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Hallowed Truth	By : Spiritwolf71 Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 3766 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Mass Effect and its world is owned by Bioware, I make no profit from this tale.

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Prolouge
18 Years ago -Mindoir
“Have you ever fired a gun,” The older man asked the young girl. She could not have been much over the age of ten and she looked at him with her large grey eyes and slowly shook her head as she chewed her bottom lip. She wondered why he was asking her, she had no idea Uncle David even cared about guns.
“David, she is way too young,” her mother scolded as she continued to make the salad for supper.
Lanie, short for Alana kept tearing at the salad leaves until they were small enough to fit into everyone’s mouth. She loved to help her mother make the dinners, she just loved to cook. It was almost as good as playing baseball and hitting a home run. Her mother allowed her to experiment with some of the herb and spices she would buy and she was allowed to make anything as long as it did not involve a barbeque. She continued with the salad as her mother and her Uncle spoke.
“Age won’t matter much if pirates decide to hit us. I’m telling you Laura, we should go back to Earth, it’s safer there. Those slavers seemed to get closer and closer all the time.”
“I can’t go back to Earth yet, you know that. I haven’t finished all the testing they need me to do and the soil is not yielding as much as they originally thought. Once I get everything balanced and proper then we can think about moving, but Alana likes it here, she’s grown up here, and her friends are here. The alliance is working on the raids anyway. They promised there would be more patrols. Not to mention that new artifact they just found. Work wants me to look at that as well.”
“You’re supposed to be teaching science not digging anymore. You gave that up when Lanie was born.”
“And you’re a retired Alliance soldier trying to talk a ten year old into shooting a gun. Sometimes we just can’t shake who and what we are.”
“Really, are you going to let me shoot a gun?” Lanie looked from her mother to her uncle.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Mom, please, can I? I promise I won’t ever shoot anyone.” Lanie begged, she really didn’t understand the danger they kept talking about. She did know that a few of the kids in her class already knew how to shoot a gun. Her mother looked at her Uncle fiercely; Lainy smiled knowing her mother was giving in.
“You do it proper, take her to the range, not the field. The kids are always playing in the corn and sometimes you don’t even know they are there, we don’t need any accidents.”
“That’s what I was planning,” Uncle David said with a smiled and ruffled Lanie’s short brown hair. She half turned and smiled at him. She loved sharing time with her Uncle. He always seemed to understand all of her problems. Unlike her Mother he was always around, not that her mother was neglecting her but the people in the colony always seemed to need her help for something or other. She was an edaphologist, something Lanie had struggled with for years to pronounce. Basically she knew everything there was about dirt and soil. From what Lanie could gather from the grown up conversations she was also the best in her field. Farmers were always asking her advice about chemicals and how to get their crops to grow better and now they wanted her to determine an age of something, hoping that the soil could tell her that. Lanie had no idea of how her mother did all that, she often used large words that Lanie thought sounded like a whole other language.
Uncle David though, he seemed to understand her language, he understood what it was like to be a kid, but then her mother often said that was because he never really grew up. It was an ongoing game they all played. David often suggested things for Lanie that her mother hated. Lanie and Uncle David would gang up with Lanie pouting a lot and the retired Alliance Officer doing the arguing for her. It almost always worked.
Her mother dumped the chicken into the salad along with the mandarins and moved to the table. “One mark David, one mark,” her mother warned.
“She’ll be ok, she’s one tough little archeologist,” he joked; he knew it drove her mother insane when he made that mistake.
“Edaphologist, we study dirt we don’t play in it.”
“Thank you mom,” Lanie said kissing her on the cheek. “One day I’ll be able to save you.”
“One day, kiddo, the galaxy’s your oyster,” her mom said and kissed the top of her head.
8***
“Ok kid, you got the sights now for the stance. Slightly separate your feet when you hold your gun, you want to grip it like this and then cradle it with you other hand like this,” he said putting the pistol in her hands like he instructed, “You don’t want to squeeze your hands or it will pull the pistol and the further the bullet goes, the more off the mark it will be. You want to hold it firmly and it will have a bit of a kick but try not to flinch. Go ahead and have fun,” he placed the ear protector back on.
She smiled and lowered her head slightly looking through the sights as Uncle David had taught her; The target was only ten feet away from her. She looked wanted to hold her breath but Uncle David had told her shallow breaths, she bit her bottom lip and squinted slightly, and fired three times. The three shots she took went right in the middle; she looked back to her Uncle who nodded.
“Ok too easy, let’s go twenty,” He moved the target back. She took aim again and hit three spot into the middle of the target. Uncle David looked at her for a few moments. “Ok hot shot,” he said and moved it back to sixty feet, a shot a lot of people could not make. “Take your time, small mist…”
She fired off three rounds and he turned to look at the target, his eyes widened as he noticed it was still a very tight grouping in the middle of the paper. Lanie smiled to him.
“Are you sure you have never fired a gun before?” he asked, but he knew the answer.
“Sure, sure, sure,” Lanie answered with a big smile.
“Try from behind the barricade like I showed you,” He said and watched three more shots into her grouping. He smiled, “Down to your knees,” Three more shots into the grouping; he was shaking his head now. He moved the target back another twenty feet and Lanie repeated the process. The grouping got bigger, but only by a little bit.
“That’s amazing pumkin,” he said, “I think we have a natural.”
“Really, what about those bigger guns, like your rifle?” Lanie asked, Uncle David laughed.
“Not, yet, your arms aren’t big enough, I’ll tell you what though, you finish up those round from kneeling barricade and if you keep them in a tight grouping, I’ll get you a nice great big bowl of that caramel swirl ice cream you love so much.”
Lanie’s eyes grew big, “You’re on Uncle David,” She said and went to work.
88888
“So how many of these caramel swirl sundae do I owe you now?” the soldier asked her, Lanie smiled as she savoured another mouth full.
“So many that I practically own you Uncle,” Lanie laughed then winced as pain shot up into the front of her head. She pressed her palm against her temple, Uncle David began to laugh.
“Brain freeze Pumkin, told you not to eat it so fast,” he laughed.
She waited for it to go away then narrowed her eyes at him, “Tis but a flesh wound.”
“Shhhh, your mother ever found out I let you watch those movies and I’d be in big trouble,” David said taking a sip of his coffee.
“She’d bit your legs off,” Lanie said giggling, David laughed.
“So tomorrow, I’m going to show you off to the rest of my mates, maybe we can make some money off it, what do you think?”
“Ohhh, yes, seventy, thirty split,” she said proudly.
“What do you mean seventy thirty, I’m setting it up.”
“But I’m doing all the work, and I can just as easily tell mom.”
“You are a black mailer.”
Lanie ate smaller spoon of ice cream, “I don’t know what that means.”
“You should, you’re very goo,” He froze mid-sentence, as a loud alarm began to echo through the colony.
“What is that, Uncle?” Lanie asked watching as everyone seemed to freeze for a few second. Then the screaming started and people began to run in all sorts of direction, gathering belonging and children, “What is happening?”
“Come on Pumkin, we have to get home and find your mother,” He said and without waiting he opened the gun bag he brought with him and removed the pistol they had been using. He loaded it and changed the heat sink before gathering her up in his arms and ran.
“What’s happening?” She asked again she was getting very scared.
“I don’t know yet, but we’ll figure it out at home,” He said, Lanie had never seen him move so fast, she held on tightly as suddenly the ice cream shop they had been in exploded in flames, she screamed and suddenly wondered if they were going to die, like her father had when she was just a baby.
“I got you,” David tried to reassure her but another building exploded and she screamed again. They were going to be blown up, she was certain of that.
Another explosion beside them threw them both into the air and Lanie felt like she had been hit in the head with a baseball bat. Suddenly there was some ugly thing with four eyes and no hair in front her. She struggled, crawling backwards to get away from him.
“Get back here,” He growled and she spotted his sharp jagged teeth and figured she was lunch. She screamed and lashed out at his arm as it wrapped around her, she felt her nails dig into its skin. “Little Bitch,” the creature said and raised it hand to hit her but instead it fell on top of her. Uncle David held his hand out for her and she took it. He pulled her back into his arms but something was wrong. He was not moving as fast has he had been.
Lanie watched from his shoulder as the monsters multiplied and moved through the colony, people were falling to the ground and being gathered up. Tears streamed from her eyes as she felt deep down that this was the end.
“It’s ok Pumpkin, we’ll be ok,” He stopped when he reached their house. “Now get down into that little hiding spot in the basement I showed you. I’ll be there as soon as I find your mother.”
She nodded and then he placed the pistol in her hands. “If they have four eyes, don’t let them take you.” He said and ran out; she looked to the gun in her hands. A target was one thing but could she shoot something that was alive. She heard someone coming and fled for the basement. She had almost made it when a monster appeared in front of her. The gun in her hands went off before she could even think about it. She screamed as the four eyed creature fell to the ground.
She looked to him, he was not moving. Had she killed him? She wanted to run and hide but she wanted to know. She was not too young to not know what she had just done. She squatted down in front of him and held her hand out to his neck like her mother had taught her. She could not feel a pulse but then she had no idea if these things even had a pulse or where to find it. Instead she poked it in the chest. When it didn’t move she poked it harder. The monster still didn’t move.
“I’m sorry,” She said as fresh tears sprung to her eyes. Before she could move through an arm grabbed her around the waist and lifted her as if she was a rag doll, slamming her on the table, the gun flew from her hands. She tried to struggle as the creature put something around her wrist and then lifted her with ease over his shoulder.
“Mommy!!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, “Uncle David!!” She screamed over and over but they never came. They moved towards a ship and Lanie continued to scream for her family, but they never came. As she was thrown in a small area with a bunch of other bound people she could only wonder if she would ever see her mother again.
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Hallowed Truth