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Shepard is a genius, violent machine, ready to bring his boots down on the corrupt, the evil, and the genocidal machines. What inspired me to write him in such a manner was Thairon, the protagonist of my original story, Arrival : Ruptures. Comments, likes and reviews are appreciated. Here are the links for : AO3, Spacebattles, Royal Road and Webnovel.
—
Citadel
"I have to admit, that was faster than I expected," Aria complimented as they flew around in an aircar for security.
"They were easy to convince," he retorted.
"Is that why Vosque is dead?" she asked.
Shepard raised an eyebrow. "He is dead because he ran his stupid mouth off."
"Good. I hated Vosque," she nodded. She knew the moment that idiot opened his lips, Shepard would kill him, and she'd have one less hassle.
"What now?"
"Now, we take Omega back. My men managed to acquire a Cerberus cruiser. We'll use that to punch a hole in their defenses and board the station."
"However, I have issues with some of the company you keep around," she said.
"My team?"
"Yes. If you are coming, I don't want them," Aria declared.
Shepard looked at her, blinking a couple of times, and touched his ear. "Let me see if I get this right."
"I have Garrus, the turian that wiped three of the biggest merc outfits out of Omega, as my right hand. Two N7s that are some of the best soldiers in the galaxy. Tali, one of the most intelligent engineers you will ever encounter; my sister, who holds the highest records in the Alliance military after me; a living, breathing prothean who spent his life fighting; and another Alliance soldier I've been training for more than a year—and you don't want them because, what? Garrus pissed you off?" he asked, eyes squinted.
If he didn't know better, he would think she was indoctrinated, trying to drag him to a trap.
"Aria, you aren't in a position to be picky, and you would turn away the Normandy's crew? Don't be ridiculous," he scoffed. Here she was, stuck in the Citadel, trying to gather an army to take her kingdom back, and she had the gall to refuse the best team in the galaxy?
The asari narrowed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Fine, bring your friends, but I swear if they cause a problem, you can forget the eezo."
Shepard rolled his eyes.
—
"Helping Aria take Omega back? I am surprised she even agreed to let me anywhere near the station," Garrus muttered. He knew how much the asari appreciated the downfall of the mercs that were planning to take her down.
Mercs that she now had to contract to take her station back.
"She did not want any of you. I told her she was being an idiot," he revealed.
"The classic Shepard diplomacy at work."
"Anyway, we get in, fight our way to Petrovsky, and then space his ass," he laid out the barebones of the plan.
The details could be filled in along the way.
"I like this plan. Especially the spacing part," Javik approved. He too seemed to have an uncanny appreciation for spacing undesirable individuals.
Like Oleg Petrovsky.
"Seeing as most of Cerberus is gone, I am sure we don't necessarily need him alive," Ashley said.
Shepard nodded. "Admiral Hackett doesn't care as long as the last remains of Cerberus are gone, and Aria starts shipping eezo."
—
Omega
Petrovsky had the station equipped with brand-new anti-ship defenses, and Aria's fleet would be shredded.
Shepard, Garrus, Hailey, Kaidan, Ashley, Tali, EDI, James, and Javik.
Good thing the Normandy was a stealth vessel.
"Aria, in her infinite wisdom, has realized her army won't be of much use if they all die. Which is why we are going first to infiltrate and shut down those turrets, provided EDI can't subvert them," he said, turning at the synthetic dressed in an Alliance uniform.
"Understood, Shepard," EDI nodded. There was a rather high probability that the Cerberus software architecture remained mostly the same, and as someone intimately familiar with it, it would be possible.
"Joker, get ready to blast us an entrance. Everyone else, into the shuttle," he ordered.
"Aye, aye," the pilot called from the intercom.
—
"The torpedo will hit exactly four seconds before we reach the entrance. It might get a bit bumpy due to the shockwave," the shuttle pilot, Cortez, informed.
"Go," Shepard ordered, and the shuttle lurched forward.
The inside was cramped with nine people.
"Hold on tight, Commander, we are about to go in hot," Cortez warned, and the shuttle shook as the very end of the violent shockwave hit the shields.
The green deployment light was on; Shepard took his harness off, rushing out the door. He shot two Cerberus agents encroaching on the shuttle and jumped down.
He rolled into cover as mass-accelerated grains flew by, and the shuttle opened fire with its dual turbo laser bolt cannons.
Shepard joined the fray, covering the team as they jumped down one by one.
"Get those blast doors open now," he ordered as the shuttle landed. EDI took the console, and the doors began to slide down, extremely slowly for some reason.
"Cortez, stay in cover," he ordered the pilot. With Cerberus aware of Normandy, the shuttle couldn't afford to go back now.
"Understood, Commander," Cortez acknowledged.
"Joker, what's the situation out there?" he asked, pressing his earpiece.
"Cerberus forces are at full alert; Petrovsky is throwing everything he has at you," Joker informed him.
"Good."
Two Cerberus agents with shields built to disperse thermal energy were waiting for them. The shields tanked the shots, but they had openings at eye level. Garrus and Hailey each put one shot through without a moment's loss.
"Shepard, the elevator can't take us all," Garrus grumbled.
"Alright, we are moving as two parties. EDI, James, and Kaidan are with me."
The elevator took them up, and whatever Cerberus was doing, the entire area seemed to be running on reserve power. When he opened the door, he had to create the tower shield to block the stream of enemy fire.
He pushed ahead, allowing the team to take cover, and himself last.
"Garrus, we are moving ahead; heavy enemy presence detected. Flank them from the right," he ordered. The more soldiers Petrovsky sent to his team, the easier this would be.
"Got it, be there in a couple of seconds," the turian responded over the comms.
"James, deploy the reflector," he called out. If Cerberus thought they had the upper hand, they were wrong.
James lowered the machine strapped to his back and turned it on. The reflector field snapped into existence, blocking all enemy fire. The team rose from the cover at once, returning fire, but theirs was far more devastating.
Kaidan focused on the shield carriers; Shepard and EDI's rapid fire forced the Cerberus agents to take cover, and James was happy to launch plasma grenades in an arch, right into the middle of the enemy.
The door behind opened, and Garrus immediately ran to the right with his team.
Flanked, the Cerberus soldiers were cornered like rats.
"Shepard, the next area needs to be repressurized. I am starting the process," EDI informed.
"Incoming from behind," Garrus warned, a well-placed shot piercing through the smoke screen and going through the head of a Cerberus soldier.
"Switch to thermal, shoot them down before they can land," Shepard said. Cerberus was deploying smoke to cover their units, and it almost made him laugh.
It turned into a multiplayer game of whack-a-mole as they competed to shoot down the most number of enemies.
"Repressurization complete. Access granted," the local VI announced.
"Oh man, it was just getting fun too," Vega grunted.
"Press forward. We are almost at the defense network system," Shepard ordered as they got through the door to the network system room.
"Watch out for the turrets," Garrus warned. He shot a combat engineer through the visor before he could set the turret.
A guardian tried to flank them from the left, but James fired a grenade right next to his legs, incinerating half of his body.
The control network was lightly defended, and as Tali shot the last Cerberus agent, EDI reached for the console.
"Subverting the IFF systems to target the Cerberus ships," EDI said.
Shepard watched the guardian lasers power down at first before starting to shoot at the enemy fleet.
"Aria, we have the defense network turned on the enemy; you are free to approach," he said over the comms.
"We'll be there soon," Aria replied with a vindictive tone.
While waiting for Aria, he opted to watch the fireworks. Cerberus vessels could not afford to fire on the station, so they moved outside the defensive range, having lost a quarter of their numbers.
Aria's fleet, led by the commandeered Cerberus cruiser, came out of the mass relay, opening fire. The enemy could not afford to retreat and reenter the guardian systems' range, and Aria's fleet barred the way forward.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, they would be down soon.
"Shepard, you have to see this," Garrus called him out.
"What is it?" he asked, and the turian gestured to the Cerberus soldier, nudging his helmet off with his feet.
"Fucking Cerberus," he cursed. The Cerberus soldier, once a human, now seemed to be a modified version of a husk but still able to retain his intelligence.
"Good thing you found their base and the Alliance took out most of them. This could have been a huge thorn for the war effort," Kaidan grimaced. Even up to three months ago, the Alliance was still cleaning small Cerberus cells across the galaxy.
"Shepard, we are landing; get ready," Aria's voice came from the comms.
"We are ready," he replied. The team rushed to the rendezvous point, with EDI putting additional firewalls to keep the network safe.
"What's that symbol?" Shepard asked, as they split into two teams again, to not get crowded in the elevator.
"Talons, I think, a gang on Omega that was known for drug smuggling and every other dirty business. They were smart enough to go silent once my team started to hit the mercs," Garrus informed. The elevator stopped, and he moved forward to scout the area.
Two vorchas were standing before a crimson forcefield, and he stopped to watch. Mechs, looking like modified LOKIs, approached them from behind, one of them even creating an omni-blade to strike down one of the vorcha.
The other kicked the remaining vorcha to the force field, causing him to burn in agony.
"Aria, Cerberus set up incinerator force fields, with armored mechs present," he informed while Garrus and Hailey shot the mechs in the head.
"We just landed and are moving to meet you," she replied.
"More incoming," Kaidan said, shooting another mech through the forcefield. Cerberus did not send many of them, most likely to get a feel of the approaching forces.
"Shepard, there you are," Aria said from the right side, followed by her men. The army was spreading all over the station to hunt Cerberus down.
"Got a way to circumvent the force fields?" he asked. Deactivating them would take too long, and every second they wasted would be to Cerberus' advantage.
"Yeah, come with me. Bray, keep my army intact," she ordered the Batarian.
"You got it."
—
Aria, as the longtime ruler of Omega, knew secret passages through the station. They went down a ladder to a dark tunnel that would allow them to flank the enemy and find a way to shut down the force fields.
"Show yourself," Javik growled, his brand-new rifle raised.
"What in the name of the spirits are you?" A turian, female by her voice, asked, coming out of the shadows.
"Someone that does not scurry in the shadows," the prothean replied sharply. He lowered his weapon once Shepard told him to.
"Nyreen. What the hell are you doing here?" Aria asked. The turian female, Nyreen, came out to the light. Beneath the hood, Shepard could see red paint on her face.
"Look who is back, Aria T'loak," Nyreen replied, though Aria's grimace did not change.
"Playing cat and mouse, mostly. Just trying to stay alive. If it wasn't for those tunnels…" she explained.
"My tunnels. I am sure glad I showed them to you," the asari reminded.
It seems even the mighty and cold Aria T'loak had a weakness.
"If you hadn't, I'd be dead or locked up by now," Nyreen explained.
"If you two are done with the foreplay, why don't we get to the main action? Those force fields won't shut themselves down," Garrus teased.
The sight of Aria's discomfort was too amusing.
"I know you; you are Archangel," Nyreen said, realizing the company Aria had brought to take her home back.
"In the flesh," he said, giving a dramatic bow.
"Aria trusts you enough to tell you about these tunnels; it's best if you stick with us," Shepard said. With how worried Aria looked beneath her frosty exterior, it would be for the best to keep an eye on the turian.
"I've got a lot of questions, but they'll have to wait," Aria said. Already, too many people had seen her secret tunnel, and she wasn't happy about it.
At all.
"I'll do my best," Nyreen assured.
"You were a cabal, weren't you?" Garrus asked as they climbed the ladder.
The turian female nodded. "How did you guess?"
"Just experience, I suppose."
"You are looking at the former Chief Advisor of the Primarch of Palaven," Shepard said.
"On Reaper-related matters, nothing else," his friend clarified.
While his knowledge was useful at the beginning, once he had taught everything he could, his only use was to answer hypothetical questions regarding possible Reaper strategies. Primarch Fedorian had understood that Garrus would be more useful out there with Shepard.
"Spirits, you have brought quite the people, Aria."
"Yeah, well, the galaxy runs on eezo."
"Bray, why aren't cannons online?" she asked her lieutenant. They already had the defense systems under control; the cannons should have been tearing through the Cerberus bastards by now.
"Something's jamming them. Trying to identify."
"Atlas and mechs ahead. Vega, put that grenade launcher to good use," Garrus ordered, shooting a mech through the head.
James hollered and fired a grenade right at the joint of Atlas' leg. It went up in a ball of flames and shrapnel, causing the mech to go down and misfire, blowing up several rampart mechs.
"Not bad," Garrus praised.
Bray's voice came from the "Aria, there's a Cerberus engineer in here hacking the cannons, keeping them offline."
"We'll find them," she growled.
"Where did they even get all this tech?" Hailey asked. Shield pylons, collector force fields, and reaper-tech enhanced Cerberus soldiers?
Whatever Petrovsky was doing, it was dangerous.
"I am sure we can beat the answers out of Petrovsky," Shepard said, looking down to see an engineer below the platform, working on his computer.
"Hey," he called, and the agent looked up.
"Ah shit," the engineer grunted before a laser bolt went through his skull.
"Canons initializing," Bray informed them over the comms.
"More behind us," Kaidan called out, turning to lay down fire. The troopers were easy to take out, since only two had landed.
However, the main trouble was an Atlas that dropped to the middle of the plaza, ready to fire.
"Aria, the cannons have to be armed manually," Bray said over the comms. Shepard growled and charged at the controls. The force of his biotics sent the Atlas stumbling, and Vega used the chance to land a grenade on the canopy.
He activated the cannons and extended the bridge as well.
The Cerberus was coming down in force now, and Bray told them to move to the bunker.
Aria's army retreated as the cannons covered their rear.
—
In the next chapter:
"Garrus, Cerberus lost control of the adjutants," he informed the turian.
Aria had given him every piece of intel she had on Cerberus, including their latest weapons, the adjutants. They were created with Reaper tech and were extremely lethal.
Blue, hulking creatures with a cannon in one arm, tubes coming out of their faces, and a sack on top of their heads, Cerberus had outdone themselves in how fucking stupid and inhumane they could be.
If they barged into the middle of the strike force, casualties would be high.
"Again? Don't they ever learn?" Garrus complained amid weapons fire.
"Apparently not. Watch out for them," he said.
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