Mass Effect: Going Dark

[Cynical Cat]

It was good that Lysander was thinking the same way Mikhail was. It was bad that he hadn't come up with something better. He sighted down on one of the krogan and opened fire.

[rhoenix]

It was good that Lysander was thinking the same way Mikhail was. It was bad that he hadn't come up with something better. He sighted down on one of the krogan and opened fire.

This prompted an immediate reaction. The krogan leading the fireteam on the right stopped in his tracks as his shields flared, attempting to stop the raw kinetic force of the round from Jager's sniper rifle, and ultimately failed as the round struck armor.

The other krogan's head whipped around to look for a moment, and stopped as he placed a hand near his ear. A moment later, the two fireteams began running for cover, firing at the team's general direction as they did, and beginning to advance toward Team Five's position from behind cover.

The team's shared map now highlighted many figures headed toward them.

Junko Mori saw from her hiding place all the gathered Blood Pack around the facility, who were previously either sitting idle, were now moving with purpose. A small team appeared to be working on the door to the north of the facility, but most of the rest appeared to be moving out to the southeast - directly toward Team Five's shuttle.

A baying noise seemed to echo through the ash-strewn atmosphere, growing louder, and being matched by many other noises of the same type as the first, seemingly from everywhere around the facility. Those familiar with varren would recognize the noises as the hunting call of the alpha to the rest of his pack.

[frigidmagi]

"Everyone take cover, engage confirmed targets as they appear, get ready to move when I give the word. Snipers, report. Ninjas, respond if you need cover." Lysander ordered. It figured, not even 5 minutes and it went to the pot. Ah well, worry about it in the AAR.

[Cynical Cat]

Jager fired again at the first krogan to insure the job was done. He didn't wait to make sure the target was down. Two shots from the same position was two too many for him to remain. He ducked down and began to move to another firing position. He would be out of the mix for a bit, but that was better than zeroed and dead.

[rhoenix]

Jager fired again at the first krogan to insure the job was done. He didn't wait to make sure the target was down. Two shots from the same position was two too many for him to remain. He ducked down and began to move to another firing position. He would be out of the mix for a bit, but that was better than zeroed and dead.

Just as the krogan staggered, and began to fall due to the neat hole drilled into his forehead, two rockets and a hail of bullets struck the position where Mikhail had been moments before, raining pieces of rock and ash down around him as he went to ground.

Mikhail was still in a position, even as he moved out of sight, to see the other krogan heave a grenade toward the team's general locale, and the vorcha to reload their rocket launchers before they began to advance.

[Sabre72]

"Everyone take cover, engage confirmed targets as they appear, get ready to move when I give the word. Snipers, report. Ninjas, respond if you need cover." Lysander ordered. It figured, not even 5 minutes and it went to the pot. Ah well, worry about it in the AAR.

Junko reported her progress, "My head count estimates about 30-40 blood pack which are now heading your way. Am overlooking the north airlock right now, which has a small team working on the door, I believe they haven't even made it inside yet, am going to try and get to some closer cover to get more detail."

Junko explained over comms, "I would love if I could have some cover, so I can make a distraction against this door team, just seconds before you guys get here, so basically we might not need to breach!"

Junko firmly said over comms "flank southwest and get to me, we cant let them get in, we can kill them just as they get the door open for us and use the inside to our advantage."

Junko then proceeded in a low crouch, to find and get to closer cover to allow her to get more Intel on the door team, the sound of battle would make it easier for her but she still took her time there was no error for mistake here.

[rhoenix]

Junko reported her progress, "My head count estimates about 30-40 blood pack which are now heading your way. Am overlooking the north airlock right now, which has a small team working on the door, I believe they haven't even made it inside yet, am going to try and get to some closer cover to get more detail."

Junko explained over comms, "I would love if I could have some cover, so I can make a distraction against this door team, just seconds before you guys get here, so basically we might not need to breach!"

Junko firmly said over comms "flank southwest and get to me, we cant let them get in, we can kill them just as they get the door open for us and use the inside to our advantage."

Junko then proceeded in a low crouch, to find and get to closer cover to allow her to get more Intel on the door team, the sound of battle would make it easier for her but she still took her time there was no error for mistake here.

As Junko crept closer, she saw that there were two krogan and three vorcha working on the airlock door, and evidently not having an easy time of it. One of them kicked the door before going back to try opening it with his omnitool.

[Soleimon Berserker]

"Am I the only one who thought they had no idea we were here?!"

Eyes narrowing in annoyance, Sol growled deep in his chest as he heard the first shot ring out, catching the Blood Pack scout in his forehead. He'd been laying low at his position to the left of the shuttle, waiting for the Blood Pack to get closer in order to draw them into a more damaging ambush. Needless to say the others had decided against it.

Popping out of cover at last, the Quarian smoothly shouldered his M-12 Locust submachine gun. Just like the rumors said, it was the favorite of gang enforcers and hit men, and both titles would have been apt for his former position under Aria T'loak. Sighting on one of the flame thrower toting Vorcha's backs he fired a series of three round bursts before ducking back into cover and moving a few feet back along the debris pile toward the right, all the better to keep the enemy guessing on where he was going to fire from.

'30 or 40 Krogan, what would be that important to the Blood Pack besides weapons research? More than likely they'd just be getting paid to retrieve something large and unwieldy, if it were data then we'd be facing off against Eclipse, and the Blue Suns normally go for small high value packages.'

[General Havoc]

"The Creators do not... need us anymore."

The voice that piped through the narrow band radio transmission was perfectly calm, and why should it not be? Shaddai was an amalgamation of nearly five thousand Geth programs, more than four times the amount that Legion had carried, and nearly forty times the number that one generally found in a Geth infiltrator. The process of controlling the protoform's movement, of selecting targets, accounting for wind and external factors, placing shots, and keeping track of the overall tactical situation, could easily be handled by two hundred Geth. For the sake of safety, care, and elementary security against sudden unpleasant surprises, Shaddai had assigned ten times that number to the task. This left the remaining twenty-seven-hundred-odd Geth available to speak for the Loyalist conclave, un-ruffled and unconcerned with how the battle might be going.

Such were the Geth.

Shaddai could speak to the Quarian without risk of distraction, but Shaddai also knew that the reverse was not true. Merely speaking to the Quarian might distract it in combat, which might in turn prove fatal, even in a simulator. Thus, after a small discussion of the options, the sub-committee of Geth intelligences assigned to speak to the Quarian compressed their reply into an audio file, and wirelessly transmitted it to the Quarian's Omnitool. The message would remain there until the situation permitted the Quarian to access it without fear of being shot in the head...

"The Creators have existed for hundreds of years without us, in the face of violent opposition from the majority conclave. While our efforts here are aimed at the alteration of our status in the perspective of the Creators, we do not believe we will successfully do so through rendering ourselves indispensable. There are no more of us, and should all transpire in their favor, there will soon be many millions of native-born Creators who do not even remember the Migrant Fleet, let alone that which occurred before it."

"We... do not fully understand why the Creators refused our request to return to Rannoch. As such, we have been forced to act in the manner we believe affords the best chance to reverse that decision. Or failing that, at least to encourage the responsible authorities in the creator government to... explain to us what our transgression was in attempting to assist them. Perhaps if we understand what errors we performed in the first place, we can attempt to atone for them somehow..."

There was a lengthy pause in the recording.

"We... would value any input towards this question. Our consensus is that we may be systemically unqualified to understand why we were not allowed to come home..."

As this message was being transmitted, Shaddai's rifle barked once, a single, massive bolt of flying mass hurtling from it towards a Vorcha Blood Packer, the sights locked upon the creature's forehead, the immediate neighbor to the one the Quarian had just blasted with its submachine gun.

And though Shaddai made no claim to confirm or deny the matter, it was unlikely to be a co-incidence that the Vorcha he shot happened to be the one physically closest to the hidden Quarian.

[White Haven]

Well, that went to hell faster than most missions.

Even Iona's inner monologue had a touch of bitter humour in it. On one hand, so much for overall tactical subtlety. On the other hand, a running firefight made for a great distraction. Leave the long-range fire to those with long-arms, leave the frontal assault to those wrapped in slabs of composite alloy. The barely-perceptible blur that represented Iona to the outside world had been bellied down to minimize visibility still further, watching the base and murmuring quietly into the tacnet from time to time. Gunfire shifted the emphasis from recon work to...not assault; she was hardly the optimal choice for such a role. But interdiction, distraction...those were another story altogether.

"Iona, moving in, I'll see if I can tie up their main force a bit, buy some time," the asari subvocalized into her suit's internal pickups as she slowly rose to her feet. The inherent downside of wide-area ground contact; it lowered your profile, but bedding down and getting up risked greater visible impact on nearby ground. Volcanic terrain -- no soft earth to deform with footsteps, heavy ash -- won't displace as much as normal dust. Not ideal, but workable. She began ghosting towards the small complex, picking her way across rocky outcroppings, avoiding depressions where ash tended to settle.

[SirNitram]

"We are reporting. Identified hostiles: Blood Pack Krogan. Eliminating." The Widow wasn't a small, delicate peice of equipment. None but a Krogan or a Geth could use one and still have arms. Many, massively reinforced and strengthed, fired a shot into the face of one of the warriors. It was a round that could shatter almost all known armor, and against the relatively unarmored face of his foe, it annihilated.

[JD196]

Tallos pulled out his Revenant machine gun and started to draw as much attention towards his position as possible. "Ninjas, flank around and attack from the sides and rear while the rest of us draw their fire. Lysander, you sneak around and meet up with Junko. We may not need the explosives but we can't risk them getting hit."

[Sabre72]

Junko opened her comm and addressed Lysander, "there is 2 krogan and 3 vorcha trying to get in the north door whats your ETA to my location? am holding off doing anything till your almost here, once we wipe the door team out we will try to hack the door and I will try to raise comms to anyone inside."


Junko moves to some different cover that will provide a better location to launch a distraction on the door team, once there she looks around to find her retreat cover that will be more to the west, which if all works out team 5 would be there.

[rhoenix]

"Amazing - I haven't seen anything go this bad, this fast since Omega," muttered Sidonis sardonically, as he took aim with his sniper rifle, carefully aiming at the head of one of the approaching vorcha, and firing when he had a shot.

"There are no mind-songs here for me to track," Sings-to-the-Stars said, with tinges of regretful color in his mind-speech. "But, I can still sing with all of you," he continued, just as biotic energy seemed to race like an angry ocean current over his huge form. An instant later, a massive Singularity opened where most of the two fireteams had hidden themselves.

[JD196]

"Sidonis, Stars, we need to keep the enemy pinned down." Tallos took down the shields of a krogan before switching to incendiary ammo and finishing it off. "Hopefully, if we can keep them pinned down here, Lysander and Junko can achieve the objective and fall back to the evac point." He stopped and fired another burst towards the enemy, forcing it to keep it's head down.

"If they manage to get in and secure the scientists and evacuate, than we can fall back as well and hopefully the blood pack survivors will be gloating over the empty facility." He ducked under a hail of shots.

"Lysander, if you can, once you secure the base plant your charges and try to bring it down behind you."

[frigidmagi]

Oh now they want to be charge. Should have done that earlier.

"Belay that. We got 30 to 40 hostiles coming downrange. Tallos if you recall primary objective is to kill all the blood pack members. Also, I'm not sneaking anywhere. Ninja's can you secure the airlock? Everyone else focus fire on the rocket launchers. Remember fire and move!" Lysander said, opening fire on the rocket launchers himself. A short burst of fire and he rolled to his feet rushing and diving into the next bit of cover.

[JD196]

"Damn it Lysander, there's more at stake here than your pride. If you can plant the explosives and we retreat, the blood pack should head into the building to try and scavenge what's left and you can bring it down remotely."

[frigidmagi]

Lysander was being shot at while carrying high explosives, it was a bad day.

"For the Love of... You have no idea what's going on do you? First off... I'M NOT CARRYING ENOUGH EXPLOSIVES TO TAKE OUT THE BUILDING! Second even if I was, I wouldn't kill all the hostages for your bright idea. Third, I... Can't... Sneak... Pass... 30... Krogan! Especially not in the middle of a firefight! Your idea is fundamentally impossible! Lastly... Retreat where genius? These guys have the firepower to shot down the shuttle! Put your genius brain to work killing blood pack and get off my radio!" Lysander said. He fired his rifle at the rocket launcher carrying vorcha and rolled again. This was a bad day!

[Sabre72]

Junko buzzed in over the radio, "Iona how far are you from me, am going to start distracting the northern blood pack door team of 2 krogan and 3 vorcha, Lysander how soon can the team get here to cover me?"


With that said, Junko unleashed a biotic charge at one of the vorcha at the door, then charged west to a different set of cover, once in cover she reactivated her cloaking unit.

[rhoenix]

Popping out of cover at last, the Quarian smoothly shouldered his M-12 Locust submachine gun. Just like the rumors said, it was the favorite of gang enforcers and hit men, and both titles would have been apt for his former position under Aria T'loak. Sighting on one of the flame thrower toting Vorcha's backs he fired a series of three round bursts before ducking back into cover and moving a few feet back along the debris pile toward the right, all the better to keep the enemy guessing on where he was going to fire from.

The Locust was rather accurate for a submachine gun. The aim was mostly true - a bloody line was stitched across the vorcha's torso before the stream of bullets struck the propellant tank, causing an impressive explosion that caused the remaining members of the Blood Pack fireteams to stagger backwards, hiding their eyes from the flash.

As this message was being transmitted, Shaddai's rifle barked once, a single, massive bolt of flying mass hurtling from it towards a Vorcha Blood Packer, the sights locked upon the creature's forehead, the immediate neighbor to the one the Quarian had just blasted with its submachine gun.

And though Shaddai made no claim to confirm or deny the matter, it was unlikely to be a co-incidence that the Vorcha he shot happened to be the one physically closest to the hidden Quarian.

The loud noise of Shaddai's sniper rifle going off startled the vorcha, but not as much as seeing the head of one of their number simply vanish into a haze of red mist, the power of the round striking the shields of the krogan behind the unlucky vorcha.

"Iona, moving in, I'll see if I can tie up their main force a bit, buy some time," the asari subvocalized into her suit's internal pickups as she slowly rose to her feet. The inherent downside of wide-area ground contact; it lowered your profile, but bedding down and getting up risked greater visible impact on nearby ground. Volcanic terrain -- no soft earth to deform with footsteps, heavy ash -- won't displace as much as normal dust. Not ideal, but workable. She began ghosting towards the small complex, picking her way across rocky outcroppings, avoiding depressions where ash tended to settle.

Before long, Iona spotted the incoming Blood Pack forces, creeping past them as she neared the facility. As she did, she noticed that there was a team at the front door of the facility, working on the door.

From Iona's map, it looked as if Junko Mori had circled around, and was now near to Iona's position, observing the rear side of the facility.

"We are reporting. Identified hostiles: Blood Pack Krogan. Eliminating." The Widow wasn't a small, delicate peice of equipment. None but a Krogan or a Geth could use one and still have arms. Many, massively reinforced and strengthed, fired a shot into the face of one of the warriors. It was a round that could shatter almost all known armor, and against the relatively unarmored face of his foe, it annihilated.

It hardly required the multitudes of processes contained within Many-As-One to aim and fire as he did, but the extra processing power and variables taken into account certainly didn't hurt.

The vorcha's head simply vanished into a cloud of red mist, the body staggering for a moment before falling down. The raw force of the round struck the hapless vorcha behind the first victim of Many's sniper shot, causing it to clutch its chest and squeal in agony, apparently not paying attention now to much else.

"Sidonis, Stars, we need to keep the enemy pinned down." Tallos took down the shields of a krogan before switching to incendiary ammo and finishing it off. "Hopefully, if we can keep them pinned down here, Lysander and Junko can achieve the objective and fall back to the evac point." He stopped and fired another burst towards the enemy, forcing it to keep it's head down.

(JD, this is due to your auto-hit.) The grenade thrown from the krogan earlier landed, and had pulsed for a few seconds before going off, relatively close to Tallos' position. All around Tallos, the world went white as the grenade went off, the Urdnot clan krogan unable to hear or see anything for at least a couple more seconds.

As it happened, those were a few seconds he didn't have. A rocket struck his shields, making them sputter valiantly before failing, just before being struck by another rocket in the chest. The impact and explosion actually lifted Tallos off the ground, and sent him flying backwards, nearly hitting the shuttle. His weapon lay on the ground forgotten, as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

Lysander fired his rifle at the rocket launcher carrying vorcha and rolled again. This was a bad day!

The shots went true - the vorcha Lysander struck was the same one staggering back from Many-As-One's sniper shot, and Lysander's rifle shots were quite enough to finish off the vorcha - who staggered backwards for a few steps, and then fell to the ground, unmoving.


EDIT: Added Lysander's results

[Agent Fisher]

Maraka had hit the dirt alongside Lysander. As they met enemy contact, he kept his head low, swinging his assault rifle from foe to foe, semiautomatic fire zipping through the air towards them.

A set of incoming hit his cover, forcing his head down, looking over at Lysander as the human popped up to engage the vorcha. He saw Tallos take a rocket and he swung his rifle, tracking back to hte shooter and tugging on that trigger, sending rounds at him.

[Soleimon Berserker]

"Tallos get do-Shit! Tallos is down, I repeat, Tallos is down. Someone check to see if he's still breathing, he took a rocket to the chest."

Cursing low under his breath, Sol'Amon moved a bit to his left, closer to his last firing position as he thanked the ancestors for the glass helmet of his envirosuit having optical dampeners. The flash of light caused by the explosion that took out the Krogan only stunned him for a moment instead of blinding him, giving him more than enough wherewithal to pop up out of cover once more to fire another burst from his submachine gun at the Krogan who'd been standing directly behind the Vorcha who'd been taken down by Shaddai.

Ducking back down he quickly checked his thermal clip, doing so caused him to grimace slightly, he'd already expended twelve bullets from his first twenty round clip. Quickly deciding to keep going with the half spent clip.

"Okay, this is turning into a real bad situation, anyone got any ideas!?"

[General Havoc]

Organics tended to suffer from sensory overload in battle. Not all certainly, and not all species equally, but it was a known factor. Geth did not share this attribute.

Shaddai had taken note of the rocket that struck Tallos-Candidate, and tagged its trajectory for further processing by a subcommittee of intelligences. But when the Creator moved, the majority of Shaddai's intelligences immediately began computing possible firing vectors towards him, and compiling a list of priority targets. But even as this was happening, the Creator leaned out and fired on the Krogan that the over-penetrating shot had struck with a submachine gun.

The committee needed very little time to decide that the odds were good that said Krogan would react violently to being engaged at close range by a Quarian. Accordingly, the decision was tabled, seconded, and passed, to elevate the Krogan in question to the top of the priority list.

The anti-materiel rifle was already in position, for the previous round had actually struck the Krogan's ballistic shields after decapitating the Vorcha. Only minor adjustments from wind alterations were required. Without a word, Shaddai locked its digital sights on the Krogan's bulbous head, and fired again, hurling another hypersonic bolt straight towards the Blood Packer.

[White Haven]

Iona started to smile at the sight of the Blood Pack forces moving opposite her, towards the firefight with the rest of the team. Not defending the facility, not already in the fight, but eager to get there...can use this. At Junko's transmission, she replied via haptics, twitching her fingers through a series of prerecorded phrases so that she wouldn't risk even a whisper of sound making it past her throat and out the helmet. This was going to be tooo close as it was. A somewhat disjointed transmission, in Iona's voice but lacking rhythm and flow, replied, "Secondary target, diverting."

Meanwhile, Iona looped around and began stalking the hindmost member of the reinforcement party, whispering closer step by step. She could just shoot him now, of course, but that would just give herself away in return for maybe, on a good day, killing one hostile. Bad odds. No...this demanded art. Her eyes were everywhere, flickering across the terrain to plan her steps, keeping tabs on the relative positions of at the least the rear elements of the Blood Pack unit. The timing, the range, the angle...all would need to be perfect. Finally, she closed the distance, ghosting up behind the trailer, reaching out and up, hesitating, slipping sideways a touch to line up the angle...

Ghostly blue light silhouetted her stealthed form as a violent blast of biotic force lashed out from her extended hand, originating from a point just behind the spine of her chosen victim and angled such that with any luck, the body (alive or dead, it was relatively immaterial at this point) would be catapulted into the troops in front of it.

And now, to survive the attempt, to evade long enough for her stealth field to stabilize and for the telltale flare of unleashed biotic power to disperse. With any luck, distraction and surprise would buy her most of that, but luck was a poor substitute for a proper line-of-sight break. Muscles bunched and threw the asari sideways in something that was very nearly a sidelong leap, only barely keeping her legs beneath her as she touch rock again and dashed for the scant cover provided by a nearby dip in the rocky ground. It wasn't much...but she didn't need it to last long, just long enough to disappear once more.

[SirNitram]

"Many-As-One reporting. Moving to retreive Tallos. Switching to.. 'Shotgun'." The delay was less than a heartbeat, but for a Geth, it was very slow. He had to look up what they had dubbed the incredibly potent plasma-launcher he was swapping into his arms. The overarmoured Hunter platform moved in, covering Tallos and launching blasts of superheated plasma into any Vorcha carrying heavy weapons. His objective now was not accuracy.. Though it'd be foolish to think the multitudes in Many couldn't acheive kills like this.. But primarily keeping them back while he assisted the downed Krogan. A few hundred subroutines accessed Krogan biology, used to quickly assess his status and how to best remove him.