There Will Be Bloodshed

1600

The void was cold, empty, one formless part of the incomprehensibly vast gulf that lay between worlds, between stars, with the greater ocean beyond. Dark. Desolate.

A moment passed.

A flash of blue.

And then void was alive. Alive with mass, with matter, with movement and motion. With the warmth of vented heat, the iridescent light of fusion torches, the black, green, and silver trimmed ablative armor, with the quiet, soft, stillness of the sleeping spinals.

A disk hung in the distance, brown and blue with hints of indigo streaking the mesosphere. A blue orb shined beyond, dwarfing all else.

Communications danced between the ship, orders, affirmations. A freighter, a hulking beast of a ship and an escort of smaller, angular Dominion cruisers, their metal limbs trailing behind like jellyfish strands, broke off from the whole. The void pulsed with blue light again and they vanished.

As one the remainder set their course and began the final burn.

1700

Yana Rou was having a bad day.

There were certain unpleasant realities inherent to running a corporate entity who regularly did things like, say, create plagues to rebalance the power of a Terminus government. One being that you needed to get used to the idea of ordering under the table war crimes before lunch and the other being that someday, inevitably, you were going to be on the receiving end of the aforementioned war crimes if and when things went south.

Things had gone so far south on Carthagia that they were in dire danger of flying off the planet altogether.

It hadn’t been anything particularly horrible this time, not a nerve agent or, Families forbid, a clandamned nanoplague, and they hadn’t lost anybody besides a few Myrmidons doing guard duty outside the clinic (and who would now be spending the next couple weeks in the med bay puking up their guts and developing a new appreciation for the phrase “Everyone needs to be in NBC gear” before they returned to duty). But things were escalating, the sixth attack in half as many days. Kalamo? Nine-Rings? Lok? (okay probably not Lok). The sad thing was it probably didn’t even matter, not really. Too many people stacked up against them, not enough allies, nothing left but the long, slow, inevitable grind of attrition.

Some of the civilians waiting outside hadn’t been quite so lucky as her marines. She, they, had done what they could but VasoTears was a cold hearted creditfeeding bitch and four had died in minutes, out there in the street. Another twelve were in critical condition and it would be a miracle if they could get them all through the night.

Her rebreather rattled with a soft sigh as she trudged over the bridge, all (acceleratorproof)glass and steel, one of the dozens that joined Tower East to Tower North to Tower West and back to Tower East, etc, etc. Very beautiful and all, very well secured too, the whole thing was practically an architecturally inclined warlord’s wet dream.

Funny how all she could think about as she looked down, in the fading winter light, was how penniless and decidedly shitty the fortifications looked. Scarred with rocket fire. Acid. Patched up with the plain metal barricades which was all they’d been able to really manufacture.

Clusters of black and green armored forms manned the towers on the walls, the gates, policed the shantytown of prefabs that had grown up around the base of the three towers.

They had the people on their side. They had both of the capitol’s major spaceports, fortified office buildings, warehouses, swathes of the volus underground settlements, outposts that were the bastard offspring of military garrisons, supply depots, and public clinics. They had a network of spaceborne holdings that stretched throughout the Abyssal like some great spiderweb, with the world of Carthagia as its center.

And it was being carved away, piece by piece, they’d done well for a time, her and Parsia, had helped maintain order. But it had to turn around sometime didn’t it?

She stepped through the open door and into Tower North. Bank of elevators ahead, all empty.

She chose the second from the left on a whim and keyed in the code for the top floor. The levels flicking past the plated windows.

He was waiting for her when she stepped off. Leaning against the metal paneling and looking out over the cityscape. His iron grey carapace was dull, his suit practically hung off his frame.
Rou stopped dead in her tracks.

“Clans Saren you look shit.” Her rebreather hissed as she took an ammonia laden breath. “I thought you said you were going to get some sleep.”

“Couldn’t.” He rubbed his eyes, trying to shake off the sleep, he managed a weak grin. “Someone’s got to do the worrying around here you know.”

And now she did sigh. Less of frustration and more...weary. “What was it.”

“Another message from the boss. Knew you were busy with the civvies for the day, didn’t want to distract you.”

She paused and then started walking motioning for him to fill her in, he fell beside the smaller volus easily, matching his longer strides to hers.

“How bad?”

“Nah not bad, just wanted me to restructure some stuff by Belavesso, clear out some of the gangs and smugglers Kalamo’s been sending our way.”

“Thought it wasn’t so bad there?”

“It’s not” he shrugged, “but I he said he’d explain it during the meeting so I didn’t press.”

They stopped at the door, the holo lock glowing a gentle, muted green.

“Saren?”

“Yeah?”

“Exactly...how fucked are we?”

There was a moment of silence as he mulled it over.

“You know I think we’ll be alright. We -you mainly if we’re going to be honest- have done a solid job. Kept things from falling to pieces. He’s not going to tear into us over that. And if he was going to tear into us over anything else he would have said in the messages.”

“Okay…” her respirator hissed again. “Okay.”

They walked in together, the boardroom and its behemoth of a table was empty save for the him and her, the turian and the volus. They took their customary positions, her at the head, him at her right hand, without a word.

Parsia tapped a few keys on the data slate before him and one by one, the holoscreens lining the room started to flare to life. There were executives, analysts, soldiers. Some theirs and some his.

He flickered into existence last, at the opposite end of the table. His unnaturally green eyes that same, piercing shade she remembered even through the intermittent shivering and distortion.

“Ms. Rou. Mr. Parcia. Ladies and Gentlemen.” Nikolai grinned and his smile was a snakelike thing, cold, reptilian and oh so pleased with itself.

“It is good to see you all again, alive and well, but you’ll forgive me if I defer the pleasantries until after we have dealt with the more pressing matters.”

The image was stabilizing, she could see people standing behind him, beside him. Their arms clasped behind their backs, lined in neat, even ranks. There was something hungry in their faces, something feral.

“Thanks to the efforts of Ms. Rou and Mr. Parcia we have retained a beachhead here on Carthagia and in the Shrike as a whole; even in the face of unrelenting hostile activity. The time has come, however,” And now she was smiling too, behind her ceramic mask, smiling as the weight fell from her shoulders, as she felt it; beside her Saren was sitting up straighter, a brightness returning to his eyes. He could feel it too, they all could.

The tides were turning. The equation was changing.

“to take this world back. To take it all back.

And we’re going to do it tonight.”

0200

Phoenicius, the capital; the largest, grandest city on the planet slept. Its paced slowed. In any major metropolis nothing ever came to a complete halt, not really, but things had become dangerous on Carthagia in recent days and with the deep, bone achingly cold bite of the year’s terminal frost already in the air it was far easier for Phoenicius’s citizens to stay inside, swaddled in warmth and what comforts they could find.

Better this way really.

Less collateral.

The detonations tore through the city, a visible wave rolling over the colony from east to west. Carbombs. The abandoned vehicles went off one after another; synchronized to within seconds. They had been scattered throughout the city, unnoticed, camouflaged by their utter mundanity as their VI pilots guided them down amongst a cluster of warehouses (barracks, narcotics labs, holding pens) in the east end, outside a club and a select few buildings in downtown (retreat, command and control),

and at the gates of the Syndicate compound, in the west.

(Headquarters).

For a minute, maybe two, there was just fire and smoke, cries of panic, shrieks of alarm, blaring klaxons.

For a moment it was still, peaceful in a way.

For a moment he had time to think.

His name was Canius Vessander. He rather liked it actually, picked it out. Was it a bit unimaginative? Yeah, every turian merc in the fucking galaxy had been through it before. Right up there with Serikix or Raptosri in terms of “scary animals that we can sell to marketing”. But nobody ever accused him of being a scholar or a poet and it suited him well enough that he hadn’t minded keep it.

Canius. Dog. Varren. Dreadhound. The faithful companion that sat at the right hand of his master, didn’t even need a fucking leash anymore now did he?

Other men might have railed against that, have clawed and chafed at the omnipresent restraint but he didn’t mind. Guttertrash he. Used. Abused. Disposed. Fished out of the garbage when he was useful again, someone’s courier or footsoldier or cheap labor. Their eyes and their ears. Even when he was a man it had been more of the same. Day in, day out. Replaceable.

To go from that, to go from that, to having an actual spiritsdamned purpose? To having a home and a place and something better than the scraps that fell from the table?

Fuck yes he didn’t mind.

It helped that his patron gave him the nice toys too.

He shifted against the ledge and the heavy metallic tendrils that coiled from between his shoulders shifted with him. Five segmented, snakelike tethers anchoring him to the side of the arcology, seventy five floors up. They hung around him, three full squads in that pseudo-organic, faceless armor. Three full squads awaiting his command, invisible in the night.

Below them men and women in hardsuits emblazoned with the Kalamo rune were pouring out, shouting orders back and forth, the sleepy, disheveled but no less heavily armed irregulars falling in place around them. They were entrenching themselves behind cover, assembling heavy accelerator cannon, activating barrier fields, locking down the base.

And there was their cue.

Hand signals flashed up and down the ragged line

and then Canius kicked off the side of the building and into the dark.

For a moment it was pure stomach churning exhilaration, plunging down, down, down with nothing to slow him or halt his descent.

Then the airfoil strung from pincer to pincer between the manipulators caught the currents, sending his unchecked fall into a smooth, level glide. The other Shades slipping into formation behind him and then fading out as their cloaks engaged. He muttered a low, guttural order and his own armor followed suit. Invisible in practice as well as metaphor save for the odd, muted flicker of a soldier correcting their course with jump jets.

The bomb had been accompanied by a low level EM pulse. They had time before the Kalamo’s sensor net started receiving verifiable data.
Not much. But it was enough,

it was enough.

They slipped over the walls, bypassing the low buildings and halls that comprised the majority of the sprawling compound, angling for the central spire.

There was a trio of marksmen on the roof, a quick flurry of gestures and two Shades broke away, pulling up as the front segments of their improvised wingsuits collapsed in on themselves, the others flaring, slowing them as the manipulators reforged the material.

The last thing Kalamo’s men saw before a hail of forearm long spikes skewered their heads was a pair of blurry patches of air detaching themselves from the greater dark and simply stepping onto the rooftop.

The rest of the Shades fired their jets at the last minute as they struck, and stuck to, the the sheer sides of the Syndicate’s fortress. Their bastion. Half molten blades flickered into existence for a moment, carving through the plates of treated glass like they were water.

Suppressed gunfire was already chattering through his comms as he angled his way to a perch next to a massive furrow that ran the length of the building.

And waited.

The others would tear through the building, through the security, through the defenses, through the fucking walls. They would compromise escape routes, they would heard the target. But he was not to participate, he had his own task given by the boss himself. Their target was his target. A volus woman.

Eliminate her guards. Kill her.

He was...no giddy wasn’t the right word. Made him sound like a he was going to a fucking dance or something. No he was

he was all tightly coiled energy. Raw strength and power ready to explode out, ready to run his target down and bring the broken body back to his master.

Figuratively speaking, the boss probably wouldn’t want an actual corpse dumped in his office.

He felt the hum, heard the oncoming rush as the elevator hurtled down from up above. There was an elevator shaft in her penthouse, a straight, thirty second shot to a bunker deep beneath the complex. But that had been breached, that route was no longer secure. Her security detail would be forced to escort her to one of the exterior lifts. Shielded cars, reinforced glass, still fucking fast.

It wouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

Here it came, fourth car from the right.

He readied himself, bracing his boots against the building itself, the whole world turned on its head, the timer in his HUD counting down.

Five seconds.

Four.

Three.

One.

And he pushed off with every single ounce of strength he could muster, kicking his jets into high gear, shutting down the now useless cloak that still clung to his armor, the tendrils brought together in a spear point, the spiked tips glowing red.

The elevator was on his level for a second, a fraction of a second.

Barely enough time for the krogan guard to look up and see the turian sized missile hurtling right at the lift.

He burst into the elevator in a shower of glass and broken metal, bringing up his clawed feet into a thrust kick, the jets practically screaming as he fired them at full burn to keep from shooting out the other side of the car, roasting one of the krogan guards in the process.

What happened next was the product of instinct as much as it was skill. Of unconscious reaction as much calculated decision.

The manipulators were coming up, the pincers opening wide like a snake’s yawn, forging five overlapping ceramic plates.
They absorbed the uninjured guard’s shotgun blast.

Canius’s shotgun was unfolding in his hands. He emptied it into the krogan still recoiling from the flames, from his own burning skin.

The far wall of the elevator was painted orange and white.

The first guard was bringing the butt of his shotgun down, slamming aside one of the armored plates, finger tightening on the trigger.

He spun with the motion, lighting the panels aflame and slamming them against the man’s back. Sending him reeling, falling,

right out the hole in the side of the car.

He completed the turn in one fluid motion, the woman’s respirator was blinking she was saying something, something about credits, about payment.

He could have told her not to bother.

Canius. Vicious. Brutal. Hungry.

But above all else loyal.

The omniblade speared through her mask, lifting the volus off her feet and transfixing her to elevator doors.

She died before she hit the wall.

He was gone before the car slid to a stop at the ground floor.

0300

It wasn’t fortuitous so much as it was inevitable. There were only so many stops between Dolo Station and Carthagia. Only so many places one could vent heat, and drive charge. And it was a massive ship, thousands of tons of cargo, licit and illicit bound for the station. Rations. Weapons. Hydroponics. Industrial nanogel stores. Narcotics. Fabbers. Repair drones.

Supplies for the Titan garrison. Raw goods for sale, distribution, hand off.

The escort orbited the superfreighter as it skated across the atmosphere of the gas giant, shadowing it from above as a miniature lightning storm radiated out from the point of contact. An aurora dancing on the fringes. Radiators flared, extended, venting heat into the near vacuum.

It was a tight defense, a rotating formation, it was textbook. Perfect.

Shame the attack was even better.

Two squadrons of mixed craft, fighters, corvettes, frigates, a cruiser or two, a proper raiding fleet. They roared out in a wave of blue interposing themselves between the layers. Between the guards and the carrier, firing their thrusters, spinning into position faster than the larger cruisers could bring their guns to bear. The freighter, the de facto hostage, the guards, prisoners of their own allegiance.

Broadsides crippled by necessity. Too many targets, too little room, too many points for the GARDIANs to defend.

And then the vast radiators were shattered, shredded, broken and volley fire was tearing into the metal bellies of the Dominions. They held out for a minute. For two. For five. And for a moment, just a moment, it looked like they might weather the shock, that they might restore superiority.

Then they reeled, one by one firing their jets and peeling away from the wounded and listing cargo ship.

The lightning had halted but it couldn’t flee, couldn’t defend. Either of those mandated heat build up. Retreating to FTL was impossible.

As the Dominions retreated the two groups separated, the bulk, lead by a shining angle-winged Atharix driving forward, keeping the defenders off balance, keeping them from regrouping while the remainder (a handful of frigates, one of the cruisers) moved to dock with the gutted freighter.

It would be quick. It would be easy. This was not New Rendil’s only fleet. Not their only band. But this was their largest. Their standard bearer. Their Captain’s personal retinue.

That’s what they knew him as. The Captain.

A remnant.

A memory that remembered the day that Titan spinals cracked the planetoid’s crust around the Rendil base. The day that all they had, all they were was mass driven into dust by a vengeful corporation. A lesson. An example.

The Atharix tore past one of the Dominions, broad hulled corvettes shielding it from scarlet and crimson threads, from the hail of glacial blue bolts. They stayed just long enough to loose a bevy of disruptors, a full payload and vanish into the thick of their escorts. The corvettes jettisoning the slagged ablative armor

He couldn’t have been anyone important, the leadership had been accounted for. Young perhaps. One of their skirmishers. Out on patrol when their port of call had been shattered.

He’d remembered that lesson. He’d learned. Take what you want, take what you please, scorch the place bare and never given them a target.

And it had worked.

The larger ships were in position, maneuvering themselves closer. The cargo ship attempted a limited burn to break the locks, to buy time, but they maintained peace easily. A thousand meters and closing

They hadn’t been able to use the same tactics here as they had then. And they had suffered for it.

Seventy five hundred meters and closing.

In the end, there had really only been one way to deal with the Captain. With New Rendil.

Five hundred meters and closing.

Ego. It had been his ego that made all this possible They hadn’t been able to go to him.

Twenty five hundred meters and closing.

So they strung the bait out.

Fifty meters and closing.

And let him come to them.

A panel flew away from the ships superstructure. No not fell off, not peeled away flew. Jettisoned. Heavy ablative plated along the edges, cheaply made.

Inside, something shifted.

Black armored. Gleaming. Insectile.

Green eyed.

The Choir mech slammed into the frigate’s thrusters with all the force of a missile. Its great claws tearing and rending as the laser arrays flashed scarlet, carving into the mechanism even as it began melting, the metal shell running in the heat.

More partitions were flying off now. Up and down the length of the ship’s. From bow to stern.

The swarm poured forth, more a cloud than a squadron, more a plague than a wing. Choirs circling and wheeling around the longer, larger Orchestra mechs. They tore through the retinue, through the raiders like a storm. Bringing down with raw, brutal rending and crushing what they could not through fire. Destroying through numbers what they could not through superiority.

The Dominions began to come about, not so wounded, not so lamed after all. And as the last of the mecha left the carrier dark winged shapes began to take flight.

The Maestros. The Drowned. Pulling free from their closed vaults at last.

As they swept through the battlefield the hordes of mechs fell into ranks. Flying wedges. Neat. Orderly.

New Rendil fired and Choirs died, burned to a husk or scattered into so much dust. The formations folding in, to account for the casualties, for the useless. But the Maestros flew on. Black on jagged black. Implacable. Unstoppable.

Titan fired and New Rendil died.

Accelerator cannon boring through armor; the massed volley fire of the Choirs, the heavy accelerators of the Orchestras, the devastating guns of the pilots, of Titan’s aces. Broadsides off the Dominions. A thousand flashing blue darts from the single, vast, flight.

They broke away, fighter by fighter, the interceptors with their attendant drones. Hunting down the tattered remnants. It was over, over the moment New Rendil had dropped in system, the rest was so many details.

Well.

And him. The Captain.

One single Maestro continued forward, alone save for the half dozen drones it had gathered about itself. It locked onto his trail. He was alone, isolated, his retinue bleeding and dying a scant hundred kilometers away, a mass of thrusters and drives crawling with a hundred tiny specks.

But he was still good. He was still one of the best. He had survived Rendil. He would survive its successor. He would start again, start somewhere else.

The Atharix rolled. The Maestro, matched it. Movement for movement.

He climbed, rising out of the giant’s gravity well, slipping through the net of broadsides and drones and GARDIAN that had trapped them.

It, she, sent drones ahead. He blew them apart, twisting and evading and making the fighter dance between them, one after another they disintegrated into hunks of charred metal.

But it had slowed him.

The Batons lanced out, burning through his wing.

He slowed more. The Atharix fired its thrusters and flipped, nose to nose with its pursuer. Separated by a dozen kilometers, maybe less.

He fired. A pair of drones intercepted shots, crumpling under the burst.

She fired. Two missile pods emptied.

For a moment, just a moment, the Atharix hung in the void. Silver. Hull lovingly polished to a mirrored shine. A killcount tally burned by the nose. The darkened cockpit. The Captain.

But only for a moment.

And then it was snuffed out.

0345

Breath fogged the visor, obscuring the lower quarter of the HUD for a fraction of a second before being wicked away. Which was good because God forbid he not have a full tactical and structural readout when he pancaked himself into the ground at terminal velocity.

Shut up.

It was good to be informed. Good to have all those juicy little facts. Dying an informed idiot in a metal coffin was oh so very preferable to dying an ignorant idiot in a metal coffin. Jesus, what would his family say? The most embarrassing specter in the afterlife: “oh so how did he die?” “well...you see he thought he could hack it as a mercenary” “oh dear” “yes, so of course he went for the biggest, fanciest piece of tech he could find and apparently wasn’t a complete loss at something (for once). But sad things sadder, they drafted him for the first hot run.” “...ah”

Shut up.

“I think I see.” “Yes quite, so naturally he managed to get his useless carcass smeared across half the southern hemisphere of some hellhole of a planet” “....oh my.” “Yes. We...try not to talk about it.” “Understandably” “Now anyway, this is our other son. He was a biotic and not just one of those ones with all the cancer, but a full grade specia-”

Shut.

Up.

The endless circle of dainty falsettos shut up.

Edgar reveled in the quiet. In the slow inhale and exhale, his breath echoing in his ears, fogging up the polished industrial sapphire of his sealed visor. Didn’t really matter, nothing to see anyway but the brushed metal interior of the hangar door.

He shifted, foot to foot, rolled his shoulders, the myriad of tubes and cables linking with the spine of the armor, the shoulders, the triceps, and the back of his thighs, whispered over each other. His fingers drummed inside the sockets, wrapped around his arm up to the elbow. His toes wriggled in boots sunk in a matching pair up to the calf.

Deep breathes. Watch the visor cloud. Relax.

“Drop prep complete. Squad ready.”

Wait. Waitwaitwaitwait. Fuck. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready there was a mistake, a fucking huge mistake.

“Airlock open. Detaching clamps. Releasing units.”

Right. Right deep breathes. He moved and felt the steady warmth bloom in his hands, along the rear of his arms, his feet, propelling him forward. An Apostle drifted past, it’s twin jets burning blue; one gauntleted hand guiding a black oblong three times its size, more suits on every side. The power armor only came up to maybe his thigh.

God. He was going to be sick. That would be his legacy, first pilot of a Crusader in a hot op. Coincidentally also the first pilot the puke inside his own helm.

His faceplate flexed and distorted as he swapped to combat datafeeds, the support VI’s integrating the feeds from outside the head. Pinpricks of light in a vast expanse of night. The planet below him. Blue and brown and green, fading to deeper and darker colors higher in the atmosphere. He felt the queasy, curious floating sensation of zero-g as it wrapped around his stomach, and pull it free from it’s moorings. Carthagia drifted closer.

It aggressively did not help the nausea.

“Atmospheric contact established.”

No. Nonononononononononono.

“All pilots. Engage primary thrusters.

Good luck. Command out.”

His reaction was one of muscle memory and he would have taken it back the very next second if he could.

The jets across the Crusader flared a incandescent violet in response, driving him deeper inside the gravity well.

And suddenly he wasn’t flying anymore

He was falling.

And shaking. And shuddering. And bouncing like a dice in a cup as the planet’s inexorable pull took hold. Friction heating his vision up to a fiery red. Kinetic barriers and ablative armor diverting the worst of the heat away. Blue to indigo and indigo fading to black up ahead as he plunged through all the layers of the sky; the Apostles in tight formation around him, a twelve pointed star; the pods spaced evenly between each pair.

“Entering the stratosphere. Anti atmospherics tracking you now.

Deploying chaff.”

As one the pods opened, segments unfurling; splitting, peeling apart. Rows of meter long metal canisters lining the insides of the panels, a cluster of ugly spikes sprouting from the center; needle tipped and deadly. The sudden addition of drag sent them flying back, soaring up above the group.

A bolt of deep sapphire blew past them, the defenders were taking their measure, gauging their maneuverability.

In reply the cannisters detached from the pods, screaming forward on thrusters of their own, burning hot, spewing chatter, EM readings, eezo signatures. Too much data. Too much noise. It was blinding, deafening,

which was rather the point.

More spears of light went flying by, accompanied by high altitude rockets now. Some missed, some detonated early, some struck the cylinders out of the sky, lessening the flood of information by an appreciable margin. Appreciable, but acceptable.

One of the spikes went flying past, exhaust burning from the rear. Then another. Then a third. And then they were falling like rain, striking out, their vanguard. The hail of fire from the ground side defenses slowed. And then went silent.

“Entering the troposphere. Ninety two percent of Demnan based anti-atmospheric defenses destroyed.

Path is clear.”

Somewhere between being peppered by hyperaccelerated flak and watching the missiles deploy, Edgar accepted the fact that he was probably going to die today. He was, strangely, pretty calm about it. But really that was more by virtue of having gotten the shaking, panicky, quivers out on the way down ie. having stressed all he was physically able and-

The atmosphere proper slammed into him like an ocean of bricks.

Fuckmeohholyfuckingchrist.

He’d done sims of course. He’d ran the drops, he’d spent hours and hours inside that goddamn cradle experiencing free fall for the umpteenth time but this

this was different.

If you fucked up in the harness you didn’t die. If you were too slow, too fast, had bad timing the worst that happened was you looked like an ass. Here...here you…

Was it too late to reconsider? About the whole dying thing. In hindsight he may have been a tad hasty with jumping to the acceptance bit and really he was fine, you know, not dying today and

Shut. Up.

The voice was cold. Clear. Precise.

The panicked stream of consciousness rambling shut up.

Pull up your legs, spread the arms and orient yourself horizontally. You’re coming in too sheer, you won’t have time to adjust closer to landfall.

He obeyed and the Crusader twisted in the air; blocky, digitigrade legs tucked up by the body, the long segmented tail whipping and waving behind. He got it under control, streamlined it, stretching out the two long constructs that extended from the shoulder joints; aligning the mecha into an enormous, fiery cross.

There was probably something ironic about that.

Better?

Better.
He felt better.

Below the settlement of Demnan stretched, sprawling across the sands. Less a colony than a full fledged city state. Less a few districts of prefabs and more like a fortress. The squad commander was shouting orders, the turbines of his Apostle firing again as he slowed, as they closed, the ground rushing up to meet them.

When you hit the ground. You’re going to roar.

What.

If you don’t. What do you think the odds are of your bawling instead?

That’s not-

We’re not here to level the place. We’re here to take it. We’re here to make a statement.

Do it.

And now he couldn’t think, couldn’t respond because the retros were firing, and current pulsing through the Crusader’s eezo core and they were here.

They had arrived.

The Nine-Rings were not blind. Eccentric their leader might have been he was not an idiot, and neither was he blind. They had seen the carnage in Phoenicius and retreated. Withdrawn to their citadel. Troops, vorcha skirmishers and Tarmar’s regulars. Armour. Gunships. Everything they had on planet, everything they could gather.

The man himself stood at the balcony, breathing in the dry night air, hands spread across the ornately wrought railing. Watching. Their AA was gone, their ships en route, but they could fight. They would fight. They would hold them here and bleed them for every block, every street. For glory yes, for all the sanctus, for the indocilis, for the risen and the entombed, for the living yes and all the dead.

Especially the dead.

Behind a elegantly etched mask amber eyes flickered, tracking the glowing trails of the falling. A deep crimson.

No...blue. Blue tinged now.

His eyes widened, he slammed a button on his gauntlet but it was too late, far too late.

There was a detachment mustering in the courtyard, his guards, his elite, blessed such as he with the holy augmentics.

They landed among them, black, green, and silver daubed, cracking the pavement beneath their feet, shattering the stone. Rising up out of the dust and flame, helmets dark and inscrutable, clutching weapons in great metal hands that could have, should have, sat mounted on vehicles.

He was raising the comm to his mouth when the last made landfall. Trailing fire and smoke, burning with a dozen smaller lights. It landed atop an IFV. Driving it into the ground. Crushing it. Pulping the armour beneath its sheer mass.

For a moment it stood crouched atop the wreckage, hunched over. It slowly stood. Rearing up to its full height. A serpentine tail. Corded, armored legs. A pair of structures that might have been fins, or maybe wings.

It roared and the square shook with the force of the sound. It’s heavy, angular head splitting open, pieces stretching away from each other.

Monstrous.

Beautiful.

Or, in the case of Edgar,

exhilarating.

He was strong now. He was powerful now. The Apostles surged forward, kicking off the ground, taking to the air. He? He ran. Dropping low and lunging across the courtyard, lighter than he should have been. Faster than he should have been.

Turrets were unfolding on his shoulders, on the outside of his thighs, raining accelerator rounds on the infantry below. He felt the pins and needles run up his back, across his shoulders as panels folded back, as rockets soared up. He could see them touching down across the palace, tearing apart edifices, blossoming into flame and shrapnel.

A building loomed up ahead, the Apostles moved over the roof tops.

He moved through it. Bulling through the wall. Exploding out the other side. A spear of light and heat searing across the enemy. Blades unfolding from the arms, shimmering, keening, crackling with lightning.

It was feral; the slashes and rending cleaves. It was primal; the storm of bullets, the plasma fusion lance. He felt it. He felt all of it. He was the Crusader and it was him.

And when he stood on top of the palace walls and roared once more, missiles raining down around him, it was not for intimidation, not to make a statement or assure himself.

It was raw, elemental, joy.

0800

The ship was elegant. Sleek. Curves that gradually became angles; a work of art masquerading as a warship. The hull gleamed as the sun rose on Carthagia, rose on the smoke and ruin and sirens of emergency craft. Gunfire still ringing out in the distance.

Landing gear extended and the ship settled down in the hangar with barely a bump. A pause as the airlock next to the coiling dragon standard unfolded, cycled open.

A handful of guards were the first ones out, in full battle dress, scanning the spaceport warily. Taking in the neat row of gunships painted company colors, the ranks of Myrmidons, the burned and scarred defectors from the Syndicate, the wounded and limping transapient warlord and his retinue each swathed in ornate robes over worked armor.

A nod was exchanged, a batarian tapped a finger against an earpiece.

Nikolai stepped into the light and, for a moment, simply stood there. Eyes half closed. Face upturned. Letting it warm him.

And then he smiled.