[The Frontier] First Sight

Captain Tabah stood in the bridge of the SSV Mashhad, arms folded, head tilted. Quiet activity surrounded her, hands tapping haptic interfaces, the navigator watching the map of the system they were currently in. Orange holos blinked at her, information at her fingertips.

The Mashhad moved with steady purpose, surrounded by the dark. Behind her were the transports, the other cruisers making slow, lazy patterns alongside them. The frigates-

"Ma'am."

Talking of the frigates. A comms specialist approached, snapping off a brisk salute that Tabah returned, "Ma'am, the SSV Alesia has eyes on the station."

"Tell them to maintain position."

"Aye aye ma'am."

Tabah shifted on her feet, "Helmsman, increase speed to full ahead."

...

The trip had been several days since the flotilla had left the Citadel, long days for the many 'contractors' and Marines aboard the ship. After all, there was little to do but wait.

But the tedium was interrupted today by the ship-wide intercom, the robotic voice of the VI filling the ship, "General quarters. All hands to general quarters."

The Alliance personnel dropped what they were doing and began walking briskly to weapons and armour lockers. Even the sailors began putting on their light, sterile white hardsuits before heading to their action stations.

Freh’ya had been meditating, sitting on her bunk, cross-legged and eyes closed, focusing on the nodes and streams of energy in her body when the loudspeaker called. The routine of endless decades had her snap back to reality in no time and she swung her legs to the floor, bare feet touching cold plastic and metal.

Feet shuffled around her, the noise of equipment made ready, as everyone was preparing with the same routine but without any haste.
Within a few minutes she had pulled her suit, a grey medium scout model, from the locker. Eventually all the hooks and clips snapped into place, pulling it to a tight but comfortable fit.

Adjusting the fingers of the gloves, she waited for further orders. Walking over to the group of tables and chairs next to a small window, she ran the suit protocol for a full function check of shields, lights and other systems, with the expected positive result.

The stars outside were shifting, indicating the movement of the ship. Not much else was visible outside but she was sure she’d find out soon enough what the task would be. She looked back at some of the now very familiar faces…

Not five minutes past the call of General Quarters, Fitzsimmons was out in the hallway, walking side-by-side with his second in command, both wearing white hardsuits, the Commanding Officer's featuring a sophisticated visor over his artificial eye and no helmet. His second-in-command's suit was also white, this one a full Ariake Technologies suit complete with a face-concealing and rather intimidating helmet with two dark blue slits for optics.

Entering the CIC, both saluted the Captain and quietly fell at ease, arms behind the back. Sarah stared through the optics of her helmet, readouts inside illuminating her face. She could see her own heart rate, her oxygen levels and kinetic readouts, and silently, behind the veil of her mask, the woman couldn't help but grin with glee about her new hardsuit.

Kai was, ironically for someone as anxious about even the posibility of combat as him, one of the first ones into the hangar after the call to general quarters. He didn't know much about this whole military/merc business but he'd at least absorbed that much from all his prep work. As far as his kit went, he actually traveled relatively light. His hardsuit was custom, the vast majority of a standard life support system superfluous to the cyborg. Instead it interfaced directly with his frame, plugged into the various input and output jacks that dotted the pure white muscle fibre and off-white casing. With the data being fed to his AR displays, he practically had perfect awareness where his own body was concerned. Plus there was the white ceramic ballistic shield to stop him getting shot in the face.

A Predator pistol sat magnetically attached to his hip, but it was mostly just for show. If it came to a fight, the utterly nutterly butterly amount of omni-gel he had in reserve coupled with the omni-tool components directly implanted in his arms would be what carried him.

He wouldn't lie. Being able to throw fireballs and lightning bolts was pretty cool.

He was happy, in a way. Now that they were mobilizing, and everyone got to get their shit together for an away mission, he finally got to see his Transgression mech again after it had spent so long in the hold in sleep mode. The way he was flitting about it nervously like a mother hen, you'd think it was a real dog.

"Vocal diagnostic?"

"All systems nominal."

"Good. That's good. Hope Kyle comes too..."

Click click.

Click clack.

Thump.

Thwack.

"You're clear."

"You too."

There, checklist done and hands stinging a little inside metal gauntlets; nothing for the siblings Ishida to do now but wait for the rest of the boarding party to file out onto the hangar deck. Which was, as one might imagine, rather boring. But, not to worry, there was plenty to keep them occupied. Namely in the form of every single person on said hangar deck totally not starting at them and their alien armor from God knows what dark corner of the galaxy.

A man walked into a pole. A few seconds later a woman walked into the same pole. It was bad.

Perhaps some elaboration is required: most hardsuits are fairly predictable in what they'll look like. There will be mesh, there will be armored plates, a back unit, all that good stuff.

The Mutasrita Imugi's armor was some kind of nightmare blend between a bodysuit and a zoo's entire Reptile House. Close fitting. Tight. Something woven and synthetic at the joints: the neck, under the arms, upper legs. Everything else? Scaled, angular ceramic mail. Painted over in black and green and trimmed in silver. It rose and fell in ridges like a thousand tiny mountain ranges. A frozen metal ocean. Coffin shaped casks were latched onto their backs in place of weapons. A sextet each, long, leaden wings that shifted and folded and refolded with their movements; the Titan corporation logo stenciled on every individual one.

Carbines for both. A blade for him and grenades for the sister.

Nothing else.

In all fairness to Kyle some people had to spend a pretty significant amount of time getting their gear on. None of that clean edged, medical white armor for him oh no. The rig that the other mercenary (and he would have, in fact, insisted on being called a mercenary) clomped up in was the definition of heavy and industrial. Droneware spliced together with a military hardsuit and what by all appearances seemed to be siege-engineer tech. It bore mentioning that [REDACTED] had actually provided him with a proper combat exoskeleton at some point in the past. Granted he'd promptly spliced it into this bastard lovechild of a mining rig, drone suite, and an assault suit but still. It wasn't wholly disreputable.

Only mostly.

The buttrock blaring through his earpieces as he took up a position next to Kai did absolutely nothing to help soften the image.

A cheerful, utterly informal "'Sup!" to Kai, a literal pat on the head to the Transgression mech (it'd torn apart like three slavers, he could like this one if nothing else), and he just stood there next to the quarian as casual as you please.

When the call to general quarters came, Lakshika was lying on her back on her bunk, staring at her omnitool. Orange light painted words before her eyes and she wanted to just ignore it, leave it for another day, but then she knew her mother would have a heart attack and call the Alliance's PR department to demand what had happened to her daughter.

Enna gedara, her mother said, like it was that simple.

Then the call came and she huffed out a breath, sliding her feet off the bunk. The recon squad lived together, ate together, fought together, so it wasn't long until the others came barreling into the room, Thullier-Wright's voice shattering the quiet. Rajapaske suited up quickly-running diagnostics even as she magnetized her marksman rifle to her back, followed by her sidearm.

"Know what's going on?" Waharoa asked as he checked his Typhoon.

"No," Rajapaske said simply, because she didn't.

"Alright then," Thullier-Wright muttered, rolling her shoulders under the weight of her recon armour.

They filed out, headed to the shuttle bay. On their way, Rajapaske noticed Frey'ha, and because she had none of the self-preservation skills such as just keeping your head down and just praying the higher ups knew what they were doing and had actually made sure to brief every contractor on general quarters, she approached.

"Ma'am? I think you're supposed to come with us."

"Definitely a regulation manual in human form," Thullier-Wright stage-whispered to Waharoa.

"Shut up, Thullier-Wright," She said, a little bit grumpily.

"One day I'm gonna unlace those straight laces of yours, Rajapaske."

There was a pause after the American said that, before the two men burst out laughing. Rajapaske wanted to shoot them, half-turning to glare at them.

"Didn't mean it that way, boss!"

Cline grinned as he put on his recently refurbished Kestrel Armor. 'So nice of the guys in the armory to help refurbish my hardsuit.' he thought as he began to attach his tools to the new webbing recently added to his armor. After grabbing his weapons and explosives from the armory, he rushed over to where Freh'ya sat, putting on his helmet as he does so.

"Well, here's hoping it's not a complete shitshow like last time, 'eh Freh'ya?" he joked, as his armor began its self-diagnostic.

"Right, Shields: nominal; Comm Relay: Good to go... " he said to himself as his hardsuit went through its self-diagnostic

“Most certainly, Cline…. Shiny equipment.” The commando replied with a raised eyebrow, connecting her Carnifex to her hip. The power magnifier device blinked two times before it went to standby. “Let’s go.”

She ran into Rajapaske’s gang on the way out, nodding at the request and smiling at the group dynamics. “So I have heard, PFC, lead the way.” Here’s hoping for a proper briefing and assignment of tasks, the command structure had be kept very flexible to be adaptable to any situation the task force may encounter, at least that’s what the last days had been looking like to Freh’ya. But scouts and vanguards would always be first in she supposed. Her tall frame was a stark contrast to the PFC’s small build as they made their way through the corridor.

The quarian team was already primed, already suited up and ready. When the alert came all they needed was their weapons, prying them from their containers in the armoury. The somewhat bulky rifles retrieved from the cases seemed analogous to their armour: Same style, designed to work as a companion to it and built around the same doctrines as the armour. A few tiny protrusions along the top of the rifle was designed to throw up to what amounted to a holographic scope, one far more versatile than a "hard" scope or sight.

Quickly locking their weapons onto their backs, the team hastily made their way to the hangar deck, pace staying as constant as their formation. Diagnostics and checks being performed on the fly, accounting for the status of both weapons and armour and fine-tuning variables as they needed. Soon, their omnitools flared to life as the HUDs flashed into existence inside their helmets, displaying all kinds of information: Vitals, location, suit status and even environmental conditions. And as quickly as the omnitools came online, they vanished.

Arriving onto the hangar deck, they immediately formed up near their gunship, The crew of it finishing up any last-minute maintenance before they stepped out and sat at the edge of the gunship's hold, giving the armoured quarians a nod which was returned in kind. The crew's suits was somewhat different yet similar to the basic suits the marines had: Same colouration, same general design yet had several modifications for their role; Reinforced environmental systems, superior temperature controls and plating over parts of the visor being the most visible ones.

The alarms went off and there was barely any reaction to them by her or the person across from her. Lyra leaned back, an annoyed expression evident. She stood then and so did the other person. Another time ops chief? She smiled at the nod and then made her way down to the hanger by way of the elevator.

Once there it was a simple process. She unzipped her bag and then put her armor on piece by piece. She moved her limbs one by one making sure that it fit as best as it could and then put on the most important part of it all, the helmet. The dark grey armor was probably the most worn set on the entire ship, absolutely covered with marks from numerous prior battles. The only mark that didn't appear to come from combat was on the front where it appeared several somethings next to a red bar had been chipped of. Even without the insignia next to it, the meaning of the red bar was fairly evident to anyone knowledgeable about the N7 program.

Her weapons, in stark contrast to her armor, appeared to be simple ones, two pistols, a shotgun, and a knife. A place to sit was found and there she waited, wondering what would happen next as she made sure her omnitool and all its fuctions were behaving properly.

General quarters? Ah, yes, the manuals given to Worag had explained this was human equivalent to action stations or shtufana ne amari as the Lystheni announced theirs.

He slotted an anti-sedative agent vial into his hardsuit's medical dispenser unit. It was simple really: sedative to block the receptors and prevent rage. Sedative blocker to bind into the sedative and render it inert before reaching his receptors. His hardsuit's dispenser made sure to distribute it evenly and fast all over his body. Give Worag a five and he'd be perky and ready to crack heads as ever.

But before that, his gun. The krogan slid the LMG onto its place on his back. The marines didn't take kindly to guns waved on deck.

"Begin scanning the station," Tabah said, giving no indication she'd noticed the intelligence officers arrive. On a monitor there was the speck of metal of the space station almost swallowed up by the vastness of space, captured by the ship's cameras and then a LADAR display showing the blip of it on the ship's systems, "Any signs of activity, you notify me."

"Yes ma'am."

That done with, the captain turned to the two officers, "Commander, Lieutenant. I hope you are well. We are now," She gestured to the screens, "On approach to Teshuru Station, an Alliance military facility. Prior to the war it was a refuel and repair station for Naval assets in the area as well as post of the QRF picket responsible for this region and had a population of three thousand. Schematics and other intel from surviving pre-War databanks have been sent to your omnitools." With the destruction of Arcturus Station, the Alliance had lost several central data banks, both civilian and military, "However, there have been no replies to attempts to hail Teshuru and so far our scans have shown no activity in this system.

"My orders are to secure the station for a recovery team. Commander, you will remain here and co-ordinate with Lieutenant Thompson, who will accompany the Marine detachment onto the station. I want whatever we find compiled and analysed for Command. Thompson, you have authorisation to seize whatever you believe will help us discover what happened to the garrison here. Lieutenant, I suggest you join the detachment in the hangar."

...

Down below, a tall woman dressed in the blue-grey Marine hardsuit, her helmet tucked under her arm, stepped forward to address the company of Marines and the mass of mercenaries. A scar nearly bisected her face and her her eyes had that look in them, the one that was all too familiar post-war, "Listen up! We're on final approach to Teshuru Station. Our objectives are to secure the station and to find what evidence we can of what happened here." Her accent in English was faintly Korean. The briefings the contractors had been given named her as Staff Lieutenant Thanh, the commander of the Marine Detachment aboard the Mashhad and, temporarily, of all the ground forces aboard. "Phase 1 will consist of Recon and specialist insertion via shuttle," The 'specialists' knew who they were-the two Titan imugi, Freh'ya and Service Chief Cline, "Phase 2 will be the deployment of regular forces via shuttle and airlock, which will be secured by Recon." Everyone else, "No confirmation of any hostiles-or anything yet, but be prepared regardless. Ten minutes out people, get ready."

She stepped away, joined by her platoon leaders and First Sergeant.

Freh’ya straightened as she listened to the briefing. Teshuru Station had been on the target list so it wasn’t completely unknown to her. She nodded at Cline, so it would be the two of them and two people from the Titan group. They had not grown particularly close during the trip, if not to say kept a distance. But there was a time for everything.
She also had never worked with anybody of that organization so it was an unknown factor. Combined training had not been emphasized during the downtime so this mission would involve quite many variables for everybody. But what could possibly go wrong on a mission that basically was about turning the lights on on a dead space station? The answer was: a lot!

Freh’ya made eye contact with Sarah before she looked over at the pair from Titan. She made a step towards them, inviting them over with a wave at the same time. She opened her omnitool, bringing up a 3D projection of the station, as good as the available plans permitted. There were a few white areas where plans for updates and rebuilds obviously had been missing.

Possible entry zones and cargo bays were highlighted, as well as the nearby power stations.

“So, what do we have? From the scanner data we have no energy on the station. Atmosphere is there, at least confirmed in certain compartments but of unidentified nature. Activating a power hub and getting limited life support and an operational cargo bay for the rest of the teams back online is priority.” She looked at Cline, who was the team engineer.

“There has been no sign of life from the station, no recent heat emissions, no signs of any recent activity. That still does not rule out the presence of others over there, hostile or not. Our arrival is not announced, little probability for a large sophisticated trap but we can’t be sure under what circumstances the station was left and what possible traps may still sit there from years past. Opinions?”

With her order, Sarah turned on her heel and made her way out of the CIC area, the automatic door opening with her approach.
Metal booted soles clanked softly against the hard metal floor of the hallway, and the woman did a final quick check over her ammo storage, a pack of shotgun thermal clips were magnetically tethered to her hip near her posterior, as she'd done for a decade now.
It was like fitting back into an old glove at this point. The turbo-lift brought her down a few levels into the hangar.

She'd made her way to the disparate group of military personnel and the mercenaries. Once Thahn finished her outline of the mission, the woman spoke up after a brief salute, the effect of the Ariake mask giving her voice a clear and projected quality. "Staff Liuetenant, I'm Second Lieutenant Sarah Thompson of the Military Intelligence Wing. I've got my orders to investigate what happened to the station and her occupants, so I will be accompanying whichever phase of deployment you want."

Taking a bite out of a D-Ration bar for biotics, Cline's eyes gazing over the plans of the station. He nodded when Freh'ya looked at him. "Should be easy enough, provided the power stations are not shot to hell. He replied.

When the call to general quarters had come, Nem was already in the hangar - fully hardsuited, folded Phaeston snapped magnetically to his back - and busy using every second of experience he had gained in his decade-plus service to the Hierarchy. But, even to the Hierarchy infantryman, there are those foes that are simply too well entrenched to overcome. Sergeant Nemanovan was coming to list Alliance Requisitions Officers among those enemies.

Setting aside his fruitless haggling as the alert came over the comms, he elbowed his way into the front few ranks of the troops gathered in front of the scarred lieutenant. He left the briefing feeling entirely none the wiser. Some unfamiliar human space station of unknown layout, unclear status and undiscovered hostility level, assaulted by a force whose command structure was being held together by the osmotic pressure of its own complexity. A purely turian force would have been appalled by the 'play it by ear' approach seemingly being adopted here. Of course, a purely turian force - at least, one operating under pre-Reaper War doctrine - would likely have just fired a few rounds from the Masshad's main gun into the station and asked questions of the debris in the aftermath.

For his part, Nem was not too concerned. He was not - and had never once kidded himself that he could be - a recon soldier, so he would be spared the perils of being in the first wave; and as an NCO without a squad to command, he would likely end up being stuck babysitting some tech weenie while they scurried about the station pilfering credits from whatever abandoned lockers they came across. Shrugging, he bounded back over to the Requisitions Officer.

"Look, dude, did you hear that?" He prodded a ceramic encased talon into the man's chest. "Ten minutes out from a spooky dead space station. You know what that means?" He asked rhetorically. "No lights, maybe no grav, maybe no air. I'm gonna need my mag boots, my NVGs and maybe my breather all running, you feel? Two cells ain't gonna power all that and my suit 'puter and HUD for longer than it takes me to unzip and take a leak, you dig? I told you, I need six cells. Six, you get me? And bro, for real, there are four TB, four fuckin' terrabytes of Silk Stripe back issues on this OSD. That's enough fap material for, like, three years. Or I guess eight months in your case. That's totally worth six cells, dude!"

"I'm sorry, last time we checked our contracts we answered to the Mashhad's chain of command." The voice hissed through the slick vents that studded Jakuzure's mask. Completely. Flatly. Unamused.

It was, in all honesty, a good thing that the Mutasrita Imugi's armor included a fully face concealing helm. Because their expressions at the moment were pretty freaking dire. As in: it was a miracle their faceplates didn't explode out from the sheer force of the bitterly dry dislike being directed at the other side. Why? Where oh where to begin? How about the fact that they were now apparently taking their cue from the commando with no prompting whatsoever? The fact that they were being tasked with keeping the Lord of Tacticool himself and his shiny set of armor in one piece? Or oh! Oh! How about the fact, the lovely fact, that there was now a Military Intelligence puke out of fucking nowhere doing everything short of going "oh check my name again, I'm sure it's on the list".

Mercenaries liked contracts. They liked their orders clear cut. They liked knowing what was expected of them and what they needed to do to keep their clients happy upfront.

This?

Not so much.

Sanageyama held up one clawed finger (their gauntlets were clawed, why in the holy hell were they clawed?) by way of interruption.

"One: opinions don't matter, we have orders. Two:," wrist flipped, a second finger joining the first, "where's our actual commander?"

Sanageyama's question was answered, and Rajapaske saved from having to say something, by the arrival of the quintessential NCO. He was tall, he was broad, he looked perpetually angry. He was the sort of man that enlisted shared stories and quotes about.

"I'm," I'm came out more like 'Ah'm', "Sergeant Alonso," He had a thick accent of some unknown place, possibly a border agri colony, "The Recon element leader 'ere on the Mash'had." His eyes settled on each of the four of them and he looked like he'd sucked on a lemon. Even the captain might not have been too pleased about how hastily this taskforce had been slapped togethr, but shit rolled downhill. "I'll be takin' a team to secure the LZ," He jerked a thumb at another small clump of recon marines, led by a by a rough looking guy with a corporal's chevrons, "You lot will start sweeping out from our infil point, lookin' for anything nasty." He slapped Rajapaske on the back hard enough the tiny PFC stumbled a step, "Rajapaske 'ere reports directly to me, so no doin' nothing stupid because then I'll hafta fuck your shit up and I like my fancy chevrons, roger?"

"Yes Sergeant," Rajapaske said with a certain long-suffering tone.

"And don't let Thullier 'ere let the whole fucking Traverse know we're here, a'right?" Alonso refused point blank to use Thullier-Wright's full last name.

"Yes Sergeant," Rajapaske said over the affronted noise the other woman made.

It just had to be an Alliance thing, Freh’ya thought. They obviously weren’t good at establishing working chains that incorporated foreign military and contractors. She loved every second of being part of that big experiment they were obviously running here. The Imugi had never used any sort of rank Freh’ya was aware of so as far as she was concerned, they were armed civilians on a contract basis being a part of a Council operation, run by the Alliance.

She turned her left shoulder in so the two had a good view on her insignia as she folded her omnitool. “There is a chain of command,” she replied dryly. Maybe they would have preferred everything in written form, stamped and signed by their employer. Or maybe they would just file complaints later.

Then Alonso took her attention. She liked the guy just by looking at him, if only he would spit out whatever he was chewing on, her translator was giving her a lag before it had adapted.
“Sergeant.” She replied with a nod, recognizing him and his assigned position. For a moment she wasn’t sure if that guy maybe would have liked them to find something nasty.

Rajapaske and her gang was a pleasant addition to the team. More known factors began outweighing the unknowns.