Chapter Text
Shanxi, 2157
Before the age of fifteen, Adrien dreamt his way through a thousand scenarios and possibilities that awaited him after boot camp. He used to dart through the Intuneric Woodland, plastic rifle in hand, and leap atop the biggest boulder he could find-- a surprise attack that gave him and his phantom platoon the upper hand against imaginary pirates and Separatists. The surrounding, silver trees played the roles of his enemies.
Now, instead of running freely through warm Palaven forests, Adrien crept slowly through foreign, levo-based groves. A heavy Armax rifle took the place of his light-weight plastic model and the idle characters that the trees had played now shot to kill. But those were all aspects he expected to change.
“Hold.” Captain Ambus quietly ordered, his gauntleted hand rising to bring their troop to a halt.
What Victus never accounted for was the possibility of going to war with a newly discovered race. Perhaps, when he was younger, he had held grand thoughts of leading a team against another acid-spitting, fourteen-eyed insect race like the rachni. He would shoot a phantom individual in the head with his imaginary shotgun and step away heroically to avoid the resultant green spray of acidic blood and brain matter while his platoon cheered.
Of course, as he aged, such fantasies of resplendent heroism died long before he landed on Shanxi. Fortunate, because their enemies were not six-eyed insectoids that spewed acid and shat webbing. They were bipedal like most races, with only two forward-facing eyes, asari-like hands, and they bled red when bullets hit them. Sometimes, they even cried like asari.
Human, they called themselves.
They were organized; they could fight. But they also liked to smoke, they liked to drink, and he discovered that they could be quite creative with their expletives. Victus had decided that ‘skullface’ was his favorite.
If he wasn’t expected to kill them, he thought maybe he might like them. Yet, as it stood…
Through a shallow morning fog that floated a meter off the ground, Adrien narrowed his eyes on a downed ship in the clearing ahead. His fingers tightened around the rifle stock. The enemy aircraft was a medium-sized vessel, designed to transport colonists comfortably on long journeys from relay to relay. It had been shot from the sky almost an hour ago where it now lay halfway encased in the loamy soil, broken and cracked like carrion. Alone.
The sight made his plates itch and he glanced sideways at his captain. He hoped the man would feel Adrien’s eyes on his back and think to glance his way but he remained as aloof as ever.
“Sevenis,” Captain Ambus quietly beckoned. “Send a drone in.”
“Sir,” their tech expert affirmed, raising her omni-tool to punch a code into the holo-interface. Within seconds, a drone materialized-- Magrim’s design, Adrien quietly noted with pride. Instead of heading into the clearing, it zipped through the trees lining the perimeter. It weaved its way around trunks, bobbing and darting as gracefully as one of the planet’s many small, flying creatures.
Once it cleared the perimeter, it flew into the open, scanning the ground for foreign objects before finally entering the ship through a large gap made by slabs of metal flayed open in the crash.
Victus continued to scan the scene for any signs of movement, but so far the only visible activity was the mist swirling around the wreckage and occasionally a flash of light from the drone as it passed a smashed porthole. Every now and again he would key in on wordless subvocals as Sevenis cleared the compartments the drone flew through.
The longer he watched, the more his suspicions grew. Adrien had seen plenty of human ships up close. Granted, they were holograms from gathered intelligence, but the one in front of him had seen better days, even before it was shot down. Old paint had long since begun flaking from long-term sun exposure and rust clung around bolts and along the seams in the metal. He could almost hear Magrim’s voice chastising the state of what was once a perfectly good vessel; imagine her mandibles pinching into a frown while she took in the outward appearance as if it were a wounded animal requiring care.
Abandoned.
Scuttled.
Hopefully, the drone would find something, anything that would give the captain reason to pause. Otherwise, he knew what the following order would be: Captain Ambus would want to investigate. As Sevenis continued to clear more and more rooms, Adrien's dread mounted until finally-
“All clear, sir.” Somewhere inside the ship, the drone fizzled out. “And I’m sending the layout now.”
Adrien’s omni-tool vibrated silently with an incoming transmission.
Swallowing his trepidation, Victus crept towards the captain’s position and whispered in a low frequency that humans-- if any were nearby-- couldn’t hear, “Permission to speak, sir.”
“Denied.” Captain Ambus never tore his gaze from the ship’s hull. Did he not see the same signs? Was the neglect of the ship not as apparent to him as it was to Adrien?
Victus suppressed an irritated growl.
“Sir-”
“Shut it, Lieutenant.” Cinnabar eyes glared from behind a dark, opaque visor. “We move in on my order.”
Adrien was grateful that his helmet obscured his sudden show of teeth. He wanted to snap back but clamped down on his second vocals nonetheless. He wasn’t the one in command and he knew better than to rattle the chain, especially at a time like this. No matter how much he wanted to.
“Yes, sir,” he gritted, hating the words as they fell from his maw.
The platoon secured the perimeter one last time before they moved swiftly through the clearing, using the thick fog as cover. The cargo hatch was easy enough to open and, within the span of seventy seconds, they were inside and split into small groups.
Quickly, they moved through the innards of the ship, weapons drawn and omni-tools raised with a holographic layout floating above their wrists. Power had been completely cut, leaving them in a blackness only pierced by the gray morning light that filtered in and the swift bobbing and darting of their own helmet lights.
A chorus of ‘clear’ began to echo in his comm, his disquietude growing with each one. Indeed, the ship was clear. Hidden among scattered clutter, broken crates, toppled mattresses, nests of wiring and torn metal was nothing. No bodies, no weapons, no tech.
It was when he and the captain moved into the ship’s galley-- gutted like every other room-- that he heard, from outside, the sound of fighter jets echo overhead. There was a hollow whir to the engines that separated them from the clunky atrocities that humans flew. They were turian vessels for certain and their arrival should have put Victus’ nerves at ease with the exception of one caveat--
They never called for air support.
Immediately, Adrien flattened himself against a wall and spoke into his omni-tool. “Victus to look-out. Can you confirm the identity of the jets?”
The comm remained silent. He tried again. More silence. He could practically feel the ambush closing around them, ensnaring them like trapped animals before they had a chance to bite. Looking up, he spotted the captain just as he ripped a chrome-topped table up from rusty bolts that secured its legs to the floor. He flipped it around to create a shelter and settled behind it, omni-tool alight on his wrist. It would seem, miraculously, that the Spirits bestowed him the ability to come to the same conclusion.
Took him long enough.
“Take cover!” Ambus growled over the open link, but Adrien had already zeroed in on his bunker and was sprinting by the time “Ready yourselves for a fight” buzzed through.
Adrien tried to tell himself that he hadn’t intentionally picked the shelter that the captain had. It was simply his best option available. When he slid in beside Ambus, Victus checked his munitions, partly to confirm what he already knew of his reserves but mostly to dissolve traitorous fantasies of pummeling Ambus’ face through his helmet visor. As it was, he could barely muster the ability to look at him.
It was hard to refrain from hissing ‘this is on you,’ as Adrien braced himself on one knee and snapped the rifle stock against his shoulder. Yet he didn’t bother to banish the accusation from his subvocals. The captain’s condemnation resonated in a deep growl.
Adrien peered around the edge of the table and took in the room. Waiting.
It started with a staccato of gunfire from where he knew the entrance of the ship to be. The perimeter watchers were probably lying dead in the moist soil, flat-footed boots stepping over them to echo through the shuttle’s metal corridors. Returning gunfire answered the call, roaring from Hierarchy-issued Armax rifles but the foreign ones would soon reign loudest.
None of them would go down without a fight. Neither would he.
Satisfied with both his ammunition reserves and his mental readiness, Adrien tucked his legs underneath him and set his sights on the only exit of the room. A warning rumble from Ambus stilled his motion, but only for a heartbeat, a second's hesitation that allowed time to meet the gaze of the one who had led them into this. They had been set up to fail, backed into a corner but Adrien would be damned before he let his friends die alone while he quartered behind a kitchen table.
Adrien returned the warning with a snarl of his own and moved. It was easy to ignore the moment of blatant insubordination, the thought swallowed by trajectories and plans that unfolded in his head. By the time he flattened himself beside the archway, his next course of action was calculated three times over. He reached up to switch the headlight off. A moment, then somewhere in the gloom the captain’s visor darkened in kind. The implication was tempting to explore but Victus had about twelve-- the vessel shuttered at the impact of an explosion-- eight seconds before humans closed in on their location.
The gleam of a black rifle barrel. A shine of metal that glinted around the corner, guided by a hand whose owner knew his location based on the feedback of his heat signature. Adrien had counted on it and his body went into motion.
While his own visor was equipped with thermography tech, he preferred it for stealth missions more-so than combat. A shock of bright color in his vision would have been distracting when he had to swipe at the rifle with his non-dominant hand, fingers closing around the barrel and redirecting it from his face. Another step brought him into the human’s space, his omni-blade unfurling on his wrist before it seared through the protective visor, settling between two wide eyes.
It would have been hard to parse the second soldier that stepped up behind their fallen ally if they were both obscured in a cloud of colored diagnostics, but Adrien could see perfectly in the low light. In the second it took for that thin digit to squeeze the trigger, its owner was bludgeoned in the temple. Her partner’s rifle was wielded by Adrien like a club, held from the barrel. Fortunately, Adrien’s helmet aided in diminishing the impact of the rifle’s fire in his aural canal as the bullet flew wide. The soldier staggered, granting all the time he needed to pull his blade from one head and implant it in another.
Receding footfalls alerted to a third soldier retreating down the corridor. It was tempting to give chase but he resisted. Instead, he lobbed a flashbang around the corner just as the humans, predictably, threw one of their own. They would all be blind but he was better equipped, faster, stronger, and-- he’d argue-- smarter. Not that he considered humans unintelligent. They were simply against an opponent that was born, raised, and trained for this.
As his mother would say: war is in his bones.
Through a flash of white, Adrien threw himself down the hallway. Blind but not completely disadvantaged. The visor of his helmet reduced the brightness, protecting his eyes even if his field-of-view was diminished. His long stride easily doubled that of his target’s shorter one and his reach was long.
Claws extended through the gaps of his gloves, Adrien pursued the frantic sound of flat boots pounding the metal floor. Rapidly, he gained on the fleeing soldier and grabbed him before he could get too far. He aimed for the general direction of the throat but only managed to secure the plastic guard that protected it. It still made an ideal handhold to lift the soldier off the ground and toss him bodily toward the right. Ceramic plating hit the metal floor in a satisfying cacophony of flailing limbs and accompanying shouts that indicated where to go next.
Nine seconds had passed.
Nineteen by the time his kill count rose to five.
Twenty-three when the steady beat of a Crossfire rifle came thundering down the hallway he’d just vacated. Captain Ambus, his legs bent and ready to propel him forward, appeared at the mouth of the corridor, his face captured in the flickering fire of his weapon’s discharge. Those caught in his sights fell while others wisely withdrew when they could.
During the span of their brief reprieve, which was only a second or two, his helmeted head inclined toward Adrien. And though the distance denied the ability to see the captain’s eyes from behind his tinted visor, Adrien knew their gazes were locked. A curt nod, an understanding reached, and the two were fighting together.
“Any bright ideas, Victus?”
They were huddled behind the wide, steel frame of a console terminal. Its width extended just far enough to shield them from the humans’ unrelenting fire. Primitive as their bullets were, they could still punch a hole through their armor provided that enough of them focused on one place; break through the shield and then through the plating. It was a tactic the humans had long since figured out as they coordinated their fire to one spot at a time.
Instead of answering, Adrien raised his omni-tool. Ambus took the signal to lean out and pepper their enemies, keeping them conveniently behind their bunkers while he spoke into his comm. “This is Lieutenant Victus. Can anyone confirm escape pods on the ship?”
At first, he was met with silence and, as it lengthened, his nerves pricked at the idea that he and Ambus might be the only ones left. Only the distant bang from an Armax Avalanche assured otherwise.
“Yes, Lieutenant.” As the voice crackled over the comm, Adrien released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The speaker was winded, panting into their comm, but the voice still registered as tech expert Sevenis.
“Location of the escape pods,” he ordered.
“The cockpit, sir.”
Adrien was about to ask for the quantity but the question died when a burst of sparks erupted in his periphery. He winced at the flash and heard the scraping of a boot against the steel floor followed by a pained groan from beside him. Adrien forced his eyes open.
He had seen animals die before, countless times while on hunting trips with his parents. Turians were no different. Ambus’ foot scraped and kicked at the floor like a scared creature fighting for its final breaths, beating death away before the void could steal the life from its lungs. Sparks rained from the terminal beside Ambus' head, the corner melted into a groove by a large, hot bullet. To his credit, Ambus’ rifle remained in one hand while the other clutched pitifully at his neck. Though, despite his efforts to stem the flow, liquid cobalt was pooling rapidly into his cowl.
“Terax!” Adrien called the name of their field medic into his comm before remembering their lack of cover fire. Leaning against the console, Adrien hefted his gun above the terminal and fired indiscriminately. When it was time to pop the heatsink, he took advantage of the break to ask, “What’s your location?”
“Terax- Terax is dead, sir!” Sevenis’ garbled shout dropped a stone in his stomach. Then he realized that Ambus had quieted.
Adrien looked up, expecting to see the worst. Given how still the captain sat, the direction of his visor tilted toward Adrien’s wrist, he might have thought so. It was the blue-soaked hand that remained dutifully at his neck that gave away his lingering life signs.
“Sir,” Adrien began. Blood was brimming over the rim of his cowl now, trailing down the crevasses of his armor like mini-streams of black ink. “Terax is-”
“I heard,” Ambus grunted. “Go.”
Later, Adrien would admonish himself for his hesitation. A moment of weakness committed by a young turian yet unaccustomed to having to leave an ally behind. Even one that had incited as much anger and frustration as Ambus had. But the hesitation was brief, just several heartbeats in which he registered the futility of trying to save his captain.
The humans knew which armors to look for when firing on their enemies. They understood how to separate officers from privates. Certainly, they would want Ambus alive and that the shots he took were meant for a different, less-lethal part of his body.
They might still want him alive.
“Go!” The captain understood this as well. Ambus raised his weapon, blood dripping off the point of his elbow, and fired over the terminal. The message was clear: Get them out of here.
Faced with his only opportunity to escape, Adrien didn’t vacillate again. He was on his feet and running, refusing to look back as Ambus’ Crossfire lived up to its name, thundering over the room. He ignored his shields when they flickered but stumbled when a bullet punched through the top point of his hip. He recovered quickly, however, and bit through the pain that surged up his side as he rounded a corner and raised his omni-tool.
“This is Lieutenant Victus,” he growled into his comm, dashing around another corner and almost barreling into a human. Adrien raised his gun before the man registered he was there and fired twice into his skull. He was running again before the soldier hit the ground. “Fall back to the cockpit!”
He didn’t bother to wait for acknowledgments. He simply ran toward the objective in mind, hoping not to get shot again. When he reached the modest-sized CIC, with the cockpit located straight ahead, it was to the sight of five of his soldiers pinned down against twelve human combatants.
Human combatants that stood between him and his goal.
Large chunks of debris and fallen equipment offered ample if not flimsy opportunities for cover. On the far side of the room, his troops were doing their best to utilize sheets of metal and sparking terminal consoles to shield themselves. Sevenis’ presence was indicated by the blue-lit drone that bobbed and darted around the room, helpfully drawing enemy fire while directing its heat-seeking missiles.
Through an unrelenting din of gunfire, detonating flash-bangs, and wailing cries of agony, Adrien mapped out the field. He memorized the locations for each of his opponents displayed as they were before him. The resiliency of their chosen cover measured in how they endured against Magrim’s missile-firing algorithm. All potential vantage points that could be secured were committed to memory as well as how much risk would be involved.
Strategy is a system of expedients. It’s more than science, it is the translation of science into practical life, the development of an original leading thought in accordance with ever-changing circumstances.
Every action could lead to defeat or victory; often times the outcome came down to a coin-flip. All Victus could do was take the coin in hand, feel the weight of it in his palm, and compile all the pieces he’d need for the coin to land face-up. Which way the wind was blowing, the amount of force in his toss, whether or not he used his dominant hand, his current footing, and if the grading of the ground would affect the muscles in his back, shoulder and, ultimately, his arm.
Adrien took a breath and reached for the proverbial coin at his grenade belt. He withdrew the first flashbang his fingers fell upon and lobbed it at the humans. For the second time that day, he threw himself into the flash of white.
Following his mental map of the layout, Adrien skirted around the enemy line before they could target him. He quickly made his way toward a steel crate located at the edge of the room, manned by just a single human.
Emerging from the smoke and lights, Adrien slammed himself into the soldier and pinned him to the ground. Before Adrien could secure his arm, however, the human managed to ram their rifle painfully into his waist, shouting what was undoubtedly an expletive Adrien had yet to learn followed by a word that he had: “Skullface!”
Biting through the pain that radiated from his waist, Adrien’s omni-blade slid home through his opponent’s neck. With the soldier-- mostly-- dispatched, he lifted the convulsing body on top of the crate-- primarily for added cover, but also an effective shock tactic.
Enraged adversaries made mistakes and empathetic ones looked away.
Now, with the wall at his back, support at his left, Victus unshouldered his rifle. It was time to enact part two of his plan: Flank the enemy.
“Light these bastards up! ” He roared with both sets of vocals, vibrations buzzing across the room. And his troops answered in kind. They rose from their shelters in one cohesive movement and fired like a swarm of provoked klixen. From his new vantage, Adrien was able to force the enemy to abandon their sturdier barricades for flimsier options. Missiles flew from Sevenis' drone, blowing their hasty selections to pieces.
Like pyjaks, the humans cursed and scurried from their broken ramparts as they tried to retreat toward the doorway.
“Don’t let up! ”
Red puddles had begun to pool in various places on the floor. A couple of humans managed to slip from the room only to come running back when they encountered the rest of the turian platoon that had managed to make their way to the ordered destination.
“Make them pay for every life lost!”
The humans soon found themselves pinned beneath the advancing turians, reduced to huddling behind what meager options for shelter they had left. None offered protection for long. Barricades splintered under the weight of dead soldiers, thrown like play-things to crumble a sifting sand-fortress. The enemy was routed and they knew it, but to their credit, they fought hard as their allies fell one by one. It would seem they learned enough from this war to know that turians didn’t make a habit of taking prisoners.
“Make them pay for every fucking centimeter stolen! ”
As the amount of red blossomed and grew, puddles running off into expanding pools, so did his pride. It was easy to be swept up in the moment. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and he no longer felt the injuries he had taken. His soldiers rose and responded as if they were his own talons flexed to rake across arteries. It was easy, but he resisted. Complacency led to recklessness and recklessness got people killed.
When the last human slumped to the floor, Adrien hurried over to the cockpit. Time was limited. More humans would arrive on the scene shortly and that was the best-case scenario. They, of course, also had the option of cutting their losses and simply blowing the ship to smithereens now that the turian commanding officer was dead and thus useless to them. Even if Victus turned and marched his soldiers out the way they had come, they would be gunned down the second they stepped foot outside.
Attached to the cockpit waited their only hope to abscond, a lonely escape pod, just as Sevenis reported. It idled alone between the empty recesses of its departed brethren. The sight should have lifted Adrien’s heart in a wave of hope but he only felt apprehension as he eyed the chamber door.
The humans had taken care to relieve the vessel of all her escape pods save for one. This was a decision. Enemy tactics had already begun piecing themselves together in his head the second they came upon the downed spacecraft. It was bait used to lure in a platoon and then launch an ambush to scatter them inside tight quarters. The lone escape pod could only be another segment to the human’s overall plan.
“Sevenis.”
“Sir.” The tech-expert hurried to Adrien’s side, her drone zooming merrily around her helmeted head.
“Have you scanned the interior of the pod?”
“Yes, sir. The moment you asked about it over the comm.” Her talons tapped at her omni-tool, bringing up results that didn’t improve his mood. She held out her wrist to show him. “Empty.”
Empty- a word that encompassed a wealth of meaning. Empty meant no explosives, no tripwires, no gas, no soldiers lying in wait. Adrien approached the door, his dread growing with each step. Empty meant there was nothing inside to outwardly kill them all.
He wondered…
Adrien opened the control panel beside the door, revealing just two buttons. Of course, his translator wasn’t modified to include any human languages. Only captains and generals were outfitted with that kind of top-of-the-line tech that could adapt to new languages with enough exposure, but even theirs weren’t perfect. And what was deciphered were only words picked up enough times for the device to place meaning, often forming broken sentences. Hence why charming names like ‘skull face’ and ‘bird’ had become widely understood among the troops.
Regardless, logic dictated that one trigger was for ‘open’ and the other for ‘close.` He tried the red button, nothing. He tried the blue and the door cycled open to a perfectly vacant pod.
Adrien turned to Sevenis. “Scan the firing mechanism,” he ordered with a jerk of his head.
Sevenis tapped her omni-tool and the drone flew inside to cast its sensory beam on all the circuitry. After a moment her ‘tool pinged with the predicted result. “Faulty,” she reported.
Victus nodded, picturing the final pieces of the human puzzle as they fell into place. “And the door?”
A beat during which the drone about-faced and scanned the entrance. Sevenis’ opaque visor cleared, becoming translucent as she squinted at the interface. “The firing clip is broken.” She looked up to meet his expectant gaze. “When that door closes again it won’t re-open.”
Ah. So the human’s overall course of action wasn’t to kill them. They wanted to corral what was left of the platoon, likely to take them into custody for study or information. A picture appeared in his head, turian soldiers conveniently confined in a pod that won’t fire, waiting for the humans to come along and take them away. Yet, he couldn’t help but sense something missing from the picture. They wouldn’t just want any soldier. They would want the officer in charge.
Adrien inspected the control panel again, finding a small, white switch beneath the buttons. He almost smiled, amused. The officer would have to separate from the group and activate the eject function from the outside.
Adrien turned to the splintered remains of his platoon. Once thirty strong, only thirteen stared back at him now, waiting for orders. None of them had questioned the whereabouts of Captain Ambus and with his voice no longer in their comms, they wouldn’t. Now they watched Victus in Ambus’ place, ready to hear the First Lieutenant’s charge in the Captain’s absence.
Victus could only think of one.
“File inside,” he told them. “Sevenis, I’ll need control of the drone out here.”
For just a fraction of a second, only long enough for his implication to process, Sevenis froze as did the rest of the troop. After everything they had just gone through, all the blood they shed, it was this order that made them pause.
It was somewhat touching to witness hesitancy at being asked to leave him behind. He couldn’t help but wonder if Ambus had felt it when Adrien lingered on the order himself. But the moment was quick to pass over soldiers. He didn’t need to explain the limited time they had or that the enemy was likely regrouping while they idled. Like good turians, they followed orders even if they disliked what they heard.
Once his troops were passed the threshold and the drone was transferred to him, Adrien hit the yet-used button on the control panel. Only then did he allow himself to glance inside one last time at the men and women that had fought and bled beside him. Only then did he allow the rush of emotion to hit him. But like the door that cycled shut, he sealed away the feeling and hit the release switch.
Nothing.
The pod remained firmly in place. He wanted to laugh, and he might have if it wouldn’t have transferred over their open comm. Instead, he reached for his shield generator and unattached it from his armor. Then he dispensed a globule of omni-gel over the gadget and stuck it against the pod door.
“Sir?” Sevenis questioned over the comm.
“The outside trigger doesn’t work either,” he told them as if reporting the inconvenient outcome of a faulty sprinkler head. “I’m attaching explosives.”
“What!?”
“I attached my shield-generator,” he explained, crouching down to begin the process of carefully laying down a line of sticky grenades. “You’ll be fine. It’s the crash you have to worry about, but it always was.”
“What’s going to protect you from the blast?”
Boots echoed along the metal floor of the vessel, human voices crackling over their comms. It would seem the second half of their enemy’s plan was in effect: seize the prisoners.
“Brace yourselves.” Adrien cut the comm to focus on the task at hand. “Activate trajectory diagnostics,” he commanded his only company. The drone flitted down to eye level and opened a screen that he had watched Magrim scroll through countless times when she thought he was asleep. Though he technically wasn’t a tech-specialist by name, Magrim had drilled several codes and commands into his head for circumstances like the one he was in. Adrien punched in the twelve-digit code that he pulled from memory and let his little friend go to work.
The footfalls grew louder.
After a quick scan, the blue orb beamed segmented lights at the pod’s door, targeting the placement for his remaining grenades down to the centimeter. It called for seven placements. As he expected, one grenade for each corner to dislodge the pod from the vessel. Another would be placed at the foot of the door, precisely in the middle. The last two placements, however, didn’t make sense.
The drone called for, not one, but two explosives at the top of the door. But that would force the pod downward, costing altitude as it propelled from the ship. It needed to soar over the surrounding enemy and put at least three klicks between them.
“Really, you're sure?” He side-eyed the orb as if its creator crouched beside him. Absurdly, the drone rotated slightly so that its interface focused on him. This time he did allow himself to laugh, thinking of Magrim shooting him a dry look over the top of a datapad.
Spirits, he missed her.
Alien shouting reverberated off the walls. They were closing in and he didn’t have time to argue. If the trajectory was off, and he felt certain it was, his soldiers would pay the price. Explosives granted very little room for error.
After a moment of hesitation, he settled on his decision. “You would hate me for this,” he mumbled to himself as he set to work, his voice just loud enough for his only companion.
After quickly fastening the remaining grenades to the door, there was only one thing left to do now. Adrien lifted his arm, tinted orange by his omni-tool, aimed a closed fist at the two center grenades placed at the base of the door, and waited. He tried to ignore the sound of his heart as it beat behind his keel, seemingly in time with the growing thunder of the closing forces. Glancing at the drone that illuminated his black armor blue, he imagined his oldest friend beside him.
The shouting was louder now, organized. They knew he was here.
It hurt to think of Magrim now, to imagine the pain on her face when she learned of his fate. Sevenis would probably report turning the drone over to his command, which Magrim would eventually hear about. Maybe she could find comfort knowing one of her inventions was with him in the end, instrumental to the survival of his platoon.
By the sounds of their voices, the humans had to be just down the corridor. They would want him alive, he knew, but they wouldn’t succeed in that. He was going to take each and every Spirits-damned bastard with him.
His mother’s golden gaze came to mind, regarding him with years of wisdom. It was her name that he and his father inherited, her legacy that shaped her future. Watching her mate train with their son, she must’ve known the path that awaited her son, what the name he carried meant because she had walked it herself.
Adrien could only hope his parents would find comfort in knowing how he died. That he went out with the respect of his platoon, something any turian parent would be proud of.
As the footsteps grew louder, a second, far quieter predator crept into his mind. Behind his dark visor, Adrien’s eyes narrowed on the unassuming orb beside him.
“Deactivate.” He ordered, but instead of blinking out, the drone remained stalwartly at his side. Adrien rapid-fired the twelve-digit code that should have bypassed the programming and cut the V.I, but no. If anything it glowed brighter than ever.
‘Could she have-?’
A voice boomed through the comm of a helmet as a human soldier entered the room. Dozens of red dots danced across Adrien’s vision as more followed suit, the gleaming barrels of their rifles aiming at his head. They wouldn’t shoot right away, not when they needed to note his armor and decide if he was worth capturing. Humans had proven to be quite fond of taking prisoners. It would be their undoing in the end.
Meanwhile, more were filing in, clamoring at him in their various languages, likely orders to put his hands in the air.
Just a few more seconds.
Angry voices reverberated the room in a roaring chorus. Guns jabbed at the air in vague gestures, both threats and promises as their owners endeavored to surround him.
‘Victory at any cost.’
Victus launched an incinerate from his omni-tool and his vision flashed in an array of colors. Red, orange, white, but brightest among them, blue.
Regrettably, Adrien’s sense of smell was the first thing to return.
Foul odors filtered passed his nasal plates, assaulting his senses with a texture more akin to sludge than dry air. A sick cocktail of burning flesh, smoke, oil, and hot metal.
Adrien’s world swam into view as he cracked bleary eyes open, realizing in the same moment that his visor was shattered. At least he wasn’t blind, though he couldn’t claim to recognize his surroundings. Cinders swirled in the air like dancers celebrating the destruction that brought them to existence. Everything was sideways and upside down all at once. Or maybe it was just him. His eyes burned from the smoke but he was reluctant to close them now that he’d pried them open. He needed to get his bearings.
He was on his back, his cowl jammed unhelpfully into what was once a computer terminal. His arms and legs were wrapped in a nest of wires, some sparking against his beaten armor. He would have to disentangle himself if he were to get up but Spirits, he was so damn tired and this sideways world left him disoriented. It was hard to tell where everything was supposed to be, though he was suspicious that the floor beneath him wasn’t supposed to be there.
Adrien scanned the wall-- floor?-- up and up. He didn’t recall the vessel’s bulkhead being so flat. Then his eyes found a huge, gaping hole in the ceiling. Black soot carpeted the edges of the chasm and warped metal bent toward the sky like a frozen Noverian wave.
Adrien snapped up-- well, tried to. Forgotten wires asserted their existence over his limbs, causing him to collapse back down under the weight of his armor. Spirits but he was tired. Maybe if he rested there, just a moment, the noxious fumes would assure that he wouldn’t wake up again. There were worse ways to die, he supposed. And, given that the pod was gone and there were no blackened turian bodies raining down on him, his plan had succeeded.
The rest was up to his team.
A voice, spoken through an electronic mouthpiece, pierced through both the smoke that blanketed him and the haze that settled in his head. Adrien’s eyes flickered open-- not entirely sure when they had closed-- and his body went into motion. He tried to draw a breath to calm himself, knowing he needed to lie still lest he attracts attention, but putrid smog slithered down his windpipe and delivered a swift kick to his lungs.
He coughed once. Twice. He couldn’t stop.
Adrien turned his head so he at least wouldn’t drown on the phlegm his body was forcing out, but he still felt like he was suffocating. He wormed his arms free from the wires and reached for his useless helmet. He needed it off. He needed to breathe.
He was hacking now.
The voice grew louder. Debris shifted and rolled under flat-booted feet.
‘Fuck!’ He needed to lie still, the logical part of his brain said. With all the hot metal and plastic, his heat signature would blend in. They might never find him amongst the ash and burning wreckage. If only he could seize control of his traitorous nervous system that wanted to rid his lungs of the toxins they’d taken in.
Finally on his hands and knees, bowed to the mercy of his wracking coughs, he searched for his guns. His heart sank as his hand closed around empty air, both for his sidearm and the rifle on his back.
Movement.
He was noticed.
Broken glass and plastic shards were kicked aside as a figure, clad in blue armor, stormed towards him from across the room. Adrien registered the steel-toed boot as human before it connected with his face and sent his world spinning. Ash made for poor cushioning. They swirled around him, agitated from the impact of his sprawled form. Then a weight crashed down on his back, pinning his arms beneath the rubber treads of his attacker’s footwear.
No.
In a vain attempt to collect his limbs, Adrien tried to force himself up but his legs responded about as well as jelly. Another body leaped on top of him, forcing his face into a carpet of ash. Particles invaded his senses and he coughed again, feeling his carapace protest at the restriction put on by a pair of thighs that kept it from expanding.
Adrien turned his head to the side and flared his mandibles in a vicious display of black and bloody teeth. Five fingered hands came down on the back of his head in an attempt to restrain him, fingers coiling around his fringe and grinding roughly against the soft patch underneath, making him grimace. That was where Magrim would gently stroke in the quiet of the night, making him purr into her aural canal.
He was angry before, but now he just felt violated.
Adrien wrenched his arm away from whoever was struggling to hold it and quickly reached for the soldier pinning his head. It was an awkward angle and he could only grab the first bit of armor available, but his movement was quick and the human met the opposite end of the room even quicker. He then used the momentum of his throw to roll onto his back and crush the soldier beneath the weight of his armor-clad body.
More were swarming in like hungry varren, barking and snapping at the belly of their prey. Deploying his omni-blade, he sliced at anyone who came near while the man beneath him clawed desperately at the air and delivered weak punches to Adrien’s waist.
Someone grabbed his foot and he tried to kick them away. Hands closed around his omni-blade arm. Booted feet kicked at his sides and as he turned to claw at the pack that swarmed him more bodies piled on. His hip, still injured from the gunshot, roughly ground against the floor and he snarled at the pain before someone forced his face back into the cloud of ash.
A hand came down to retake the spines of his fringe, a second pressed down on his mandible and bent it awkwardly into his teeth. It was a popular hold humans utilized on turians until they could force a muzzle on their captive. It allowed them to use mandibles as shields from gnashing jaws that could otherwise close on soft skin. Effective, but only if the hold was secure enough. Fortunately for Adrien, the blood that currently slicked his mandible made for a poor grip.
Adrien opened his mouth, heedless of the choking ash invading his throat. With a jerk of his head, he shook his mandible free and snapped his jaws shut on its captor. The hand was gloved in a flexible mesh that was difficult to pierce, but bones still splintered and popped when under enough pressure. Judging by the bloom of iron in his mouth and a resultant scream that filled him with a sense of satisfaction, he was successful. At least until the fists came down, pummeling his maxilla to try and dislodge their friend but Adrien only bit down harder.
Harder still when a black muzzle came dangling into view.
Gone were the calculated kicks and takedowns from earlier altercations. Now his lungs burned with each hacking breath, his muscles protested every movement, and if he didn’t have a concussion before he would certainly have one now. This wasn’t a confrontation. It was a struggle and as the face mask was pulled flush to his maw, still clamped on a lump of twitchy pulp, the fight in him rose to meet the challenge. Claws raked across armor, blood pooled in his mouth, and visors shattered under the weight of his fists.
A rod of metal was roughly inserted into the corner of his mouth, the taste masked by the liquid iron that pooled around his teeth. He knew its purpose before the handler twisted it in his jaw, wrenching his maw open. As the hand pulled free-- “Fucking buzzard!”-- the mask sealed around his mouth in one fluid motion, snaps buckling behind his head with practiced ease.
Adrien reeled, only then realizing that his right hand had been cuffed during the scuffle as he attempted to claw at the plastic casing. More bodies leaped on top of him, pinning him down as if he were a dumb, struggling animal. Spirits, the demeaning nature of a muzzle damn near made him feel like one.
It wasn’t until they finally secured his left wrist that Adrien finally succumbed to his fatigue. Dislocating a shoulder wasn’t going to help his situation. With his face still pressed to the floor, laying in the clearing he and his opponents had carved with their bodies, he panted and tried not to think of Magrim.