath his armour he saw that Shepard had crashed down even closer and had grabbed one of the slavers with one battle claw before opening up with the flamer attached to that arm, the Pirates panicked, fleeing from within the enclosure as the Star Commander began bathing the defences in fire. As the pirates began to flee from their emplacement, fleeing towards their ships they found themselves cut off as more and more people appeared on the streets, hard to see in the stealth effects of the Nighthawk powered armour.
Hard to see for a moment. Then the laser weapons illuminated them just fine for the four seconds the Pirates lasted long enough to see them.
---
Ships were aborting their run to land on the planet. Too many had been destroyed by the enemy vessel above, and now fighter strikes and mech assaults from below were cutting the chaff from the air, only the few modified military ships were surviving the onslaught, and the volume of laser fire was putting even their survival in doubt. How had he misjudged them so badly? He knew that by now, two ships had lifted with a couple hundred prisoners so far, none from the so called Clans Martial. Scientists, farmers, common peoples, and even they had put up a terrible fight, meaning most of the produce was also injured as well, some of it gravely so.
"Withdraw from Elysium. I want everyone to fall back to secure point Alpha." He was referring to the jump point leading to Torfan, where he had used the planet as a staging point.
The nose of his frigate began to climb and he felt the drives coming to life for maximum acceleration. "Are our people back on board?" He asked. They had only deployed a few shuttles with teams to try and steal technology under the cover of the slavers doing their job.
"Two returned. We lost contact with the other two." Came the automatic response. "Two and three were the ones to make it back, waiting on the Quartermaster to reveal what they managed to steal."
"We'll determine that later, focus on the withdrawal."
