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Staff Lieutenant Jake Anderson
The infiltration team quickly proved just why it was that the Spectre’s has searched them out, systematically taking the Cerberus assault team apart with surgical precision, and not a little panache. Anderson almost felt privileged to watch it, thinking that even the N7 Special Ops team he had led during the war would have been hard pressed to emulate such a speedy take-down. He stepped out of his cover as Sicaria dropped the last of the troopers, using the lull in the fighting to eject the spent thermal clip from his Valkyrie and to slot in a fresh one.
"Still have your doubts about me?" Asked Sicaria, a shit-eating grin painted across her bloody face – when she got injured, the Spectre just didn't know – and Anderson briefly wondered how Aegon would respond to that. Probably threaten her with charges. Good thing for the Turian, he wasn’t Aegon.
“I never doubted your skills, Velinian. If I had you wouldn’t be here.” He responded with a crooked grin, It wasn’t a direct answer, but he’d leave it to her to decipher the meaning behind his words.
Away in the distance it sounded like the main battle was beginning to wane. Seemed like Cerberus just didn’t have the forces to contend with two Krogans and a handful of powerful biotics. What a surprise. Thinking that the area was under control, and that the two Turians had a handle on the scientists, the Spectre approached their hacker.
“Hey Rayes, you alright? Not hit or … ” a blaring of klaxon horns stole from him the chance to finish the sentence. Casting around quickly for what may have caused the noise, he spotted one of the scientists, a middle-aged Caucasian man with a grey specked beard, who had hauled himself up to one of the terminals while the team’s attention had been elsewhere. Even without knowing yet just what it was the man had done, Anderson knew it wasn’t good. After all, you didn’t use alarms like those to announce the lunch hour.
“Turn it off!” He yelled at the scientist, though whether the man struggled to hear him through the blaring racket, or through a wilful disobedience, the scientist didn’t actually switch off the alarm, forcing Anderson to cross over to the terminal and hit the alarm button himself. Blissful silence did not sound though. In fact, the sounds that replaced the blasting sirens was much, much worse, both familiar and horrifying in equal measure.
A ululating shrieking was sounding in the distance, the terrifying bastard child of a death scream and a berserkers roar, though an undercurrent of electrical feedback gave the clamor an otherworldly quality. It came from all around them, distant but steadily getting closer. Anderson felt a pit widen in his stomach, fighting back feelings of revulsion and the frightful recollections of half-remembered battlefields.
“What. Did. You. Do.” He demanded of the scientist, his expression cold and flat, his hands tight on the grip of his rifle. The sudden change in composure was startling, and obviously terrifying for the old greybeard, who began to stutter his way through a nervous answer, though with the shrieks closing in Anderson didn’t have time for the man’s stammering. He grabbed a fistful of the man’s lab-coat, and slammed him bodily back onto the computer desk, his free hand forcing the barrel of his rifle under the man’s bearded chin. “ENGLISH, YOU SON OF A BITCH! SPEAK IT!” It proved to be the incentive the scientist needed.
“The Husks!” He spat, breathless as Anderson’s hold was restricting his ability to breath, “I released the Husks!”
Aegon Partinax
Despite everything, Aegon had to be impressed by Vella's inspired manoeuvre. Her pulse grenade coupled with her singularity managed to completely stall the Cerberus advance. The FENRIS Mechs, already staggering from an earlier explosion, short-circuited when the EMP hit them. They might have recovered if the subsequent singularity and frag grenade explosions didn't turn them into a roiling stew of circuity and composite metals. The Guardian shield wall suffered as well. The biotic attack and Rykarn's grenade launcher decimated their ranks, severed body parts and viscera joined the macabre soup levitating in the air. Less impressive was Ellis' disabling at the hands of Vella's grenade. Aegon filed away that miscalculation for later berating. Cerberus changed tactics, electing to dig in and direct all their firepower at their position instead of charging forward. A smoke screen was thrown up and tracer rounds spit out of it like fireworks.
It wasn't the time to press the attack but that's exactly what Ellis did. Aegon tuned his helmet to infrared and caught the heat signatures of the Cerberus troopers as well as Ellis himself. Whatever Guardians survived the earlier carnage were put down by the Ex-Cerberus behemoth, who also killed a few troopers and went straight for the mech. Aegon cursed under his breath. The human was advancing on his own, robbing the team of the luxury of heavy weapons out of concern for his safety. And if he went down, he would force them to charge into a meat-grinder to get to him. Spiritsdamned amateur! Aegon would have to shout at him later, if the human survived. All he could do was try and give him covering fire, shooting tight bursts of rifle rounds at Cerberus to get their attention while Vella and Tiberius attended to the grenades. That was another miscalculation on Ellis' part. If he hadn't charged like a cowboy in those human western vids, they could have dumped the grenades right back in Cerberus' lap.
Luckily Vella and Tiberius' combined efforts saved the team from either dying in the blast or being crushed to death in a cave in, though he wasn't sure what Skarr's shock-wave was meant to achieve. Perhaps he meant to detonate the explosives early, in a controlled fashion, but as they were trapped under the other biotics barrier, it seemed to have little effect. As it was, most of the force of the grenades were absorbed by the barriers and the tunnel wasn't damaged further than having some loose bricks and dust fall. Salissa's suppressing fire drew the attention of the surviving Assault Troopers and the Centurion, who were down to nine men. They were in no position to throw further grenades and elected to stay in position and shoot back at the team, luckily leaving Ellis alone and trusting the YMIR mech to deal with him. Aegon was appalled however when he saw Salissa use explosive rounds from her inaccurate machine gun to shoot at the YMIR. At that range she could have hit her teammate, and if she did kill the mech, with those rounds the explosions would have taken out Ellis as well. He wasn't particularly concerned about the Ex-Cerberus operative's life but the reckless display rankled Aegon's sensibilities. He commed Salissa, "Check your fire! Ellis is up there! You're liable to hit him with that thing! Focus on the troopers!"
For his part, Ellis managed to disable the Mech's most powerful weapon, and the Mech was showing heavy wear and tear with it's shields drained and it's armor compromised. But he hadn't been paying attention to the duo of Engineers who had used the time to set up turrets. And he had just thrown away his cover. The turrets and their builders opened up while the YMIR reeled and the automatic machine gun fire and heavy pistols shot into his already damaged armor. Luckily for the man, the rounds didn't quite fully penetrate his barriers or his armor and into his vital organs, but many of his servos and joints were nearly scrapped by the rounds, and several cybernetic limbs were almost ripped off. He went down under the hail of gunfire and the turrets turned their attention to the rest of the team, their operators leaving Ellis alive to draw in his comrades.
The situation was only compounded in severity when Giles decided to shoot the YMIR in the head with his explosive round. The mechanic corpse started to glow, counting down until it exploded with force comparable to a Cain. In that confined quarters, Ellis and everyone else in the immediate vicinity of the tunnel would be killed. Cerberus recognized this, and the squad immediately beat feet, turning and sprinting down the hallway as fast as they could, ignoring Ellis and leaving the turrets to pin down the squad. The chances were they would die anyway, but no doubt they preferred to take a chance.
Aegon cursed inwardly, emitting a long mental blue streak that would have made his old drill sergeant blush. Gile's showboating might get Ellis killed and it was way too risky for anyone to go in and extract him manually with the weight of his armor and the turrets still operational. He resolved to shove his boot up Giles and Ellis' asses, and probably Vella's for good measure, should any of them miraculously survive this. He shouted out, "Biotics! Get Ellis! Someone get the turrets! Everyone else, cover!" He reloaded his rifle and ignited his jetpacks while activating his suits stimulants and time slowed down while he jumped into the air. He unloaded the clip into one turret, draining its shields before finishing it off with a concussive blast, he dove back behind cover as the other turret tried to tag him and he his heartbeat thundered like a storm while he waited for the inevitable explosion, hoping the biotics would draw Ellis away in time and hoping they wouldn't all be crushed alive under tons of concrete.
Staff Lieutenant Jake Anderson
Anderson’s rifle-butt slammed into the scientist’s face, sudden and shocking, rocking the older man from his feet to send him sprawling to the ground.
“Always fucking Husks with you people!” He snarled, remembering that Cerberus had done similar during the war. Didn’t they ever learn? Those monsters were dangerous, and should be put down wherever they were found, not poked and prodded in hopes of finding some new, nebulous way of making soldiers more effective. He took a deep breath, struggling to calm himself. If he didn’t get control of his emotions he was liable to do something stupid. “How many?”
The bearded scientist was in no shape to answer, struggling to spit blood and teeth from the shattered ruin of his face, so Anderson directed his question to a pretty female researcher who had the swarthy looks of someone with a middle-eastern heritage. She didn’t answer at first, perhaps afraid that she would receive the same treatment her colleague had suffered. Anderson repeated the question, trying, and failing, to sound gentler.
“We have four sub basements, each filled with up to five hundred husks, mostly human but with some Cannibal and Marauder designations mixed in.” Andersons eyes widened at the figure, and he had to grab at the desk to steady himself. How had their intelligence-ops not given them any hint of that the facility was concealing something of this magnitude? How could they have missed something this big? It did answer one thing though. The tunnels around the compound had been conspicuously absent of Husks. Cerberus must have cleaned out the entire Underground system to have such numbers.
“Are you all crazy? Why would you let them loose?” He demanded, though he had a good idea of what the answer was going to be.
“Michael said that if we released the Husks we could use the ensuing chaos to escape.” The woman answered, looking to the injured scientist, apparently named Michael. Any feelings of regret that Anderson had felt for smashing the older mans teeth out swiftly dissppeared. The man was a dangerous idiot.
The screeching was uncomfortably loud now, and it seemed that at any moment the horde might spill into the room. Anderson knew he had to call a retreat now, before it was too late and that option was denied to them. However, he knew that if they didn’t deal with the Husks here, then they’d eventually make their way to ground level, where the innocent civilians lived, and they were in no way prepared to deal with a horde of this magnitude. Hundreds would be killed long before the Alliance Military would be able to take control of the situation. He couldn’t let that happen. Wouldn’t let it. The lives of his team weren’t worth those of all the people living above, completely unaware of the danger beneath their feet. He took a few moments to formulate his plan, before dragging the female researcher towards the workstation where Michael had released the beasts.
He instructed her to shut and lock the back-doors that the infiltration team had used to get into the facility, ensuing that the horde only had one way out, that being through the entrance that Aegon and his team were currently assaulting. He then had her open every door that led in a direct path from the sub-basements to this room, and the room to the front entrance, while shutting and locking every door that led on a divergent path along either route, meaning the horde had only one way to go.
Towards the Task Force.
Opening the communication channel to the whole team, including Aegon and the assault squad, he gave a brief message.
“Katabasis, there’s been a development. This institution has been used as a Reaper research station, and now we have upwards of two-thousand Husks on the loose. We must hold them here, stop them gaining passage to the city above. Infiltration will act as a lure, and lead the horde to Assault’s position, there we’ll be able to hunker down and use the tight confines to halt them until reinforcements can arrive.” Short, and Aegon probably wouldn’t appreciate being left out of the decision process, but time was tight and he couldn’t afford to spare the Turian’s feelings now.
He hauled the scientist, Michael, to his feet, realised the man was still unsteady on his feet, and unlikely to be running anywhere any time soon, and so thrust him at Raye’s.
“That download better be complete, because we just ran out of time. Ok people, we’re leaving. Balak, you and Angel are acting point. Use the maps we sent to your Omni-tools and lead us to Aegon and the others. Slow and steady though, we want the Horde to follow us out, rather than finding any other exits we don’t know about. Careful though, with the amount of Husks in this place, I expect there will be packs of the fuckers cutting us off from our allies already.”
“Rol, Sicaria, we’ll be fighting rear-guard. Phalanx, you and Raye’s will be with the scientists in the middle. Keep them safe, and keep them from ‘disappearing’ on us. We’ve got plenty of questions for them when this is all over.” He cast a quick, disparaging glance at the Cerberus troopers, many of whom were still lying in pain on the floors. “Those, we leave to the Husks. They made their beds.” He wasn’t about to risk his people for men and women who had just recently tried to kill them.
While waiting for the team to get into position he contacted Alliance forces in the area, appraising them of the situation and begging reinforcements, while recommending they evacuate the immediate area. The reinforcements were promised, though may take up to half an hour to arrive. They kept tight-lipped on the evacuation though, and Anderson wondered what kind of omen that was. Not a good one, if he was to guess.
He was just stepping into line next to Sicaria and Rol when the first Husk burst into the room, wail ululating out, before it noticed the fallen, squirming Cerberus Centurion, quickly throwing itself bodily at the man, ripping at his armour until it’s flailing fingers managed to tear into the flesh underneath. It was presently joined by another Husk, then another, until before you could even say 'Reaper', there was over a dozen of the desiccated monsters, screeching and clawing at the screaming Cerberus Assault troopers, with more and more pushing their way into the room every moment. Anderson swapped his Valkyrie out for his N7 Piranha, feeling the heavy weapon unfold in his hands, his anticipation rising once more.
Don't think of Mam. These aren't the same ones that ...
The first of the Husks spotted him and his team at the opposite door, screeching a challenge before hurling itself forwards. It didn’t get very far before the Piranha bellowed it’s reply, razor shot tearing through the creature’s body to send it flying back in a bloody spray. The blast awoke the rest of the horde to his presence, and as one they began their screeching once more, before tearing towards the team
“Here we go.” He muttered, pumping round after round into the roiling mass, giving ground with each shot, following the path chosen by Balak and Aria.
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