You Have Been Called Upon to Serve

Eden Prime

Team 2a

15 minutes earlier

In between killing geth and awkwardly discovering that the beacon had been moved, Chief Williams finally opened a private channel with Lieutenant Alenko. "LT? Is the commander really N7?" 

She had been dying to know the answer to this question since seeing the insignia on Ryan's jackets. Sure, there was plenty of N7 merchandise for civilians to buy, but anyone actually serving with the Alliance had to be N7 to openly wear the symbol. And even then, normally it was seen on their armor, not a jacket that seemed made for aliens. It didn't make sense, and if he was going to be giving the orders, she had to know he was legit. That conversation he had over the comm. earlier hadn't done a lot to help his case. Seriously, how could he talk about "chaperones" in the middle of an invasion?

Before she drove herself crazy with paranoia, Alenko responded. "Trust me, Williams. He's the real deal. You're looking at the Torfan Tactician. Of course, he was N7 long before that. Scuttlebutt says that he graduated in about a week. Off the record? He's got more than a few quirks, but who doesn't in this universe?"

Before Williams could make a comment on how the aliens never think their own people have any quirks, Ryan came to a halt and motioned for the two behied him to do the same. Slowly, he holstered the stinger in his left hand, and he signaled the pair to hold position. Dropping into a crouch, the commander moved toward the set of spikes. Looking up, Williams saw that the victims no longer had skin, clothes, or muscle, to name a few differences. The best description she had was... dried up husks.

"Perfect place for an ambush," Alenko whispered, "so keep your guard up."

The words had barely left his mouth before Commander Ryan snapped his gaze directly toward the Lieutenant and fixed him with a glare that clearly said, 'No shit, really?' Unfortunately, the damage was done. 

The husks on the spikes began to spasm, and the spikes themselves began to retract. Williams' stomach churned. "They're still alive!" Alenko shouted. Clearly silence was a moot point. That comment also earned him another 'No shit?' look from Ryan. 

Williams watched as the spikes lowered the husks to the ground, and once they had reached the tripod at the base, they just tore themselves right off! "What did the geth do to them?" she screamed?

Ryan simply cocked his head as if this was a mundane discovery. He chuckled, saying, "And here I thought they were impaling organics on spikes as a way of compensating for something! Weapons free!"

With that the team opened fire on the crazed zombies, which were now crackling with electricity. In a panic, Williams loosed a carnage blast from the shotgun Ryan had given her. He was going to need the gun barrel touched up later, but it was worth it when the closest husk blown to bits. Alenko did well too, sending a second husk flying into the cliff across from them with a biotic throw. He was just in time, as it began discharging a ton of lightning just after it left the ground.

Ryan's new personal space invader was the furthest away, yet Ryan hadn't taken the opportunity to shoot it yet. Rather, after seeing them release electricity, he lowered his gun. What happened next made Williams go completely still. Her commader was doing something that just wasn't possible. 

His had was on fire. 

With a simple snap of his fingers, Ryan lit the husk of fire. As Ryan had predicted, the fire was so intense that the cybernetics responsible for discharging electricity were immediately turned to ash, followed quickly by the husk itself. 

"Well," Ryan began, "that takes care of-"

Bang!

ZAAAP!

They all turned their heads in the direction of the commotion. It was the spaceport that Nihlus and MacGrath had gone to check out. Ryan's gene-spliced blood chilled, and he barely spared his a two squadmates a "come on" as he barreled for the spaceport. He hoped for the best, but with that behomoth of a ship in the sky, he feared the worst, especially when it began to rise off the ground. 

WWWAAAAHHHNNNN!

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Eden Prime

Team 1

Present Time

Cole cringed. That damn ship was making that unholy noise again, and it was taking off too. Dreadnoughts weren't supposed to even land on planets, so this shouldn't even be happening. Cole knew it was a little hypocritical, but there was a huge difference between a living himan less than six feet tall defying a dozen or so laws of physics and a two kilometer long spaceship flat out ignoring everything physics had ever said! Even while dodging bullets and frying geth, Cole felt like that thing was watching him. It felt like Sasha, the crazy bitch from Empire City on his home territory, was trying to get in his head again. 

A hail of gunfire aimed not at him, but at the geth, caught Cole by surprise, but he quickly recovered once one of the drones was hit with a lightning bolt that wasn't his. Wasting no time, cole turned to Ryan's approaching squad, yelling, "Ryan, another turian Spectre was here! His name is Saren, and he shot Nihlus in the head! Geth covered his escape, but I caught his movement with my radar pulse. He's gone to the other end of the spaceport. That's where the beacon is. Find him, and end him, now!"

Ryan opened his mouth to argue, but Cole beat him to it. "We can continue our pissing match later Jack!" He knew Ryan hated to be called by his first name, since it technically wasn't his. "Saren is Supernova-class! I'll wait here until Mercer shows up. Go!" 

Ryan's eyes practically left his skull at those words. He sprinted past Cole, using telekinesis to pick up Nihlus' HMWA VII assault rifle along the way. He turned to Alenko and a soldier that Cole assume was Chief Williams, both of whom had yet to move, and screamed, "You heard him! Let's move!"

Williams and Alenko ran to keep up. Cole heard them as they left though. 

"Hey, LT. Why's the commander taking order from a civilian? Who was he anyway?"

"That 'civilian' is the Storm of Elysium, Williams. He's also one of the two of the guys that Ryan had airdropped at the Battle of Torfan. The other oe is here somewhere."

"No shit? The skydiver part was real? We all thought that was just exaggeration."

Cole was pretty aure he convinced her otherwise when he brought a lightning storm down on three geth sniper trying to kill them from the far cliff. He shouldn't have wasted energy showing off, though, because two destroyers, four shock troopers, and plenty of normal troopers took the opportunity to open fire. Cole wasn't fast enough, and he took a few bullets to his left side. He looked around for a quick source of electricity, but he didn't find one. "Oh, shit," Cole muttered as he returned to the combination of polarity wall and shock grenades. "This is gonna suck." 

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Eden Prime 

Team 2a

Tramway

Ryan was grateful that Alenko and Williams were both so competent. They could easily handle themselves, and that made his job easier. He could focus more on killing the geth and less on keeping them alive. The linear design of the tramway made long range fighting easy, but Ryan wasn't content to play shooting gallery while a turian Supernova was getting away. He pulled out Nihlus' rifle, and turned to Williams. "Hey, Ash," he held the gun out to her, "trade me back my shotgun?"

Williams looked at him like he was crazy, so he elaborated, "I prefer close range, and I'd hate to let this gun go to waste..." That was all he needed to say before his Firestorm was being tossed his way. He caught it in his right hand while throwing her the Specter's gun with his left.

"Give me cover fire," he yelled, while equipping his hooks. "This is gonna get tense."

Without waiting for an answer, Ryan took off running down the walkway, and when he saw his chance, the Splicer King activated his cloak. He kept running, but the geth couldn't see him at all. He knew they would become bolder in their attacks if the larger threat appeared to have vanished. As the first pair of troopers stuck their heads out from behind cover, Ryan caught each one in the neck with a hook, decapitating them mid-stride. He was able to repeat the act on the second pair of troopers before his invisibility wore off. Now he was left with a sniper on the end of the tramway and a destroyer hell-bent on blowing his head off.

"Commander!" Both squadmates were yelling now, obviously concerned for his safety - and likely his sanity.

Stunning the destroyer with an electro bolt, Ryan pulled out his shotgun and switched over to winter blast. He wasn't going to use the icy plasmid, at least not directly. With winter blast's freezing qualities, Ryan had discovered that could use his own hand as a heat sink, allowing Ryan to fire his shotgun almost endlessly. He had actually tried to determine how many shots would be needed to cause a regular cooldown, but he lost count at forty-five.

Pulling the trigger again and again, Ryan tore into the destroyer. Finally, its shields went down, but the machine changed its tactics, and began charging at him like an enraged bull. Ryan froze for half a second, the charge reminding him of Bouncer Big Daddies from Rapture, and then he blew it to hell with far more shotgun rounds and electro bolts than necessary. The sniper lasted five extra seconds before it spontaneously combusted via Ryan's left hand.

"Commander," Williams called out, "when this is over, we're gonna have a talk about that of yours."

Ryan smirked, and capitalized on the moment. "Don't tell me I accidently set you of fire too, Williams" After watching her stutter for a moment, he held up a hand and said, "We'll talk later, alright? Right now, we need to get to the beacon, and introduce Saren's ass to my boot.

"Hell yes, sir." With that, all three got on the cart and waited tensely as the sped them toward their destination.

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Eden Prime 

Saren Arterius 

Beacon holding zone

Hearing the combat in the distance was irritating enough, but witnessing that display of lightning from the sky was just disgusting. A human that could actually harness the power of electricity to such an extent shouldn't exist. No turians could do it. Not even the best asari biotics could manage such a feat.

Saren had believed the descriptions of Elysium, Akuze, and Torfan to be pure fantasy. Yet all three of those so-called "heroes" were here on Eden Prime, decimating his geth with zero difficulty. And that one called "MacGrath" had seen through his deception when Nihlus, a fellow turian, had been fooled. It was insulting. Saren's mandibles flared in rage.

No matter. They couldn't hope to stop what's coming. And it should be interesting to watch them accuse him of anything. The council is easily fooled by whatever keeps them feeling safe and content. Now all that remained was a loose end known as Eden Prime...

Turning to the geth shock trooper beside him, Saren gave his orders. "Set the charges. Destroy the entire colony. Leave no evidence that we were here."

Those meddling humans would never make it off this planet alive. And as much as he hated to admit it, Saren was doing them a favor by killing them with bombs. He turned to the Prothean beacon and allowed himself to be lifted off the ground.

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Eden Prime 

Team 3

Casevac Site

"Even a UNSC 'dumb' AI would know better than to keep sending soldiers to their death. They haven't even scratched the paint, yet they keep attacking you. What gives?"

Cortana was not concerned with the fight. These geth couldn't hurt the Chief the way they were fighting, and she had diverted more than enough processing power to protect her Spartan from their tech attacks. What she wasn't using to protect the Chief, she was using to theorize why an artificial intelligence was being so damn stupid. It was completely irrational to fight a battle they couldn't win, yet they kept trying - and failing horribly - to kill the Chief. She couldn't understand.

"Same reason you never saw the Covenant retreat," Chief responded as he blew the "head" off another geth with his sniper rifle. "They'd rather die than let us live. I'm not sure this really counts as 'dying' anyway." A geth destroyer lost half its body to a remotely detonated grenade. "I know you. You've noticed they've gotten smarter and more aggressive with each wave?"

Cortana gasped at the implications. "Chief, they're a networked intelligence! They're learning how you operate. They haven't lost anything but a few tons of metal! You're about to lose everything once they figure out this armor's capabilities!"

At that moment, over a dozen geth shock troopers dropped from the sky, all less than thirty meters from the Chief's position, and all armed to the teeth. The Chief tapped a few keys on the side panel of his sniper rifle, and he tossed it out at the mob of geth. The sniper's heat venting system overclocked itself instantly, and vented plasma everywhere. Several  of the shock troopers were caught in the resulting fireball. Pulling out his Kassa Armageddon IX, Chief radioed the Normandy. "Joker, our position is overrun. What's your ETA?"

"Damnit! ETA: five minutes in this situation, Master Chief. Sorry." The pilot sounded genuinely apolgetic and the Chief smirked.

"No worries, Joker. That's four more than I need." With his free hand, he pulled out another grenade disc. 

Cortana couldn't resist. "I bet you can't stick it."

Chief primed the grenade, "You're on."

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Eden Prime

Team 2b

En route to Team 1

Alex let out a roar of frustration as he cut one juggernaut in half with his blade while kicking a hole straight through the other one's chest. These things just didn't quit. He knew that blast he heard was lightning colliding with biotics, and there was a good chance it meant that his closest friend in the Supernovas needed his help.

"Just hang on, Cole." The virus murmured. He flipped over a geth prime, grabbed it by the shoulders in midair, landed behind it and shattered its entire upper body on the ground.  Looking up from beneath his hood, he said in a quiet voice, "I'm on my way."

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Eden Prime

Team 1

Spaceport

Cole was not doing well. There wasn't any electricity available, and he had already taken more hits than was healthy, even for him. That damn flashlight-faced sniper on the far catwalk wasn't helping either. He couldn't use a lightning storm because it needed a clear view of the sky, and he was crouching beneath a small overhang. By the looks of those shambling biomechanical zombies, his polarity wall wasn't ging to keep him safe for much longer either. It only protected him from bullets and pulse rounds, not smacks to the head. Luckily he was largely immune to blunt force trauma...

"Blacklight Virus Strain DX-1118 Variant C, where the hell are you?" He yelled over the comm. at Alex.

Not expecting an answer, or any timely aid, Cole dodged away from a geth destroyer that was far too close for his liking. "Personal space, camera-head!" He blew it right off the spaceport with a close-up shockwave blast.

What happened next was pure luck, and if it hadn't been Cole on the receiving end, it woud have been fatal. The husks had finally reached him, but instead of trying to eat his face off like regular zombies, these guys began to spark and snap with electricity. Just as they had surrounded the vulnerable conduit, they did the exact wrong thing:

They discharged massive amounts of electricity straight from their bodies and into Cole's. Anybody else would have been killed or hospitalized, but for Cole, this was just what he needed to heal all of his wounds and get back in the fight. He laughed. Zombies had accidentally healed him. He thanked them with a few slashes from his gigawatt blades - knives made from electricity that extended from his hands.

Turning to the small army of geth, all trying to reach a logical conclusion that could explain his survival and enhanced functionality, Cole cracked his neck and grinned. Not bothering to waste any more one-liners on robots, he spark-stepped to the side of the whole group and raised his arms back behind his head. Gathering energy between them, he borrowed a page from Kessler's book, pointed his outstretched hands at his foes laugnched a torrent of blue lightning in their direction. Spark-stepping right up into the remaining two geth's faces Cole grabbed each one by the flashlight and drained them dry. Now with all enemies neutralized, Cole smirked and said, "Thanks for the boost you freaks."

A red targeting laser reminded Cole that he still had a sniper on his ass. He put up a polarity wall with less than a second to spare. The sniper looked like it was fiddling with its rifle, setting up an assassination shot, which would tear through his shield, so Cole began to run for cover. He had taken two steps when a black and red blur flew past him, vaulted across the overhang, and pulverized not just the geth, but the entire section of rock it was standing on.

Turning around, Alex Mercer looked at Cole and smirked, "Sorry I'm late. Traffic's a bitch."

Cole laughed and shook his head. "C'mon, let's get going. The beacon is on the other end of this tramway. So is the Supernova-class turian thata killed Nihlus."

Alex broke into a psychotic grin. "Supernova opponent, huh? Let's do this!" Without another word, he began running along the side of the cliff, following the direction of the train tracks.

Cole sighed in relief before spark-stepping down to the tramway. It was good to have Alex back by his side. Stepping off the tram, he put both feet on the tracks themselves. Sparks began to fly as he used his induction grind to skate along the tracks toward Ryan's squad, the beacon, and hopefully, the bastard Saren. 

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Eden Prime 

Team 2a

Beacon holding zone

Unfortunately, this Saren character Cole mentioned was long gone. But he had left plenty of geth to make up for his absence. Plenty of geth and quite a few bombs. Ryan didn't have the proper skill for anti-explosive work, and he did not want to find out what would if he tried any plasmids on it. Those types of plasmids and gene tonics were meant to cause various kinds of malfunctions in electronic security, and that was not a desired quality in a bomb squad.

Activiating his comm. link, Ryan contacted MacGrath. "Team 2 here. Please tell me you can get to my location soon. I've got a bomb problem."

The group of geth shock troopers and snipers firing at his squad from the platform on the left suddenly disappeared as a boulder the size of a Mako slammed into them all. Ryan's comm. buzzed to life as Cole's voice came across. "That soon enough?"

The electric man hopped off the tracks, and immediately drained the bomb completely dry. "Give me cover fire, and I'll get the rest." Cole said.

The process was largely uneventful. Ryan and his squad gave fire support, Alex shredded what they didn't shoot, and Cole simply walked up to the bombs and shut them down with a quick drain.

They saw the beacon on a large platform below them, and after eliminating the last of the geth, and husks, everyone was in moderately good spirits. Then they looked out at the horizon and time seemed to freeze. "No fucking way," was all Alex could say.

Everyone was looking at the place where the giant ship had been before leaving. The entire area was fire, ash, and glass. And everything was red as the flames of hell. 

Nobody was taking the view well, but Cole MacGrath had it the worst. The image in front of him could have passed for ground zero back in Empire City, only flame red instead of ink black. Having that knowledge return to the forefront of his mind wasn't pleasant, so he demanded that Ryan call in the Normandy for pickup. The mission was done, but things had gone FUBAR in the process. One Spectre killed by another Spectre working with the geth was not exactly smooth sailing. 

Ryan sighed, and contacted Joker. "We've got the beacon, and we're waiting extraction."

Williams walked up to the beacon, intrigued by the swirling energy. "It wasn't doing anything like that when they dug it up." She stepped closer. "Something must have activated it."

"Roger Normandy, standing by." Ryan said with an uncommon discipline. Cole noted that perhaps the Alliance was a good fit for him after all.

Suddenly, the beacon went nuts, and it began pulling Ashley closer towards it. 

When Ryan turned around and saw what was happening, he ran straight for Williams without any hesitation. Lifting her as if she weighed nothing, he gently ripped her from the beacon's grasp and threw her gently outside the radius of its mass effect fields. He then mentally activated a teleport, trying to get to safety. 

But nothing happened. He was now trapped by the beacon. Resisting its pull as best he could, Ryan looked at the others for some kind of help.

"Alex!" Cole yelled, "Get him away from that thing. I doubt its fields are strong enough to even move you!"

Alex grunted, and hurried towards Ryan. Just as he was about to grab Ryan by the collar and walk away from the freaky Prothean tech, the field actually lifted Ryan off the ground. It was trying to lift Alex too, but the viral hunter was far too heavy. That wasn't what stopped Alex in his tracks, though.

It was the fact that hell on earth just broke loose inside Alex Mercer's skull, and his last coherent thought was that Ryan was probably getting this too. 

"Ryan!" Ashley shouted, reaching out to the man that had just taken her place as the beacon's victim. Cole stopped her though. She heard somebody say something about "too dangerous" but it was drowned out by an inhuman noise"

The sound of Alex Mercer, curled on the ground, clutching his head and shrieking in agonizing pain as the Prothean beacon forced memories into his head that he couldn't comprehend.

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Web of Intrigue Unknown Node:

[Indecipherable Origin of Memories]

Death; pain; not his, but everyone's. These images are not made for the mind like his. He can see the pictures though, that's all he can clearly interpret. The words are lost on him.

Searing hot metal tears flesh from bone. Synthetics - he doesn't know what kind - slaughter organics without mercy. The ones unlucky enough to live are... he can't make out what they are. So much death, and it's happening faster than what should be possible. There is only one way to describe what he was witnessing:

Xenocide at the hands of machines.

End of Unknown Node

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The vision had ended, and the beacon had even exploded, but Ryan lay unconscious, and Alex was curled up in a fetal position, gasping in pain. Cole had once told him the at every time he consumed somebody, the process of gaining their memories was quite painful. This was totally new though. It had been years since Cole had seen his viral friend actually flinch while experiencing new memories. It was actually Alex's greatest weakness. Whatever that beacon had shoved inside his head must have been ugly as sin. And it knocked Ryan out too, even though he had a - relatively - normal nervous system.

Cole looked  at Williams and Alenko, then radioed the Chief, "Hey big man, we're gonna need your help."

"Nothing major," Cole said bitterly, "Just a multi-ton virus lying on the floor in a catatonic state. You're the only one who can actually pick him up."

"Copy that." Chief opened a new comm. "Joker, what's our ETA?"

"A minute at most. Anxious to see the beacon?"

Chief thought for a moment, then responded in the same way that an old ally would have.

"Were it so easy."

Anderson walked up at that moment, looking concerned. "What's going on, Chief? Permission to speak freely."

Chief cocked his helmeted head, then said, "Respectfully sir, we just saved the colony, but the mission was a complete failure."

The Normandy's cargo bay opened, and Anderson watched as the giant man walked out onto the platform, lifted his hooded friend with some difficulty, and carried him back onto the ship without a word. When Anderson saw the look in the ground team's eyes as they followed the Spartan, he knew one thing clearly. 

These heroes had just busted their asses to save a colony, and it would be a cold day in hell before he let the Council treat them as anything less.

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Well guys this is the last time I will update. Because even if I have another month of school. Im falling behind in school work. So this will the last update I will do for all time.