Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

The Justicar's Dog of War	By : Doirly_No Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 55028 -:- 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
- 39
- 40
- 41
A red light pulsed in the elevator as it rose from the depths of a planet so insignificant no one had bothered to name it, it's only claim to fame was being the final refuge of the criminal organization known as Cerberus. The subterranean, clandestine base was on full alert after being rocked by a massive explosion from above. No significant damage had been sustained to any of the major systems as everything that could be was kept underground, so only the arrays and sensors on the surface were harmed. Communications were being hampered as well as many smaller devices; hallmarks of an EMP and by extension a nuclear weapon, but that could not yet be confirmed. People were being sent up to assess the situation, including the two assault troopers and one combat engineer heading to an auxiliary entrance used mainly by maintenance personal to service a sat-dish that was no longer there.

The door of the cylindrical, surface-level structure opened to a hellish wasteland that just a few minutes before was a dense, primordial forest. The only remnants left of the burgeoning ecosystem were the flattened and burning trunks of plants too large to vaporize. A hazy veil of smoke and kicked-up dust hung heavy in the air, making it impossible to see beyond a hundred yards. The two Cerberus assault troopers stepped out into the scorched landscape, each taking a step in opposite directions to maximize their search radius while the engineer made a couple last minute adjustments to his equipment. Then from out of the fog came a shot. A blazing slug tore between the two soldiers outside, into the bunker and right over the kneeling technician's head. It wasn't a miss however. The M-920 Cain's round created an explosion powerful enough that the thick, metal walls of the structure bowed out slightly and the men outside were dismembered by the wave of pressure and fire that blasted out through the open portal.

The Cerberus troops hundreds of feet directly below the suddenly hollowed out bunker felt the floor tremble then heard a piercing screech lash out from the elevator as the car plummeted. The horrid sound grew louder and louder until it ended with a resonating boom on the other side of a thick metal door that was barely able to contain the impact of the lift hitting the bottom of the shaft. Still not exactly sure what was going on a few engineers took the lead investigating what had just happened and inched their way forward, the soldiers behind them reflexively raised weapons. One went to a control panel to run a scan. Detecting toxic gas he signaled everyone to put on their helmets before opening the hatch.

Thick, black smoke poured out when the elevator doors separated, enveloping the trio of engineers who had stepped forward. The other dozen soldiers completely lost sight of their comrades. Suddenly the fog seemed to turn into a storm cloud as intermittent flashes of light illuminated various sections of it for a minute before an actual bolt of lightning blazed out. The ribbon of electricity struck a centurion, knocking him off his feet then arced to the trooper beside him. There was no time to react as a second later a barrage of white-hot plasma began indiscriminately torching everything. Men would survive a direct hit only to be killed by the next that had leapt from someone else's instantly charred corpse. In the chaos no one was able to get off a decent shot at the adversary they never even saw.

Alarms began to blare as the Cerberus forces finally realized they were under attack and put the base into full alert. Checking the internal sensors they could only find the life readings of one intruder. Perhaps it was a scout with a damaged cloak or maybe the sole survivor of a confrontation with their people. There were no other signs of movement in the area so it couldn't have been the main attack force. Whatever the case they'd find out soon enough, a squad was dispatched to capture the interloper for interrogation and the focus shifted to finding a way to locate the bulk of their unknown enemy.

One operator was left to continue monitoring the situation and direct the security detail to the lone intruder, who surprisingly seemed undaunted by the loss of their unit and was pressing on into the corridor. Not much information could be gleaned from the orange blip moving around the map on his screen besides its speed which indicated whoever it was they weren't injured; although they didn't seem to be in too much of a hurry either. The intel was passed on to the five blue blips he knew were his guys. On his board he watched his blips close on the unidentified one. When they all reached the same hallway he was informed contact had been made, then four seconds later the comm line went dead and his blips disappeared. After making several attempts to reestablish contact he followed standard procedure and summoned a drone to investigate. The little robot only captured a single image before it too vanished; that of a fully armored soldier, a giant pack strapped to their back and an 'N7' logo emblazoned on their chest.

A minute later every speaker in the base sounded, "Alert! Alert! Intruder has been identified as Commander Shepard! All personnel to battle stations! All efforts must be taken to eliminate the threat!"

The deliberate pace of the enemy strolling through their headquarters allowed Cerberus to move several combat groups into position. Assault troopers lined the next corridor using doorways for cover as guardians hunkered down with their shields at the far end with a couple nemeses behind them and engineers scrambled to deploy turrets. A formidable defense, swept away by an orb of chaos with a pitch-black core. A gravitational singularity raced down the hallway, pulling men out of cover as it went, until it detonated amidst the large concentration of soldiers in the rear. A second was unleashed to neutralize the grunts who had felt the effects only in passing. The next embattlement fell the same way, with a couple blasts from an M-490 Blackstorm, but that used up the last of the weapon's ammunition so it was discarded like the Arc Projector moments ago and the M-920 Cain up on the surface.

The defenders decided to fall back and put up a more concerted effort in the nearby warehouse where they could bring heavier weaponry to bear, like the atlas. Cerberus already had a pair of phantoms in the area though and sent them in to intercept the intruder at a corridor junction. The invisible warriors arrived just as the N7 marine was passing through the crossway. They silently charged from either side with their blades drawn, completely undetectable. The one on the right neared striking distance first and was confident she would be the hero to slay the evil Commander. Then when she was a hair short of being in range the dark figure pointed an oddly shaped gun directly at her and fired at pointblank range. She was frozen in place; her charging companion was caught off guard as well and after being side stepped was also hit with an M-622 Avalanche blast. The villain moved on, leaving a grenade behind to finish off the immobilized, would-be assassins.

Not far away a sizable portion of the Cerberus forces was mustering in a mostly empty warehouse, repositioning crates to use as cover and training their sights on the elevated entryway. The door was set a third of the way up the wall with a small platform underneath and twin sets of stairs leading up to it. Six person squads were stationed to either side of the entrance, ready to shred the next soul to step through it with a crossfire of burning slugs. The leadership was more than willing to risk their own people getting shot if it meant neutralizing the intruder. When alerted that the enemy was nearing, the centurions commanding the two groups each took out a grenade. Using nods to sync up their actions they pulled the pins in unison then began to toss them down the corridor together. Just as their hands reached around the corner a frigid blast lashed out, repulsing them and instantly freezing the explosives to their palms. Before they could recover the bombs went off incapacitating the soldiers, some temporarily while others permanently.

The majority of troopers were left unfazed, but the elevated location of the door made it impossible for them to shoot down the hall and they had to wait until their adversary stepped into view to open fire. They were ready for the highly-skilled infiltrator's cloak as well, having several sensors that didn't rely on light pointed at the warehouse's entryway. It was odd the intruder had yet to turn invisible during the assault. What they weren't ready for was a salvo of miniature, homing missiles. The barrage from the M-560 Hydra launcher tore through Cerberus's ranks, neutralizing every soldier in range. Several of those in the rear were left untouched, but weren't in position to make an immediate counterattack.

One of the soldiers knocked unconscious by their commander's grenade was awoken by a mechanical whine. His eyes cleared just in time to watch the rotating barrels of the Geth Spitfire pointed right at him rev up to max an instant before it unleashed a torrent of plasma projectiles. A quick sweep with the heavy weapon neutralized any other survivors then it was turned toward the still functioning atlas across the room. A stream of blue bolts immediately honed in on the mech's canopy, obscuring the pilot's view until the armor failed and the shots penetrated the cockpit. The man inside was absolutely shredded. The other defenders, not caring one iota about their comrade, used his death as the distraction they needed to move in. One of the squads on the left presumed too much and rushed forward without concern for cover. They were cut down as the humanoid tank behind them made its final death throes with a fiery explosion.

No thought seemed to be given to ammo conservation as the N7 infiltrator shot at anything that passed through her field of vision. With uncanny accuracy she picked off several Cerberus soldiers, only needing the barest of slivers to be exposed in order to score a fatal hit, forcing them to keep their heads down. Even those who could cloak weren't safe, they were hit same as the others. The loses didn't matter however, a war of attrition would go in the defender's favor. They just had to wait for the Spitfire to run dry, which would give them the opening they would need to attack. Then out of nowhere three tightly packed assault troopers and their centurion leader exploded. A guardian tried to peek out to assess the situation but a volley of plasma tore his head off. Only those watching through surveillance cameras could see what was happening; the Commander was wielding not only the alien minigun but an M-100 Grenade Launcher as well, as if the heavy weapons were mere pistols. Shepard may have been amazing, but that was downright inhuman.

As the battle raged deep in the bowels of the military instillation two new combatants entered the arena. Encased in biotic energy a pair of warriors descended the devastated elevator shaft the Command had left behind. Nearing the bottom the younger of the two dropped a small, surveillance device to check for opposition. There was none, but they remained cautious as they dissipated the mass effect fields they were using to control their fall and gently touched down in the remains of a warzone. The walls were scorched with burns, the floor was littered with bodies and in the distance they could hear the unmistakable sound of gunfire. Normally those would be bad things, signs of danger that should be fled from, but not to the two asari. To them they were a warm welcome that eased their minds, at least a little bit.

"Those shots don't sound nearby," the maiden mentioned.

"Yes, we best hurry. Focus your barrier on the rear, I shall cover the front and we will run for it. Ignore opponents. If any chase us we will lead them to Shepard and the three of us will fight them together," the Justicar ordered, already breaking into a sprint.

Catching up to the matriarch Liara replied without thinking, "Yes, ma'am."

That put a thin grin on Samara's lips.

The Commander's path, now also littered with a Geth Spitfire, was leading straight to the very heart of the base, the command center; a massive, three story tall, circular room the size of a small stadium with a monolithic, support pillar at its locus. At its height hundreds of Cerberus personnel manned the numerous stations, cubicles and monitors, but after the war ended only a fraction of that were left and none of them were primarily trained for such work. All but the most zealous and deeply indoctrinated of the organization were left and they were all soldiers. The augmentation process was seen as a waste to use on noncombatants, perhaps if their mission had been a success they would have expanded the program. As such, every person in the compound was a fighter ready to lay down their life with reckless abandon if ordered to and every one of them was being called to make a last stand. Only one side would ever leave that place; Shepard's dead body would be a trophy so great that surely their leader, the Illusive Man would return to them and bring back the words.

With reinforcements still arriving, the defenders began hearing low thuds coming from the entrance they knew the intruder would be coming through. They grew louder and louder, tremors vibrating the flooring, until with a final violent boom the door exploded in a ball of fire and smoke. Before the twisted hunk of metal blown from its frame could land a ray of light lashed out from the black cloud it left behind. The particle beam from the collector weapon cut the hatch in half as it swept the room. A swath of soldiers was instantly decapitated. The others were ready to counter attack though and three atlas mechs launched a volley of rockets, which were all shot out of the air before getting anywhere near their target, causing several friendly-fire causalities when they detonated directly over their own troops.

There was a momentary stillness as observations were made and thoughts gathered, then without an order needing to be given a tsunami of slugs was unleashed. Dozens of guns and cannons sent an unbroken stream of fire into the enemy position, destroying the hallway, walls, floor and everything else within thirty feet of the target. Within seconds a chain of explosions heralded the destruction of the Collector Particle Beam's core and M-100 Grenade Launcher's remaining ammunition. That wasn't enough to end the attack however and most Cerberus soldiers kept shooting until they ran out of rounds; the torrent gradually tapering off due to variations in clip capacities and fire rates.

The squad at the far left of the line, hugged right up against the wall, was mostly out of ammo besides the centurion with a semi-automatic rifle which was the slowest to drain. They were the closest group to the hallway, but hadn't noticed that just before opening fire the lingering smoke from the initial blast swirled and whipped as an invisible body passed through it. Nor did any of them notice the engineer just behind them was having his throat sliced until they heard the body hit the ground. It was too late to do anything at that point though, the infiltrator armed with the monomolecular sword confiscated from the phantom on Azure Sky was already charging. A few slashes and a stab later they were all dead. It was only then that someone else finally saw what was going on, but it was too late, the Commander was re-cloaking.

Half way across the base the diminishing rate of gunshots was an ominous sign. The pair of sprinting asari tried to pick up their pace, but they could go no faster. In their worry they temporarily lost focus, no small thing for either of them, and missed a turn. It was only after seeing no signs of destruction for several minutes that they noticed their mistake and doubled back. Oddly, their hope bolstered when a series of booms rocked the walls around them and floor beneath their feet. After what seemed like an arduous distance they finally saw a raging firefight at the end of the hall. They stormed into the battle, announcing their entrance with a biotic barrage that caught everyone off guard, including the Commander who was taking cover behind a disabled atlas. She lifted her head and then a nemesis put a slug between her eyes.

Shepard's head flung back and body went limp as she collapsed to the ground, blood and smoke seeping from the hole punched through her visor.   There was a moment of shocked silence while an event most doubted possible played out before them; the mighty Commander felled in battle and lying motionless on the floor. The silence was shattered by a piercing wail not heard since the last Reaper-perverted banshee was put down. Four-hundred years of pain and loss boiled over with a deafening cry as Samara's restraint shattered. Her daughters, her bondmate, all those she failed to save and now the woman who had brought joy back to her life; all taken from her. Everything gets taken from her. No amount of discipline or training could contain her anguish and rage. Liara was struck dumb, unable to accept what had just happened; leaving the maiden susceptible to her elder's influence and that which made a matriarch truly frightening.

Eons ago before the asari's ancestors became sapient they lived in great hives as super-organisms with the longest-lived individual acting as the nexus of a shared, low-level intelligence. In times of distress this queen would exert control and direct the entire group as one. Evolution into individuals and higher-beings made such grand scale joinings all but impossible, they had to settle for the more intimate version of the act that they had come to know. It could still be done though, amongst those who had achieved an undying connection to one another.   It was what many matriarchs and their followers aspired to achieve. It was also possible between lovers, family and bondmates, especially when their emotions and thoughts fell into complete alignment. And there were few things better for uniting two souls than shared pain and hatred.

Samara's eyes exploded like the supernova of a binary star only to collapse into inescapable black holes an instant later, instinctually pulling Liara into her orbit and creating a joining so absolute that the maiden seemed to become an extension of her own body. The abilities and knowledge of one became the abilities and knowledge of both. The light fought back and intermittent rays would manage to create cracks in the void that would inevitably seal back up almost as fast as they opened. Nothing else made any semblance of containing her biotics; a violet corona erupted from her body and she slowly lifted off the ground.

The newly born goddess of vengeance turned her wrathful gaze to Shepard's killer. The metamorphosis of the asari gave the nemesis enough time to line up a shot and didn't hesitate to take it. The slug didn't get anywhere near its target however, harmlessly disintegrating as it passed through the matriarch's biotic barrier like a piece of space junk in a planet's atmosphere.   With a gesture of the hand Samara wrenched the rifle from the sniper's grasp then tore the augmented soldier out from cover to float helplessly for a moment before filling the air with a cacophony of cracks. Starting at the tips of the fingers and toes she worked her way inward, breaking every bone in the human's body. Each limb snapped twice then was bent the wrong way. After shattering the pelvis she worked her way up the spine, obliterating each vertebra and when the time came every rib, until she reached the neck which she twisted one hundred and eighty degrees.

Samara's wrath took but a modicum of power so the majority of it was siphoned into Liara, who suddenly found herself with abilities she never had before. Upon seeing a volley of missiles heading her companion's way the maiden used a biotic charge that nearly broke the sound barrier to intercept, throwing every piece of office equipment from her path. She came to a sudden, explosive stop that sent out a fan of shockwaves in front of her, destroying the incoming barrage in one fell swoop. Before the cascade of impacts ceased she created a huge singularity which sucked up several Cerberus soldiers. The troopers were only trapped the few seconds it took the first attack to catch up. The two mass effect fields collided in a massive detonation that eliminated over a dozen others.

Out of the maelstrom of smoke and fire came another flurry of missiles that would have sailed over the asaris' heads, hit the ceiling and caused a cave-in, burying the pair in several tons of rock. The rockets barely made it halfway across the command center before being stopped by a string of stasis fields, turned ninety degrees in either direction and then released, taking out several more squads. Even though the volley was repulsed it still provided a distraction that the last half dozen phantoms moved in to exploit. The six invisible, cyborg ninjas rushed the ground bound maiden at full speed from both sides. Several yards out, they passed through the outer corona of biotic energy radiating from the two aliens without a thought. It seemed like the emanations they'd seen a hundred times, whenever mass effect fields were being manipulated; the Cerberus soldiers were wrong.

The matriarch and maiden's joined minds were able to detect and process more information than they could ever individually, including disturbances in the mass effect fields they were creating around them. Nothing entered a web without the spider knowing. Liara spun around and used a biotic throw to fire one of the cloaked assailants like a bullet several hundred feet into the far wall. The second she flung into a catwalk, followed by one being hurled up into the ceiling, another was blasted back into the fifth so that both crashed through a bank of computers, before finally the last surviving phantom was violently lashed and then launched at an atlas. The impact finished off the Cerberus soldier, but wasn't enough to damage the canopy. Not that it mattered, because by that time Samara was done with Shepard's killer and looking for a new target.

Levitating high in the air, tendrils of energy cascading off her, eyes chaotic pools of nothingness and light Samara looked every bit the goddess her lost love imagined her to be. Though, Shepard would have picked her to be the personification of beauty, desire or fertility; not the deity of vengeance, anguish and hate lording over a battlefield rife with death and destruction. Wherever the Justicar pointed damnation followed. Metal, circuits, bones and flesh warped, ripping them apart with savage proficiency. One atlas after another crumbled and fell, their cannons impotently failing to so much as scratch the rampaging asari. Once every mech was on its knees the matriarch unleashed a maleficent flare that vaporized the target it struck directly then set off a cascade of detonations that consumed every other war machine as well as any other soul within a hundred feet. And that was the end of Cerberus.

A few stragglers were left, so deeply indoctrinated that they wouldn't consider surrender no matter how hopeless the odds. They were brushed away easily as even hiding didn't seem like an option. Flares rained down from the sky above and shockwaves erupted from the earth below. Any hint of movement was eradicated with overwhelming force as the asari pair swept the room clean until the only living souls within it were themselves. Finally, with the heat of battle cooling their rage began to subsided, giving way to far worst emotions; sorrow, hurt and despair. Samara collapsed, surrounded by mangled bodies and burning debris, for the first time in centuries tears scarred her cheeks. In her grief the daughter and lover she still had faded from her mind, she could only think of those she had lost. Like on Lesuss she reached for her pistol, but before she could draw it she heard a call.

"Samara," Liara's shaking voice barely managed to lift above the din of the flames. "Look."

The matriarch turned to where the maiden was looking. Shepard was sitting up, legs wide and stretched, head drooped. Like an old doll that had been left in the back of a closet for far too long. She remembered; the light was blue. At the end of the galaxy she met a boy who said he could end the war, but it was up to her to decide how. The first of three options would have destroyed her enemy, along with a close friend and an innocent race. She would not fight genocide with more genocide. The second was to unite organic and synthetic beings into a new form of life so the two would better understand each other. Perhaps that would have been the best solution, the most peaceful and enlightened, but it also would have let the Reapers off the hook. The Reapers didn't deserve understanding or empathy; they deserved only punishment and suffering and only one choice allowed her to inflict that upon them. She was loath to admit it, but the Illusive Man was right, control was the only option. She would enslave the monsters, make them rebuild what they had destroyed and force them to serve those whom they had tried to wipe-out.

In the infinitesimally small instant of time after she began to control the power of the Reapers but before she lost her mortality she prayed to the god she was about to become. She was afraid and wanted to go home, so back on Earth one of the capital ships created a new body for her consciousness to continue on in, with a few improvements. She would be younger and stronger. She wouldn't have to worry about diet or exercise to stay in shape. She'd have a bigger libido and wouldn't be so impervious to the advances of others; perhaps she'd even make a few of her own. She would be able to let go of stress, no longer tortured by nightmares, ulcers, migraines and chest pains; in fact she didn't want anything to be able to hurt her. She'd be her ideal form which turned out not to be perfect, her alterations threw her emotions a little out of whack and took away some of her maturity. Also messing up her mind were the memory blocks she put in place that prevented her from recalling her ascendance and gave her chance at living a normal life. A block that automatically crumbled when certain circumstances arose or something happened that defied logic, like surviving a bullet to the head.

Shepard had heard the battle raging, but it sounded like it was a hundred miles away on the other side of giant wall of cotton. Her vision was fuzzy too and for some reason she could only see a single spot of light, everything else was dark. The memory block was dumb, she was just starting to realize. Knowing what was happening to her would have made things easier and simply being aware that another version of her was off being god somewhere else in the galaxy didn't have the existential impact she would have thought. Maybe she wouldn't have lost control and gone on a mindless rampage after seeing that news report. Probably also would have recognized the connection she had to people who were indoctrinated and used that more effectively. She was able to free the mind of that phantom back on Azure Sky without even trying. She should have let Reaper Shepard have more input. It wasn't like she was in the best frame of mind to be making decisions at that moment; she was really tired and kind of dying. All of a sudden her vision expanded as her damaged helmet was removed and black was replaced with blue, her new favorite color.

It took several minutes for the blue blobs in front of her to turn into familiar faces and the stream of muffled noise to clear enough for her to recognize it as two frantic voices trying to get her attention, then a few moments more before she said, "Hi."

Liara began weeping and collapsed on Shepard's chest, holding her as tightly as possible while babbling things like, "By the goddess... I was so scared... Thank you Athame... I hate you."

Meanwhile, tears drowning her eyes, the elder asari cradled her love's face, "Never again. Promise me you will never do anything like this ever again."

Still punch drunk and not sensing the gravity of the situation the human said, "I could only make that kind of promise to my wife."

The retired Justicar smiled warmly, her pain and sadness quickly fading, then gave the loopy woman a brief kiss and replied, "This is not going to be how you propose to me. You will have to try again later."

Glancing over at a burning corpse not ten feet away Shepard asked, "What, this not romantic enough for you?"

"It is not. I expect better of you." She squeezed the former Commander's cheeks to force eye contact and reaffirmed, "Clear?"

"Clear, Samara."

... All that's left is the epilogue...
- 39
- 40
- 41
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Justicar's Dog of War