Vanguard of Vengeance: Chapter 20

The Normandy screamed as it tore through the heavy, water-laden air of tropical Virmire. Down in the darkened cargo bay, Nihlus and his ground team stood shoulder to shoulder, swaying slightly in the turbulence of the Normandy's high speed, low altitude flight. Behind them, a dozen Alliance marines stood in two orderly rows, their weapons held at the ready. Ashley led them, grim faced as she gripped her rifle tightly to her chest. She nodded as Shepard looked back towards her. A light spray pattered down on the waiting troopers as a high crested wave slapped against the underside of the speeding frigate. The Normandy rose slightly as more waves began to reach out to pluck it from the sky.

"We make the beach in five minutes," Nihlus said, his voice repeated over the cargo bay intercom and in the helmet of every waiting soldier. He spoke firmly, steadily. It was a voice that spoke to the common trooper and the officer, It was a voice that Captain Anderson had used, and it had been a voice that Shepard had once tried to foster. It was a voice that she hadn't heard, nor felt, in a long time. "Projections give us a good chance of running up against some form of resistance after we splash down. I'm not going to lie to you, this may get rough. But you, you must get rougher. You must take the enemy and smash him aside. You are proud children of Palavan, Thessia, and Earth. You are Alliance Marines and C-Sec Operatives and soldiers and scientists. You have what it takes to win this day. Follow me, and we will take that beach. We will break our enemy, drive it before us. Follow me!"

His words echoed in the cargo bay. No one cheered, but instead faces were set in fierce determination. Hands gripped weapons and in the back of the bay the Mako revved its engine. The Normandy was ready to fight.

"The beach is coming into visual range now," Joker reported. "Hold on to something. Ground fire coming in." The frigate shook as bright mass driver rounds began to arc in at them in livid streamers. The low, dark shape of the beach resolved itself out of the hazy surf. It was a shallow band of yellow-grey sand backed against white cliffs that humped up out of the dunes to define the beach's contours. Two paths were cut through the cliffs, leading deeper into the enemy held archipelago. Between the Normandy, the white ridged waves, and the paths off the beach, were the Geth. The yellow sand of the landing zone was suddenly alive with the dark grey automatons, its smooth dunes suddenly a roiling mass of machines directed with murderous intent. Each foot soldier raised its weapon until the sky became a wild fireworks display of blazing light trails. Most of this blizzard of death beat fruitlessly against the Normandy's kinetic barriers. But heavier fire was being laid on as Joker drove the slender frigate screaming into the enemy's teeth. Shepard raised the magnification and held her breath as she saw a column of the Geth's crab-like heavy weapons platforms march onto the beach with head mounted weapons held high.

Joker must have seen them as well. "Uh, Spectre, it's getting real hairy out there. I'm not sure I can drop you on the beach all in one piece. Do we abort?" Silence followed the question. Heavy, tense, laden seconds of silence.

"No," Nihlus answered. "The beach in unpracticable. Drop us in the surf."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You heard me, we drop into the surf. It will cover are assault. Once we splash down, the Normandy will strafe the beach. Once the beach is secure, the Normandy will come back around and drop additional troops and vehicles."

"SPECTRE, I…" Chief Williams spoke up. Nihlus silenced her with a curt gesture of his hand. Shepard could almost feel the Chief grit her teeth.

"We go," Nihlus said with finality. And then he jumped from the lip of the loading ramp.

"God damn it," Ashley swore. "Come on, marines, are we going to let this scaly bastard show us up? I don't think so." She ran forward, rifle clamped to chest. A platoon of ready men and women followed. Shepard fell in beside them, leading the rest of their allies forward. Boots clomped on bare metal, step by step causing the deck to disappear until the ramp ran out and nothing was beneath her feet but the bright blue sea meters beneath her. Then Shepard was falling. The wind, the surf, and the enemy's fire whistled around her as she shot, feet tucked together, towards the water. Her rifle rattled in her grip as she chanted the steps of the combat drop in her head. The water rushed up beneath her, its crested waves reaching up to pluck her from the sky. And then, all of a sudden, she was beneath the waves. The impact of the water drove the breath from her chest and the heavy weight of her ceramic armour pulled her down to the silty bottom. The water boiled and whirled around her biotic barriers.

Shepard's boots hit the sand. Mass effect rounds zipped through the surf, leaving flash boiled trails. They sparked and flashed off the barriers of the other marines. Evangeline summoned up her biotic energies, channeling through the amplifier that still felt like a foreigner in her skull. The whirlwind of fizzing water roiled as her barriers flared and her newly negligible weight sent her shooting up towards the surface. The surface, no longer the expected blue, was a dirty grey. Debris streaked the crests of the waves. Shepard broke from the water and into a firestorm. The surface was beat by a hailstorm of tungsten. Fire bloomed from the beach and from the surf as shots were traded back and forth. Rockets fired overhead left greasy trails through the air.

Scattered across the beachfront, the platoon bobbed like an array of heavily armed corks. Some were floating, very still, while others were making their way towards the beach. Shepard joined them, slicing through the water with long strokes. Shots whipped off the water around her, but none could find purchase in the ceramic backed plating of her armour. The shoreline rose up to meet her as she threw herself onto the beach. A blue uniformed marine was flopped down in the wet sand with his weapon trained up towards the enemy. Shepard checked the mission chronometer and was shocked to find that what had felt like mere seconds between hitting the water and leaving it again had taken her ten minutes.

"How many made it to the beach, Corporal?" Shepard asked, picking out the golden chevrons on his pauldrons. She flicked out her own weapon and sent a burst of high velocity flechettes up towards the forces arrayed before the darkly stained white cliffs. From low down, only a few Geth were visible, but Shepard knew that somewhere past the humped dunes they must be darkening the beaches with their multitudes.

"You'd be the first. Commander." The marine Corporal replied. His weapon, a heavy machine gun, was sinking slowly into the sand as he fired. He swore virulently and hauled it back up by its carrying handle. "Well, besides me and Private Skillicorn here." The surly corporal gestured to another marine hunched over on the other side of him. Private Skillicorn wasn't moving, and had seemed to have tried to bury himself halfway into the sand of the beach.

"We have to give our men some covering fire! Clear a space and give them some more space to move up! You and Skillicorn move left and…"

"Skillicorn's not going anywhere, ma'am." The Corporal replied roughly.

"He what!? Private, this is no time to bury your head in the sand!"

"He's not deserting, Commander. He's dead." The Corporal kicked his companion over, revealing the three neat holes punched through his helmet. The sand below him was stained red with the unfortunate marine's blood. "See. So I move left and provide cover for our swimming friends. Got it. Give us your grenades, Skillicorn, there's a good lad." The corporal unclipped his still partner's belt and slung it over his shoulder. With an off kilter nod, he shuffled off to the left, weaving his way across the surf wetted sand like a snake. His heavy machine gun followed after him. Shepard refocused her eyes to the front. Her position was still screened by the slight rise of the beach, but the outgoing blizzard of ground fire was inching ever closer. More and more streams of fire were shifting from chasing the Normandy to blasting into the ocean.

"Alright, Corporal. Let's make a hole." Shepard lunged to her feet, not waiting for the other marine to begin firing. What greeted her almost checked her charge. The beach crawled. Platform standing shoulder to shoulder with platform. Serried ranks of grey skinned automatons with towering juggernauts amongst them and massive colossi lurching into place above them. "Oh." Shepard dropped her rifle. This was work for her other skills. The Geth seemed to be ignoring her. Either they hadn't seen her, or they didn't see the single soldier as enough of a threat to distract them from their attempted slaughter of her comrades. She'd have to change that. Shepard reached for her biotics, ignoring the alien fizz of the turian amplifier. She gathered the dark energy, shaped it, let it loose. The unfocused oily purple light reached out across the beach, almost invisible against the bright sunshine that belied the battle going on beneath the tropical skies. It struck a tightly packed group of the enemy foot soldiers. Sand leapt into the air as the vortex of altered gravity exploded outwards. The geth were sent cartwheeling into the air with the force of the detonation, smoking and torn apart by the sudden uneven release of energies. Shepard felt the amp in the back of her skull shudder under the force of biotic feedback. She dropped back down to the sand, shivering. "Gotta pace myself."

Her ally wasn't one to be outdone. The marine corporal opened up on the geth from further up the beach. Grenade after grenade went spinning over the rise of the dunes, their explosions throwing more debris into the air. His wild laughter echoed over the comm. channel. Shepard looked back over her shoulder. The bobbing corks of her ground team had seen the slackening of enemy fire and were coming in out of the waves. But they were not coming fast enough. As Shepard watched, she saw another body sink beneath the waves, ravaged by bright blue metal fragments. They needed more than covering fire. They needed shelter. Shepard knew what she had to do. She jumped up again. This time the geth were ready for her. But she was ready for them. Their attacks were met by a shimmering wall of force, projected in front of her at an angle to bounce them up and over her. Even with the deflecting angle, the force coming in at her was immense. Shepard dug in her heels, sinking into the beach sand as round after round hammered into the biotic force field. And not just the small arms fire of the smaller platforms, but the bright, slow moving artillery of the cyclopean four legged walkers as well. Shepard stripped herself of her personal defenses, knowing that it would leave her naked. She didn't care, if the wall of force failed she would be annihilated in an instant, but that would happen whether she was maintaining a close bubble or not. At least if she could hold this large umbrella open she might be able to usher one more marine to the relative safety of the sheltering dunes. Sweat soaked the inside of her helmet as she drew more power from the amplifier, making the element zero nodes throughout her body sing with sympathetic agony.

Something dropped down into the sand at her feet. She spared a second to look down. Ashley had come, throwing herself onto the beach.

"Chief." Shepard felt relief course through her, even as she grit her teeth against the force of the effort it took to maintain her defenses. If Ashley Williams was here, that meant her men weren't too far behind.

"Commander." The chief of marines cleared saltwater from the barrel of her rifle. "Thanks for the cover. Me and my boys will take it from here." She rose to kneeling, training her weapon on the oncoming iron tide. More soldiers were throwing themselves down on either side of her, burrowing firing positions into the sand. "You can drop the barrier, Commander. We'll need some space to return fire."

"Yes, right," Shepard replied. She released the angled field, hurling herself out of the way of the geth's attacks. The fire blazed overhead, but Shepard was safely pressed against the wet sand. Chief Williams and her growing squad went forward, sending grenades ahead of them to erupt in bright flowers of fire amongst the swarming geth. Some marines fell, but more took their place, crawling out of the surf and rushing to join the firing line. Nihlus was amongst them, and Garrus, and Tali. Javik stood apart from them hurling invectives and particle beams in equal measure. Shepard looked back again and saw the asari, T'Soni rushing towards her, omni-tool extended.

"Shepard. Goddess, are you alright?" A look of concern twisted the asari's face.

Shepard waved her off. "I'm fine."

"Shepard, you're bleeding." Liara grasped the other women by the wrist and pressed the omni-tool to her side. There was a hiss of transferring medigel. Shepard felt pain she hadn't even noticed melt away under the flow of the medicine.

"Didn't even feel getting hit," she mumbled. Blood stained her armour again, sticking the sand to her chestplate. She scraped it away, revealing a neat hole between two flexor plates. "Huh."

"All troops, hit the deck. Air support incoming." A voice sounded over the radio. Shepard's head snapped around to see the needle nosed shape of the Normandy come screaming out of the sky. Hot white flashes erupted from its nose, searing the air between it and the beach. In its first attack run the Normandy had been driven away by the intense ground fire, but now the geth were focused on the attacking marines. Too late they realized their mistake. A few were able to lift their weapons, to strike up at the screaming death that approached them, but it was too little, too late. The Normandy drove in, its weapons stitching explosions across the waterfront. Shepard was rocked by the chained detonations, each one bounced her up off the sandy ground and every concussion drove her back down into the surf with teeth shuddering force. Sand, rocks, and the ashen remains of geth battle platforms rained down about her.

Shepard raised her head slowly. Great chunks had been chewed from the dunes above and ahead, revealing the full lay of the beach to her despite her prone position. Not that that was a danger any longer. The forces arrayed against them had been devastated. The beach was afire in several places; great craters had been gouged out of the sand. Scattered active geth platforms still attempted to resist the advancing ground team, but their efforts were erratic. Too many gaps had been opened in their joint AI net, and now they were suffering for it. The marines were moving inland, moving in concerted fire teams and putting down the remaining foes. Above, the Normandy circled.

"Good, very good." Nihlus stood mere meters to Shepard's right. He spoke to no one in particular, seemingly addressing the air before him. He strode up the beach in defiance of the few remaining defenders. "Unorthodox, but good." For the first time, he seemed to notice Shepard. "Well done, Commander."

"It wasn't just me," Shepard retorted. She picked herself up, flexing jarred joints. "I wouldn't have been able to hold it so long without his help." She looked to her left in search of the irascible Corporal of marines, but saw no one standing in the surf or further up the dunes. She moved up the beach, leaving Nihlus flat footed and alone. Still, no one stood to meet her. She climbed the lip of a crater and almost pitched forward as something struck her in the shin. She dropped into a crouch, biotics aflame and eyes searching for a hidden enemy. None made itself apparent, her assailant had been a bent spar of metal protruding from the side of the small depression. She grasped it, pulling. A barrel of a rifle popped from the sand, the rest of the weapon following it. Then came a hand, wrapped around the trigger guard and Shepard knew what awaited for her. She continued to pull regardless, using her biotics to clear the stones from the sand. A blue armoured body spilled from the wall of the crater, golden Corporal's insignia still shining on its burnt pauldrons. Shepard's breath caught in her throat. The face behind the glass faceplate was familiar to her. The first man on the beach, the man she had sent to flank the geth position, the man that had saved the SPECTRE's beach offensive. And he was lying dead in a hole that was slowly filling with water. "I'm sorry." The body didn't answer.

Overhead, the Normandy hovered on wavering jets of distorted gravity. The wide mouth of the cargo bay opened again, revealing the wedge shaped nose of the Mako. The tough little troop transport trundled out of the hold, descending of jump jets on its own. It crunched down amid the smoking ruins of the geth that had held the beach. The remains of the assault team rallied there, standing in two rows sadly much shorter than the formation that had jumped into the surf. The SPECTRE and his alien allies also clustered there, their heads bent together. Shepard slumped towards them, fighting the sudden onset of the fatigue that always followed a major use of her biotic abilities. She pulled on her suit ration straw, sending a rush of energy to smooth over the rough edges of her oncoming migraine. Nobody looked up when she splashed into line. Nihlus was addressing the gathered masses.

"Good work. Damn good work. An opposed landing under adverse circumstances, and with acceptable casualties. Damn good work. We've secured a foothold, now it's time to push home our advantage. We've given ourselves a shot at the heart of this whole monstrous operation and we're going to drive the knife of this grand coalition straight through it. Saren is here, and I intend to break the Reaper's control of him. Pull that thread and their plan to invade this galaxy, our home, will unravel before their very eyes!"

The marines reacted, as they often did, with stolid, professional silence. Shepard reckoned that they might disagree with the SPECTRE on exactly how acceptable their losses were and how worthy a prize the freedom of the sacker of Eden Prime was. Whatever their opinion, they kept it to themselves.

"The geth will respond quickly, we'll need to move before they trap us here. Mount up. We move in ten!"

The Mako jounced along in the lee of the pocked limestone cliffs, tires biting deep into the shallow riverbed and kicking up great gouts of water in their wake. The cramped interior of the transport's torpedo shaped body was darkened, its battle lights dim as the driver plowed through another stand of the reedy trees that clung to the sandy shores. Atop the transport, attached to the hull by mass effect tethers, the short platoon of marines endured the assaulting vegetation and juddering ride. The infantry fighting vehicle slewed around a bend in the archipelago's labyrinthine rock formations.

"Keep running this course until the next junction. We're covered from enemy ground radar until we hit that point. Past that junction it's a straight shot down the west running trench to our rendezvous. We'll have to outrace them once we're detected."

The assembled crew nodded in unison. All except for Shepard and Javik.

"How can we be sure the salarians will still be there?" The prothean asked in his deep, buzzing tones. "Are you not concerned that they may have fled or otherwise gone into hiding?"

"These STG officers are the very best," Nihlus replied. "I know their captain personally, fought with him on a few missions. Sealed records, of course. Kirrahe, he's called. They'll be there. Do you have any reason to think otherwise, Javik? Were there salarians abroad during your cycle?"

"Not as such, but we ran across their ancestors. They used to eat flies." Javik let the barely shrouded insult hang in the air. His bifurcated lips curled in a cruel, leering smile. "I wonder if they have managed to move beyond that particular habit." The Avatar of Vengeance leaned back in his seat and spoke no more.

"You'll do well not to disparage the abilities of our allies, Avatar," Nihlus bit back. "You'll recall that your cycle failed to stop the Reapers. This fresh galaxy will be different. We will not give in. We will not be indoctrinated!"

The last word was almost shouted. It hung in the air between the assembled team. The Mako continued to judder across the wet sand, shaking them in their seats. Liara coughed into a closed fist.

"SPECTRE, I…"

Nihlus cut the asari archaeologist off. "No. I won't hear your objections. Victory on this mission relies on all of our complete dedication to its success. We will pull off this rescue mission. That is final." Nilhus stared intensely about the small compartment, meeting each member of his crew in the eye. Javik stared right back, his face a sneering mask. When it was Shepard's turn, the intensity was almost scary. Nihlus' beady emerald eyes burned out from beneath their black and white painted sockets. But there was more behind that anger, a spark of madness that flickered in the back of his skull. Shepard held the stare, refusing to look away.

"Nihlus, we're coming to the junction now!" The driver called out. The tension snapped in an instant. The madness in Nihlus' eyes faded, slipping behind the icy mask of professionalism.

"Take us through, full speed. The time for stealth has passed." The SPECTRE was suddenly focused again, the skilled commander and not the crazed fanatic. He stood, stoop-backed, from his seat and moved to observe over the driver's shoulder. He matched the movements of the transport with avian grace. Outside, the geth forces must have seen them. Shepard could almost feel the searching rays of the geth ground radar prickling against the skin of the Mako's hull, tendrils of probing radiation trying to pry their location from the background noise of the sand bedded trench. The geth must have mapped every inch of the exposed tropical riverbed. There'd be no hiding from them here.

"Contact, dead ahead. Looks like a couple of drones sweeping above the trench." The driver called out coolly. "Evasive maneuvers?"

"Maybe they haven't seen us yet?" Liara said. She worried her helmet between her gloved fingers.

"Keep driving, speed is of the essence. Garrus, get on the main gun. I want those things out of my path the second they react to us. Don't start shooting yet, though, every second we buy ourselves is another second the alarm may not have been raised." Nihlus snapped out orders with rapid efficiency. "Chief Williams, you may want to tell your men to hang on and prepare to meet the enemy."

"Copy that, SPECTRE."

Shepard dropped her helmet over her head and linked her view with the outside cameras. Three mark metallic disks resolved themselves against the sky. They bobbed and weaved as if following the currents through the air. They appeared not to notice as the Mako rocketed straight for them. They buzzed around, looking in all the world like a lazy pack of bumblebees circling unconcernedly over a flower patch. But they had to have seen the transport by now. Shepard's eyes bounced up and down the tight trench, gripped suddenly by a feeling of absolute wrongness. They caught on something glinting atop the clifftop.

"It's a trap!" Her words rang out just a second too late. The cliffs were lined with geth platforms. The Mako had been racing towards an ambush.

"Evasive maneuvers!" Nihlus yelled as the first bolts of plasma began raining down from on high. The driver jerked the Mako into a frenetic series of dodges that slalomed the needle nose of the transport through a corkscrew course. The tires span in the sand, carving a deep rut in the trench's floor, and still the enemy poured on more incoming fire. Even the trio of drones dove in at the desperately evading vehicle, their role as bait fulfilled.

Garrus did not wait for the order to fire. The roof turret mounted cannon thrummed with power and spat its tungsten slug into the cliff side, shattering the limestone and spilling the geth mounted atop its heights into the trench. Garrus didn't dally on the tumbled platforms; he stitched his machine gun fire back up along the heights and into the drone speckled sky. The fallen geth were left to the marines perched atop the Mako's roof. "Loading." Garrus spun around in his gunnery chair, lights playing across his face as he picked targets and eliminated them. But there were always more lined up behind them, ready to lash out at the transport as it raced below them. One by one, the marines fell from the roof, dead from the torrent of fire aimed at them.

"We're getting pounded out here!" A livid Ashley called over the comms. The sound of rifles rattled in the background. "Where the hell are these friends of yours?"

"We should be close." Nihlus replied, his voice calm. "Driver, expand the barriers. Give our passengers some cover!"

"We'll have to pull coverage from the undercarriage!" The driver responded. "At this speed an expanded barrier would occlude the drive wheels and drag us through the dirt.

Nihlus held his tongue, silent in thought. On the monitor, another marine flatlined. "Do it."

A wash of static filled the compartment as the barriers shifted and ballooned outwards to cover the rooftop soldiers. The Mako continued to race on as scattered geth flailed uselessly against the barriers. The sky had been cleared of drones, the platforms along the ridge were falling behind and falling out of range. Speed had won the day, the ambush had been defeated. A collective sigh of relief ran through the compartment as the desultory shower of weapon pings stuttered and then went quiet. Up ahead, the canyon opened into a basin and there, hunched on digitigrade landing struts, was the dark skinned STG frigate.

"Thank the Goddess. We're safe!" Liara cried.

And then the unshielded underside of the Mako struck the first landmine.

Author's Notes:

Apologies for the lateness of this upload. Personal stuff, nothing too major but it's thrown a iron bar right through my writing spokes. Good news, however, is that it's mostly been cleared up. Hope you enjoy.

-Liddle Out