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The Justicar's Dog of War	By : Doirly_No Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 55026 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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"Just keep your eyes forward and hold my hand as tightly as you wish," Samara quietly reassured into Kelly's ear. "Nothing will happen to you as long as you are by my side."
"Okay," was all the young woman could manage to say back.
They stood together on the main platform of the central transit station waiting for a tram to arrive. It took all of Kelly's strength to stay upright, her knees were ready to give out at any moment. Taking the matriarch's invitation she squeezed the blue hand with all her strength. All she really wanted to do was go back up to her apartment and call in sick another day, as she had the past week while her protectors figured out how to keep her safe, but the Cerberus operatives were tired of waiting. Shepard said it was a good sign that the enemy was rushing into things and she so wanted to believe her former commander, but she could not keep her fear at bay. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the Phantom approaching.
Outrageous costumes were hardly unusual on The Azure Sky so a person could get away with walking around in practically anything, from pasties and a thong to combat gear. Still the fully armed and armored Phantom walking through the central hub for staff transportation caused more than a couple folks to make a call to station security, who advised them to leave the area immediately. The suddenness of the Cerberus soldier's movements had precluded proper preparation. No one thought the agent would be so brazen as this, it just did not make sense.
Right on time the four o'clock tram arrived at the platform. The Phantom had been trailing her targets for the better part of an hour, not waiting for an opportunity as much as just trying to get close enough. The query was able to stay out ahead with the guidance of a pair of all-seeing, blue eyes watching their every move. Several attempts were made to draw the agent into a trap, but it had yet to work. Hopefully this one would be different.
Samara and Kelly stepped onto the front car; the one hunting them couldn't catch up in time and had to enter more toward the back of the tram. The Phantom didn't even break stride entering the vehicle, heading straight for the head of the train. The sparse commuters didn't hesitate in getting out of the terrifying and determined looking human's way, making advancing a simple matter. All focus was on the target. She didn't bother consciously glancing at any of the faces she passed, not even the purple-haired security guard whose armor wasn't quite standard issue.
"This may be your best chance Shepard," Liara's voice filled her earpiece.
"Agreed," the vigilante replied as she subtly set off after the enemy agent. "Have you blocked their communication?"
"For the past nine minutes. Too much longer and one of them may notice."
"Alright, send out the message."
"You only get one shot at this."
"Yeah, but that's all I need," Shepard definitely earned the right to be cocky in such a situation.
"Sending, in five minutes the local news will report a tram accident that claimed three lives; including one matriarch, a human staff psychiatrist as well as a heavily-armed second human."
"Add a couple more to the death toll, be weird if only those three died."
"True, sending a correction." After a second Liara added a worried, "Good luck."
"Thanks." Shepard heard the concerned tone and added, "Not that I need it. I used to kill these ninja assholes while waiting for Atlases to reload."
To help her own mood the maiden back home tried to continue the joke, "Why wait for an Atlas to reload?"
"Had to keep Vakarian on his toes somehow."
The commuters not being as intimidated of the security guard didn't give Shepard quite the same wide berth as the terrorist so she had to weave her way through the sparse crowd. Once past the last salarian she entered the small compartment that separated this car from the next. As a safety precaution, since the tram occasionally passed through environment-less areas, the door behind her had to seal before the one in front of her would open. When it did she was confronted by the terrified faces of a group of asari and turians.
Once Shepard had weaved through the fleeing civilians she noticed a similar scene at the opposite end of the car and in between was the Phantom, "Commander Shepard. I was worried my face-recognition software had made a false positive. I have prayed for your death and feel blessed to be the one who will give it to you."
The infiltrator's hand drifted toward the Carnifex on her hip as she squared her shoulders. "Pray for my death? You feel blessed? Why? The war is over, the Illusive Man is dead..."
"He is not dead!" the agent screeched, all composure shattering all at once. "He cannot die!"
"I was there. I watched him put a bullet through his own head."
"Lies," the Phantom growled. "How dare you say such things about Him. He wouldn't abandon us."
"He didn't really have a choice." Shepard tempted forward.
"No, He would not abandon us," the Cerberus soldier repeated, shaking her head. "He will return to us once we have proven ourselves worthy. Then He will take away the pain and give us back the words."
"The words?" she whispered to herself as she realized, "You were indoctrinated. It has effected your thinking, but with the Reapers gone you can recover. There are doctors who can help you. Just surrender. I'll make sure you are pardoned once you've completed treatment."
"Pardoned? I have committed no crime." The Phantom then regressed into rhetoric, "I work for the betterment of humanity. To further humanities goals so we will prosper and show the Council humanity cannot be pushed around."
"Humans are on the Council and the other races trust us now more than ever." Shepard attempted her final pleas to avoid the inevitable battle, "We showed our worth by saving the Ascension and the Council; we showed our resolve when Earth was the central point of the Reapers' defeat; we showed our loyalty by returning the Citadel to the Widow system; we've showed our charity by lending assistance to other races even as we struggle with our own needs. The other races have noticed this, they know who we are now. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them."
"No," the entirely armored, faceless operative mumbled. "Only He can save us. Give us back the words. Tell us what to do. Take away the pain."
It was all too obvious that this woman's mind was far too degraded by the Reapers' control to be reasoned with, even if the machines' influence was no longer there. Across the galaxy on every world touched by the war there were entire hospitals dedicated to helping the indoctrinated. Suicide was rampant, either because the person was too far gone, unable to function and just wanted the pain to stop; or they had too many of their senses left and the guilt of what they were forced to do weighed too heavily on their souls.
The former marine wanted to help, now understanding it wasn't this soldier's fault, but knew that was most likely impossible. This woman wouldn't freely accept assistance or even acknowledge she needed any. However she was too dangerous to let go, Cerberus too dangerous to allow to exist and Shepard knew she would have to kill one then destroy the other, completely. To complete the first she would need an opening; a wrong twitch could break the Phantom's momentary stupor and there was no way she could draw her pistol before her enemy got off a shot from her gauntlet.
Without aiming Shepard launched a sabotaging bolt into the tram's wall. An instant later the lights lining the ceiling whined, burned then burst in a shower of sparks and molten plastic. The entire car went pitch black save for the glow on the two soldiers' armors, as it had no windows and the backup lighting had been taken out along with the mains. A little too late and entirely blind the Phantom fired off a shot from her gauntlet, that merely put a hole in the door as the infiltrator had dipped her shoulders and pulled her pistol.
This time Shepard took precise aim, right for the space between the glowing-red lines of her foe's helmet. She fired twice but the Phantom's implants kicked in, a barrier emerged and neither slug hit their mark. Biotic energy illuminated the confined space allowing the enemies to once again see each other. The vigilante did not stop her barrage forcing the Cerberus operative to maintain the protective shield rather than shoot while the infiltrator charged, omni-blade readied.
The Phantom heard the click of an emptied clip just before the surging Spectre completely closed distance. Dropping the localized barrier just as the searing-hot blade closed she countered with a downward slash from her freshly-drawn, monomolecular sword. It missed high, the intended target's shoulders collapsing down and out of the way. Without the biotic energy the omni-tool became the only source of light, hampering the accuracy of the follow-up strikes. The vigilante's stab sailed an inch wide of a greave while the terrorist's stab glanced off a pauldron.
Out of the corner of her eye Shepard saw the palm of her opponent's gauntlet light up so she threw her forearm at it, just in time to screw up the Phantom's aim. The seat and floor plating behind her exploded as an emergency battery inside the paneling burst. Whatever the damage to the tram was, it didn't really matter at the moment. Not wanting to give that sword another chance to slice her and unable to get out of its range, the former marine decided to get inside its range. She put her shoulder into the Cerberus agent's sternum and slammed the enhanced woman into the opposite wall with greater force than a human should have been capable of. The impact causing her to drop her pistol.
The tackle served only served to stun the fully-armored soldier for a split-second, she didn't even drop her blade. The cybernetic implants in the Phantom's hand kept her from losing her weapon, not that she could get a good enough angle to use it with her target giving her a bear hug. She knew the reverse wasn't true and if she did nothing an omni-blade would soon be buried in her side. With all her strength she kicked off from the dent they made in the wall to cause Shepard to stumble back.
Even as she recoiled the former marine planned, preparing a next move that she would not get a chance to make. Her foot found a piece of weakened flooring that collapsed under the combined weight of the two heavily-armed warriors. They would have gone no further than the crawl space underneath if the Phantom hadn't fired again. The shot tore apart the already damaged civilian-grade hull of the car. Despite a few instinctual, desperate attempts neither could prevent their fall from the moving tram.
Not being a regular passenger Shepard had no idea how fast or how high the short train got until she was thrown out of it. Tumbling through the air entangled with her enemy, skyscrapers all around, her focus suddenly shifted from killing a terrorist to not becoming a stain on the street hundreds of feet below. Apparently the Phantom had the same idea as the attempts to stab and shoot her tapered off. For a moment she considered releasing the other woman to figure it out on her own, but then they started to decelerate.
The Phantom engaged her hardsuit's onboard thrusters to slow their decent, though it could only do so much with the added weight of a fully equipped infiltrator dangling off her. She would have tried to dislodge the armored woman, but she had to put all her focus into keeping them from spiraling entirely out of control. The VI could not cope with how out of balance the spinning pair was. It turned out she didn't have to maintain for long as the momentum given to them by the train sent them slamming into the side of a building.
Four-hundred pounds plus of meat, bone, weapons and tech were more than sufficient to shatter the windowpane the two adversaries crashed through. The Phantom's thrusters and both their kinetic barriers prevented any serious injury, though they both were dazed. Shepard hit the ground first and was slammed straight into a desk which stole most of her speed; the Cerberus agent went flying over it and deeper into the empty office, out of sight.
Merely winded Shepard recovered her bearings immediately, even as her ears still rang, and reflexively activated her cloak. She relocated before popping her head up to scan the room; the Phantom had been just as quick to disappear. No enemy to be seen she shifted focus to studying her surroundings. There was no cover, none of the dozens of lined up desks would stop a slug, and only three ways out, all in her line-of-sight. She reduced it to three by dropping a sticky grenade with a proximity fuse in front of the window they had crashed through. Whether any door had a lock didn't matter, opening one would give away their location; meaning the two invisible warrior were trapped together.
When the buzzing died down, she really wished she wore a helmet, she heard the voice in her ear, "Shepard. Come in. What happened? Please, respond. Please."
She couldn't risk making a sound so sent back a ping that meant she was fine, but couldn't talk.
"Thank the Goddess," the maiden exhaled. "The operation has been successful. Without direct communication the Nemesis did in fact rely on newsfeeds. She is already heading toward a docking bay. Security will allow her to stowaway, steal a small ship or just walk out. All tracking bugs are functioning properly. Also, the tram was seriously damaged, which they expect us to pay for, but there are no casualties."
Shepard was happy to hear nothing but good news because she didn't have much herself. Repairing a tram couldn't be too expensive. With her pistol gone she was left with her submachine gun; adding to the list of equipment she wished she had was the Graal Spike Thrower Wrex gave her for her birthday. It was probably the oddest gift she had ever gotten, not because of what it was but the fact her old friend even knew her birthday let alone, after a thousand of his own, cared enough to want to celebrate it. She actually suspected Grunt had something to do with it despite his denials.
At the moment what she lacked didn't matter, what she did have was a M-12 Locust. Even unloading an entire clip probably wouldn't be enough to bring down a Phantom unless she could get to pointblank range and considering the sword being wielded that didn't seem like a good idea. This was why she hated spy shit; soldiers didn't have to limit their equipment for the sake of appearances. With a long-range shotgun, or maybe if she still had her pistol, she might have been able to give up her position, withstood the first attack then countered with a headshot. As is, there was no way she could survive a straight-up shoot out, hoping her defenses held out longer. Her first shot would probably decide which of them died. If she shot.
A plan was forming, but a clatter from across the room derailed her thinking. The infiltrator raised her submachine gun, looking for something to aim at. Nothing, she could not even find a rolling pencil holder to center her crosshairs on. After scanning the dark office for just over a minute, lights from across the street providing the only illumination, she lowered her weapon and started enacting her plan.
Shepard cautiously returned to the grenade she had set by the window. Luckily she couldn't trigger the proximity fuse of her own device. She could however knock something over and possibly get spotted. After the explosive was retrieve she took the three others from her belt, activated then stuck them all together. She stepped out the window, pinning her fate on her magnetized boots holding to the building's exterior. Crouched and dangling from the side of the skyscraper she called up her omni-tool in order to sabotage her own weapon. Not a second later she tossed it back inside, because after few more the bombs backfired.
When the primed grenades exploded they set off a tech burst, magnifying the damage. The walls contained the blast, building the pressure inside the room, amplifying the shockwaves. Fire and electric bolts, along with a few desks, blasted from the hole above the infiltrator lying in wait a fraction of a second before the rest of the windows gave way and blew out. Enough energy and shrapnel struck her that her cloak fluctuated then failed, leaving her visible. She hoped that wouldn't matter as she slowly pulled herself back into the building, prowling into the office with her Locust pointed wherever her eyes tracked. The whole room had been hollowed out, the cheap furniture turned into flattened pieces of scrap embedded in the floor. Her jaw knit when she saw one of the doors was open.
Shepard almost called for the young asari she knew was still monitoring her for some guidance, but a glance at the ground made that unnecessary. A cybernetic arm drenched in blood lay in the middle of the hallway outside the demolished office. The right one, her enemy had lost her ranged attack. Stalking along the wall her thoughts turned to preparing for the next phase of the battle, believing all she had to do was keep her distance, but that belief did not last long. A little further down she came across the trademark monomolecular sword of a Cerberus Phantom. She stopped to pick it up.
The longer she walked the more her muscles relaxed and the lower the barrel of her gun dipped. A path of charred bits of metal and bloody hunks of gore led Shepard down the hall like a trail of breadcrumbs. Nearing the lobby at the end of the hall she began to hear the strained breaths of dying lungs and shrieking whines of failing mechanisms. By the time she turned the corner to see the sad sight of the stumbling, one-armed Phantom unable to stay upright without leaning against the help desk she had all but holstered her weapon. Her footfalls were noticed by the wounded assassin who jerked then turned, raising a combative fist ready to fight.
"Liara?" Shepard's solemnly called.
"I'm here."
"Tell security they can move in." She slowly approached the suffering woman. "Get a medical team here too."
"Are you hurt?" Liara worried.
"I'm fine, it's for the Phantom."
"The Phantom!?"
"Just do it," the former commander's tone soft.
"Of course. I'll notify them of the situation."
The comm channel quieted and Shepard requested of her foe, "Please surrender."
"Words," the Phantom grunted, the lower half her mask was gone so her moving lips could be seen. "Will you stop the pain?"
"I promise."
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The Justicar's Dog of War