“Alright everyone, we’re going to hit our LZ in five. Keep your eyes open, watch your sectors, and stay alert.” Shepard said as the Kodiak fell through the atmosphere. “We have no idea what we are heading into so no lone wolf crap.”
“Don’t worry Commander, we’ll get it done.” Jacob Taylor reassured.
Miranda Lawson wasn’t so optimistic. “What exactly are we looking for? The Illusive Man doesn’t send assets on frivolous missions. You must have something more than go ‘investigate a wreck’.”
Shepard shrugged. “I wish I could tell you otherwise but this is just an in and out investigation. The Illusive Man thinks we could use a milk run before we head out to Omega, and I agree with him.” Shepard had to quickly check to make sure she hadn’t thrown up in her mouth.
She had seen the kind of shit Cerberus got into. Agreeing with the leader of such an organization on anything was enough to make her gag.
Miranda accepted her answer and returned to checking the scanners.
Five minutes later the three of them fell out from the Kodiak in textbook formation. Shepard waited until both Jacob and Miranda gave the all clear.
“All right EDI, lock it up. We should be back in a couple hours. Miranda, Jacob, on me.” After a round of affirmatives the squad set off for the crash site.
The wreck was surprisingly large, Shepard thought. And in much better condition than she would have assumed for something that had made a crash landing.
The front of the ship was still mostly in one piece, even after tearing what must have been a mile long trench over the surface of the planet. In fact if it wasn’t for the gaping hole in the rear of the ship where the engines used to be she wouldn’t’ve believed the ship had crashed at all.
“What kind of ship can skip across a planet and look okay?” Shepard wondered.
“Not anything we know of.” Miranda replied. “The design doesn’t match any ship on record and I’m not reading any eezo signatures. Shepard, I don’t think this ship belongs to any of the Citadel races.”
Shepard’s head snapped to her XO. “Are you saying we have a potential First Contact scenario?”
“Possibly. If it is, we should pull back and inform the Illusive Man. He can send a team better equipped for studying a new species.”
“Absolutely not.” Shepard denied immediately. She would be damned if the first contact a new race had with the rest of the galaxy was being shipped off to a Cerberus lab and experimented on. The haunted eyes of Corporal Toombs flashed in her memory. The sick bastards had killed his entire squad at Akuze and then tortured the man by injecting Thresher Maw acid into him. All in the name of some messed up experiment. She didn’t want to know what they would do to an alien if they were willing to go that far on a fellow human. “We are going to sweep for survivors, give them any aid we can, and then inform the SA. They can handle First Contact.”
Miranda gave her a cool look before accepting. “Alright Shepard. It’s your call.”
“Well if you want to help out any survivors we’d better hurry.” Jacob called out, pointing towards the rear of the ship. “Because they are about to get a very rude introduction if we don’t find them first.”
Shepard looked to where Jacob was pointing and cursed. Huddled around one of the holes in the hull were a group of four-eyed humanoids. Several more filed out of a nearby APC and filtered into the wreck.
“Batarians.” She hissed.
One of the most morally repugnant races in the galaxy, the Batarians were the biggest supporters of slavery around. Shepard had dealt with their kind several times over her career and few of them pleasant. The most notable was during the Skyllian Blitz on Elysium when hundreds of Batarian pirates had launched a massive slave raid on the human colony.
“Okay, things just got a bit more urgent. Lets go, double time.”
-o-
Revan woke to the sounds of alarms wailing throughout the cockpit. With a groan she pulled herself up into a more proper sitting position than the way she had been hanging in the retaining harness. She couldn’t help but wince and the burns on her chest, as well as what felt like a few broken ribs, protested at the movement.
“T1 status report.” She slurred.
There was no reply.
A quick look around the rest of the cockpit showed that Revan was all alone at the moment.
“Never any help when you need it.” Revan muttered out loud before checking a console in front of her. Thankfully it still had power. Reaching out Revan flicked the switch for the shipwide intercom. “T1 you there? What's the status of the ship?”
Instead of the electronic beeps and whistles she expected, a harsh guttural language barked out of the speakers. More concerning was Revan had no idea what any of it meant. Either her translator had broken or she had landed on a planet outside of known space. Likely the latter since the aliens on the security cameras didn’t look like any race she had seen before and Revan wasn’t about to gamble on the locals being friendly. Not with the amount of blasters they were carrying with them.
“Welp, better go meet the new neighbors. Hopefully I can talk my way out of this mess.” Revan was always up for a fight, but even she would admit jumping straight to violence when she was stranded on an unknown world hurt and alone was not the best choice. Reaching out to the Force to block the worst of the pain Revan picked up her discarded helmet from where it had been dislodged during the crash.
She turned the hemet over in her hands, running her thumb over the various scratch marks covering the surface of the red and grey piece of armor. Part of her was tempted to leave it behind. This mask had become the symbol of her burgeoning empire. A symbol of terror across the galaxy. What hope did she have of resolving this peacefully if it was recognised?
But would these new aliens listen to a lone woman otherwise? The weapons clearly showed they were expecting a fight.
In the end, practicality won out. Symbol or not, the helmet had life support systems and filters that she might need. She could always take the time to convince the locals to help her later, and it would be easier if she wasn’t sick because of some toxin in the air.
Revan slipped the iconic helmet over her head and walked out the door. She didn’t have to go far before she ran into the first group of aliens.
“Hello there. It seems my ship had a bit of trouble landing. Any chance you could point me towards a good mechanic?” Revan was quite proud of herself for managing to sound so polite.
Unfortunately from the glances between the aliens they hadn’t understood her at all.
“#$% $%^& #@$&%$.” the one in the lead barked out while pointing his blaster at her.
The hostile stance pretty much confirmed how this encounter was going to go, but Revan gave it one last shot. “Look I can’t understand you. Either speak basic or try another language. Because the one you're using isn’t working for either of us.”
This time the three other aliens pointed their blasters at her.
Revan let out a disappointed huff. “Fine, be that way.”
The Force blared a warning as the lead alien fired off a shot, but Revan was already moving.
One of her lightsabers leapt into her hand and ignited into a brilliant crimson blade with a snap-hiss. Revan twirled the blade into the path of the alien’s shot and was mildly surprised when it was disintegrated rather than reflected. Projectile weapons? Did they know they would be fighting a force user?
Revan pushed those thoughts aside for the moment and focused on the fight. The other aliens jumped in surprise at the sudden appearance of her lightsaber and unloaded their own weapons at her. The red blade sang as it weaved a protective wall of flashing light in front of her.
Still, there were four slug throwers and Revan was forced to use a single saber and was injured. Despite the masterful defence, she was forced to focus on the shots that targeted vital areas and the breaches in her armor. Every once in a while a shot would make it through her defense and hit the metal plates of her armor. If the integrated shield was working, Revan would’ve dismissed these shots entirely but Bastila’s sabotage ensured that the slug’s full impact was felt.
Revan’s leg and chest screamed in protest as the supersonic rounds aggravated barely healed wounds and after a lucky shot slammed into her helmet, her head buzzed with static.
Eventually the four aliens were forced to stop firing when their weapons ejected a cylindrical object with a burst of steam. The four of them stared at Revan in disbelief that not only had she survived the stream of gunfire, but she was also nearly untouched.
“You done?” Revan snarled. The aliens flinched at the simple question and quickly tried to replace the cylindrical thing from their guns with another. Revan wasn’t going to allow that. Her hand came forward and sparks jumped between her fingers.
“My turn.”
Thick bands of lightning flooded the cramped corridor and washed over the four aliens. They could only scream in agony as the powerful bands of electricity fried them from the inside out. Revan only halted the deadly tide of energy when the last of them fell silent.
“Dammit, I should’ve saved one. Their electronics are toast.” Revan lamented. Getting her hands on a working radio would’ve given her a much better idea where she was and slowly made her way past the charred bodies before bumping into a wall and nearly falling over.
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“And to top it all off I have a concussion. This day just gets better and better.” Revan complained wearily. It was a good thing she was as good with Force Reinforcement as she was or she might’ve collapsed. Instead new power bolstered her tired limbs and soothed the aches of her many injuries.
Just in time for another six of the hostile aliens to turn the corner.
Revan had just enough time to duck behind a structural brace as the six opened fire with more slug throwers.
“You know this didn’t work for your friends, what makes you think it will work for you?” Revan called and was answered with another burst of gunfire. “Freaking rude…”
Rounding the corner, Revan hurled her still ignited lightsaber down the hall. The gunfire quickly turned to screams as the ruby blade sliced through guns, armor, and limbs like it was nothing. A small pull of the Force returned the lightsaber to her hand.
Approaching the dismembered remains of the aliens, Revan got her first good look at the aliens attacking her.
Green skin wasn’t anything new to her. In fact it was so commonplace Revan barely gave it any acknowledgement after her first glance. An alien with four eyes was somewhat more novel, however. Between that, the ugly multi ridged nose, the tubelike jowls, and the mouth filled with sharp needle like teeth Revan was confident in saying she had never heard of a species like this anywhere in the galaxy. That, and she probably wouldn’t like what would happen to her if she was captured. Nice, peaceful races tended to not have teeth like Adegan eels.
Revan quickly dug through the equipment the aliens had carried looking for anything useful. She found several more of those cylindrical objects, ammo canisters probably, but elected not to take any with her. She could play with alien guns when she had made sure they were all dead.
She also found several grenades she left behind for similar reasons. Blowing herself up by accident was not how a Dark Lady did things.
She also noticed there was some kind of computer attached to the left forearm of several of the aliens, but a quick experiment showed that the terminals were either password or DNA locked to their user. Revan couldn’t get the things to turn on.
She had mildly better luck with a communicator that she pulled from the ear of one of the aliens. As in it worked based on the screaming she could hear coming from the tiny microphone. Revan gave the communicator a quick once over and decided it was a simple audio receiver and transmitter. She wasn’t going to find a translator among this group it seemed. Perhaps the next would have something worthwhile?
Revan paused.
Actually, how many aliens were on her ship? Revan hoped not too many more. She had already killed ten of them, but she was nearing the end of her endurance. Who would have guessed dueling a master Jedi, crashing a ship from orbit, and fighting through nearly a dozen aliens would be so exhausting?
She chuckled at her private joke, but only because lingering on that first point was enough to make her cry.
“Enough stalling Revan, you have a job to do.” She whispered to herself and set off again.
Soon enough she was able to see the reason her prototype had crashed in the first place.
The powerful hyperdrive engines had managed to tear themselves from the ship entirely, opening the whole thing to the world outside. Hatches and security doors were useless when there was a giant hole in the wall.
I just hope T1 wasn’t back there when the engines blew. Revan thought. He wasn’t the best droid I’ve worked with but it would be nice to not be completely on my own.
A slug pinged off a nearby handrail and more shouting came from below. Revan saw another group of five aliens directly below her rushing to cover and taking a few potshots at her. A lazy twirl of her wrist and her lightsaber annihilated the few slugs close enough to hit her.
“Let’s see if you can do better than the last group.” With that, Revan jumped from the deck to the one below and landed in the middle of the aliens. She had hoped landing in the middle of them would discourage them firing indiscriminately, but the aliens seemed to be gambling on bringing her down before their friendly fire overwhelmed their shields.
Revan charged one alien and swiftly cut him diagonally in half before turning and pulling another towards her. The alien flailed wildly in the air until Revan positioned it in front of her and used it as a meatshield. The alien’s shields were quickly depleted under the assault from three automatic weapons.
It died soon after when they finally broke. Revan noticed one of them pause their attack to reload and tossed the corpse of it’s companion at it. The other two redoubled their attack, spraying a hail of slugs towards Revan. Not that it did much. Between her lightsaber and her armor Revan was able to shrug off the last few seconds of their barrage.
The two upright aliens ran out of ammo at nearly the same time. Their guns venting steam. Revan took advantage of the sudden lull to stab the fallen alien through the body of it’s friend. The final two alive gave a cry of rage at the death of another member of their group. The bigger of the two was fumbling with another ammo canister so Revan focused on it’s smaller friend. It had just managed to reload it’s weapon when she removed it’s head with a swing of her saber.
The final alien apparently had given up on reloading and charged her. Revan was about to dismiss him just as easily as his friend when the Force screamed a warning. Revan felt the world slow down around her as she looked over her charging foe with the experience of the victor of thousands of fights. It was only when she saw the silver device in it’s hand that she realised it was different from the ammo canisters she had seen. It was a grenade!
Despite the agony in her left arm, Revan thrust out her hand. The power of the desperate Force Push nearly tore the unfortunate alien to pieces and flung it back the way it came. Unfortunately for Revan, this also set off the high explosive grenade in its hand.
The blast was far enough away that her armor absorbed the worst of it, but it still picked her up off the ground and threw her across the room.
“I hope that was the last of them. I’m getting tired of getting thrown into walls.” The Dark Lord muttered as she stood and distantly realised the tattered remains of her robe were on fire. She absently patted the flames out and realised the only reason she hadn’t cut her own arm off was because her lightsaber had automatically retracted when she released it sometime after being exploded.
Revan knew she was dangerously close to overdrawing her powers, as she infused her entire body with the healing power of the Force once more, but as her mind cleared (and her vision stubbornly remained blurry) she realised she was going to be forced to recover for days once she stopped moving. So if she wanted to live through this then she needed to make sure she was in a safe place to heal.
“Now if only more of them would stop coming!” Revan cursed as she noticed three more blurry figures on the other side of the room.
-o-
Seemingly a lifetime ago Shepard’s N school instructors had worked hard to drive one thing into her skull. Moving fast means objectives get done, enemies get put down, and your squad stays alive. Moving hastily means missions get sloppy, the bad guys win, and your squad is dead.
Watching as over a dozen heavily armed Batarians stormed the wreck in hopes of enslaving the likely injured crew made Shepard want to push that line between fast and hasty. She wanted to charge forward, biotics blazing, if only to draw the slavers away from the no doubt scared aliens on the ship, but years of training and discipline held her in check.
“How many went in the wreck?” She asked
“By my count, maybe a dozen? Might be more that got here before us.” Jacob replied. “And we have a bunch of them still outside.”
“Fourteen still by the breach.” Miranda said and turned to Shepard. “Commander, I understand not wanting to leave anyone for the Batarians, but can we afford the risk? You’re the only one who can stop the Collectors. If we...”
“I hear you Miranda.” Shepard cut her off. “But I don’t leave innocents behind.” she smiled. “And since you work for me now, that means you don’t either.”
Miranda gave a small start, but returned the smile.
The three of them were soon crouched right outside the rest of the Batarian group. The Batarians had not been expecting anyone other than themselves and the crew of the ship so the ones outside were relaxed and lazy. Just how Shepard liked them.
“How do you want to play it, Commander?”
“Jacob, you and me Lift the ones at the edges. Whichever has the biggest gun. I’ll take right, you go left. Miranda, Slam the ones in the middle. While they are disoriented, sweep through and put ‘em down.”
“Showing the Batarians how to do a proper blitz Commander?” Jacob laughed. “I can dig it.”
“On my mark. 3. 2. 1. Mark!”
Despite the short amount of time working together, the three members of the ground team moved like a well oiled machine. The first group of Batarians barely had time to scream before a storm of ME rounds and biotics killed them all.
Shepard was privately impressed. These two were certainly better than the normal Cerberus flunkies she dealt with.
“Great job team. They didn’t know what hit ‘em.” she complimented. “Let’s go take care of the ones inside.”
The three humans rushed into the breach and started working towards the front of the ship. The Batarians likely had rushed to take key points along the ship. Most of the doors remained closed and only a few looked like they had been forced open.
“No signs of a fight or even any of the crew.” Miranda observed. “Did they know the Batarians were hostile and locked the doors hoping they would be rescued?”
“They might have gathered at the front of the ship.” Jacob suggested. “With the engines ripped out it is likely the most secure place left.”
Shepard shushed the two of them with a quick wave. “We can only guess for now, but heads in the game. We have more Batarians up ahead.”
True to her word, a group of five more Batarians were visible in the room ahead. When the four-eyed aliens rushed to cover Shepard thought they had been spotted and prepared to order Jacob and Miranda to find some cover of their own. When the Batarians started shooting and none of the rounds were coming down the hall, she had a different revelation.
“The Batarians are fighting the crew up ahead! Move up and support!”
The humans rushed to the doorway ready to suppress the Batarians, but when they saw the fight in front of them they could only stare in disbelief. A two meter tall armored figure in a black robe stood in the middle of the room using the corpse of a Batarian as a bullet sponge. With little apparent effort the unknown humanoid tossed the body at one of the three surviving enemies and casually blocked gunfire with some kind of red energy sword.
She was so stunned she barely saw the figure move when it beheaded a Batarian after stabbing the fallen one.
She was confident however that the last Batarian was not going to last much longer so she quickly addressed her team. “Okay, so this is less than ideal but we are going to try and do this peacefully. We don’t shoot first and we limit biotics to lift fields. Miranda, I want you-”
Shepard was cut off by the sound of high explosives and the sight of the figure slamming into a wall.
“Oh shit,” she cursed. “Jacob, watch for more Batarians. Miranda, grab some medigel.”
“Uh, Commander? I don’t think we need to.”
This was not the time for any hidden Cerberus racism to surface.
“And why’s that?” Shepard asked, a promise of punishment in her eyes if Jacob didn’t have a good reason.
Luckily for him, he did. “Um… well, just look.”
All three of them watched in stunned silence as the alien that had just tanked a HE grenade to the face stood up like nothing was wrong, nonchalantly patted out the flames smoldering on its robe, muttered something, and turned to face them.
Okay… the alien was tough enough to cut its way through a squad of heavily armed Batarians and take a grenade with minor injuries. Shepard hoped they didn’t have to fight. But that hope was sunk when the alien’s red sword blazed to life.
“Hold on a second!” Shepard spread her arms to the side, making sure the alien could see she wasn’t pointing her gun anywhere close to it. “We aren’t with them. We just want to talk.”
“Espechs tnow aves uoy romf em.”
Fantastic, whatever language the alien spoke wasn’t recorded in the database the Citadel used for their translators. It was expected but still frustrating.
“Okay, I didn’t get a word of that. But let's just put the scary glowing sword away and-”
The only thing that saved Shepard from getting bisected were the new reflexes granted by her Cerberus implants. By instinct she ducked under the glowing weapon and reflexively blasted the alien with the strongest biotic Throw she could.
The alien was once again thrown into one of the walls. It let out a small cry of pain and held its side, before it focused back on Shepard with a laser-like focus.
“Jedi...” it hissed and Shepard could practically feel the hatred dripping from the word.
“I think you made it mad, Shepard.”
“Not the time Miranda.”
Shepard dove out of the way as the alien charged again. This time she rounded on the alien and prepared to fire into its side with her Katana shotgun. They might not actually be enemies but she wasn’t going to get herself killed trying to reason with it if it didn’t want to listen. A soon as the gun lined up she pulled the trigger.
When the gun didn’t fire Shepard realised that while she had dodged the energy blade just fine, the upper half of her weapon had been sheared off leaving behind a worthless lump of metal with the edges of the missing section glowing orange.
Son of a bitch! She liked that shotgun!
She ducked under a decapitating strike and despite common sense screaming at her to put distance between her and the sword that cut through hardened metal like rice paper, tackled the armored alien.
Lucky for her that the alien was not as uninjured as it appeared and howled in pain when she smacked into its ribs. A biotically infused punch to the forearm forced it to drop its weapon. Shepard smiled in savage delight at the turn of events. Something that changed quickly when the alien’s elbow smashed into her nose.
“Gah! Bitch!” Shepard and the alien descended into a no-holds barred fistfight. Both fighters pulled every dirty trick they could think of while Jacob and Miranda looked on, waiting for an opportunity to assist without endangering their commanding officer.
The brawl continued for over a minute before Shepard made a major mistake.
A sloppy punch to the alien’s helmet was countered with a brutal right cross and Shepard’s world went white as her already abused nose broke. Shepard stumbled backwards trying to disengage and cursed as she slipped on a puddle of Batarian blood.
Shepard panicked when she heard the snap-hiss of the alien’s weapon activate. Her sight cleared up just in time to look into the red and grey mask of the alien as it held a blue colored energy blade high overhead, ready to plunge it into her vulnerable form.
Luckily for the Commander, she didn’t fight alone.
Before the blade could descend, the alien glowed in a corona of biotic energy. It quickly levitated a few feet off the ground before it was slammed into the ground at high speed. Jacob quickly pulled Shepard to her feet and pressed a pistol into her hand as the three of them surrounded the fallen alien watching for any sign of movement.
When it didn’t move again Shepard slowly approached it, kicking the deactivated energy sword further away just in case the alien was faking.
“You alright, Commander?” Jacob asked, gun still trained on the alien.
“Pweachy. I fink by noebs bwoken doe.” Shepard replied nasally.
“Well I don’t think we killed it. What should we do next?”
Shepard deftly inserted some medigel into her nasal cavities, breathing a sigh of relief when the painkilling properties kicked in.
“Check dis one, an’ make sure itz still alibve. Den sweep da’ ship for ‘ny surbibors.”
Her squadmates nodded and Shepard knelt down and started feeling around the alien’s neck for a way to release its helmet. She quickly found two releases and removed the helmet, allowing the humans to get a look at the alien that they were hoping to rescue.
The face was shockingly human. In fact, between the fair skin, red blood, and shockingly golden blonde hair the alien looked exactly like a human female. The only feature betraying the alien’s origin were the long pointed ears on the side of her head.
There was only one thing Shepard could say to that.
“Did I j’st get my ass handed to be by a f’eckin space elf?!”