The Long War - Chapter 18 (Patreon)

Turian Occupation Command, New Taiyuan, Shanxi, 314 System,  

September 13th, 2649 GST — Galactic Standard Time  

Three hours before the shot.  

Abuvea Abrudas  

Desolas waited until the security indicator changed from amber to green. The room acknowledged the lock with a soft tone, then fell quiet except for the low ventilation hum and the muted electronics of the command center various terminals.  

He reached into the holographic table and removed himself.  

GENERAL DESOLAS ARTERIUS vanished from Turian Occupation Command.  

The same identity reappeared one kilometer northwest, inside a projected convoy that did not yet exist.  

Abrudas stared at the moving identity while the vehicles that were supposed to carry it remained scattered across separate motor shelters. Half the escort had not received movement orders, and the second command transport sat beneath an armored roof three levels below them with its engine cold.  

The authentication, however, was already real: Desolas’s expeditionary identity, priority authority, command encryption, and emergency succession credentials. Any Hierarchy system inspecting that convoy would conclude that the ground commander of the 314 expedition was inside it.  

Abrudas looked from the moving symbol to Desolas.  

“You intend to put your own authentication aboard a decoy.”  

“Yes.”  

“Delegated authority would be sufficient to move the convoy.”  

“It would be sufficient for us.” Desolas expanded the projected route. “However, the human machine is the audience.”  

Abrudas studied the layers of authentication attached to the convoy and understood what he intended. A borrowed transponder alone would never satisfy the machine; Desolas meant to make every system within its reach report the same answer, from command authority down through the convoy’s ordinary network traffic.  

The convoy opened beneath his hand: scout vehicles, infantry transports, two command transports, a C77 Tyrus IFV, and an electronic-security element positioned where a senior commander’s staff would expect it. Nothing in the formation looked improvised.  

“The humans built a trail for me,” Desolas continued. “Three attacks, all pointing northwest. They have destroyed search assets, communications positions and patrols, then permitted enough evidence to survive that we can follow them. They expect my interest in the canyon to overcome my caution.”  

Abrudas followed his gaze toward the western edge of the map, where the canyon remained enlarged behind the projected convoy route.  

“If I may, sir... has your interest affected your judgment?” 

His mandibles tightened before he answered. “My interest is the reason I recognized the trap.” 

Abrudas lowered her head slightly. “Of course, sir. I only meant that the distinction may be difficult to maintain once the operation begins.” 

Desolas regarded her for a moment, then returned his attention to the convoy. 

“Your concern, while valid,” he said, “will not alter the plan.” 

Abrudas did not press further. There was no useful answer available, only a boundary she had already located.  

“The convoy requires genuine authority, genuine orders and soldiers who believe they are protecting a senior commander,” Desolas continued. “The humans have shown that they can distinguish a careless deception from a system behaving according to its own rules.”  

Abrudas studied the second command vehicle. “Who?”  

Desolas did not answer. After another glance at the second command vehicle, Abrudas understood that she did not need to.  

“No...” The word escaped before she could stop it.  

Desolas’s expression did not change as he answered. “Tiron matches my height closely enough. Command armor will alter the shoulder line and helmet silhouette. At the sniper’s expected range, authentication and escort behavior will matter more than being unable to see my face.”  

“...he does not know.”  

“He knows the route is contested.”  

“He does not know you expect him to be identified as you.”  

“I expect the sniper to commit against a target that they consider worth exposing to strike.”  

Abrudas heard the evasion in his phrasing. “He may die before containment units move.”  

“Dozens have already died without an opportunity to end these attacks.” Desolas kept his voice level. “The enemy must believe the target was genuine. Tiron’s ignorance contributes to that belief.”  

Abrudas watched the red command icon move along the false route, her mandibles pressing inward as the conflict showed despite her effort to keep it contained. “Sir, I still believe he should be warned.”  

“And then he would behave like a man expecting a sniper. He would watch rooftops that should not concern him. He would alter his spacing. His escort would read him and alter theirs. The machine would see uncertainty propagate through the formation before the first shot.” Desolas’s delivery quickened as he continued. “No. If we intend to deceive something that reads systems instead of faces, every layer of that system must confirm the same truth we have given it.”  

Desolas moved the convoy farther northwest, into a cluster of human attack markers spread across woodland, agricultural structures, drainage channels, and several buildings capable of supporting a long-range firing position.  

“They will attack only if the target justifies revealing their sniper, their artificial intelligence…” he continued. “Once they commit, the containment elements close.”  

“And Tiron is the price to make the target seem credible?”  

Desolas turned to face her fully. “Tiron is an officer executing an operation against an enemy unit that has killed scores of our soldiers. Do not reduce him to a price merely because the arithmetic is uncomfortable.”  

Abrudas almost answered that Desolas had already reduced him to one, but the accusation would change nothing, so she let it go and asked, “What will disable the machine?”  

Desolas touched the electronic-security vehicle. The hologram stripped away its armor.  

Abrudas recognized the chassis first. Another C77 Tyrus, but the normal main accelerator was gone. In its place sat a long armored emitter assembly surrounded by capacitor banks and field-control hardware, heavier than anything normally mounted on the vehicle.  

A designation appeared beside it.  

FS-128 VINDEX  

ANTI-SYNTHETIC SUPPRESSION PROJECTOR  

“A Vindex?” Abrudas said.  

“Admiral Pallinax brought several with the fleet after the first confirmed reports of hostile artificial intelligence. They were intended as reinforcement against synthetic intrusion.”  

The checkpoint report returned to her without prompting. The humans had triggered a denial pulse during withdrawal, accepted the electronic loss, and kept moving, which made it almost certain that their system was hardened against ordinary electromagnetic interference. A standard pulse would merely inconvenience them, so Desolas had selected something built for a different class of enemy.  

“At this output,” she said, “anything inside the beam loses barriers and tactical links. Unshielded electronics will fry outright.”  

“That is the requirement.”  

Desolas separated the C77 from the convoy order.  

Abrudas understood the design immediately. Isolation would make the Vindex harder for the human intelligence to detect or interfere with, while its presence remained entirely plausible aboard a convoy hunting an elite unit known to employ an AGI. 

Tiron would be told enough to make the deception hold. He would receive genuine authority, command a genuine anti-synthetic weapon, and know the operation was meant to engage the human team.  

He would believe Desolas had finally entrusted him with the hunt he wanted.  

“He will think this is his operation.” 

“It is his operation.” 

Abrudas looked past the convoy toward the canyon. “If it succeeds?” 

“Hopefully, take at least one human alive and preferably the machine intelligence is still functional. Their equipment, their routes, their knowledge of the restricted site—one of those will give us the path before Council authority arrives.”  

“And if it fails?”  

“We continue losing personnel to an enemy unit we cannot predict.” Desolas turned fully toward her. “How many lives should be preserved today if the cost is hundreds tomorrow? How many Hierarchy soldiers should die because one lieutenant was entitled to information that would compromise the only counter-ambush with a credible chance of success?”  

Abrudas disliked the question because she could answer it from both sides. The humans had destroyed patrols, intelligence teams, and security positions. A successful counter-ambush could stop those attacks, while a prisoner might expose the hidden site and whatever Prothean discovery Desolas believed could alter the military balance of the galaxy.  

She could build the argument herself, and that was what made it dangerous.  

“You disapprove,” Desolas said.  

“...yes.” Abrudas disliked the hesitation in her own voice and reined it in before continuing, her tone settling into something formal, almost stiff. “The operation may be necessary, but keeping Tiron ignorant of his role is a betrayal of an officer who trusts your command.”  

Desolas accepted the accusation without visible anger. “Your objection is noted. It does not change the order.”  

Abrudas lowered her head slightly. “Then give me the complete order.”  

“Prepare the convoy...”  

  Eastern Motor Shelter, Turian Occupation Command  

Two hours before the shot. 

Abuvea Abrudas  

The authentication package arrived in an unmarked armored case and Abrudas carried it herself.  

The second command vehicle waited beneath the roof of the eastern motor pool while technicians worked around it under restricted orders, fitting hardened communications - independent fire-control links, and additional shielding around the command bus. Work lamps threw white bars across the armor and left the spaces between vehicles in shadow.  

Most of the technicians believed they were preparing a senior-command movement.  

Farther down the shelter, the modified C77 Tyrus sat behind a temporary screen. Several patrol groups had already received sealed orders and dispersed along separate routes, each waiting for the same signal before converging on the area. Until that signal came, there was no unusual traffic pattern for anything listening to detect. 

Abrudas set the case beside the command console and opened it to reveal two modules. The first contained the delegated expeditionary authority Tiron would see: priority convoy control, restricted ground channels, and authority to redirect nearby patrols without waiting for occupation command. The second carried Desolas’s hidden identity.  

The black transponder module was no longer than one talon. Command certification, emergency identification and expeditionary priority compressed into something small enough to disappear behind a vehicle panel.  

Abrudas installed the delegated package openly. The hidden transponder went into the secondary authentication bus beneath it. Tiron’s internal display would still recognize him as himself. Outside systems would identify Desolas.  

A technician watched her close the panel, then checked the console. “Synchronization complete. The internal console recognizes Lieutenant Tiron’s authority.”  

“Verify the external identity. Isolated reader.”  

He connected a diagnostic unit with no path into the shelter network.  

GENERAL DESOLAS ARTERIUS  

EXPEDITIONARY GROUND COMMAND  

PRIORITY AUTHORITY CONFIRMED  

Abrudas looked at the name for several seconds.  

“Erase the diagnostic record. Local cache as well.”  

“That leaves a maintenance gap.”  

“Record a failed calibration and replace the reader, then forget the name you saw.”  

The technician hesitated until Abrudas looked directly at him. “...understood, Lieutenant.”  

He erased the record and withdrew as footsteps approached from the main shelter entrance. A moment later Lieutenant Varus Tiron entered in sealed command armor, helmet clipped to his belt. The red-trimmed plates were broader than his normal equipment. A removable casing altered the helmet crest enough to change his outline at distance.  

He had been told the modifications marked delegated authority.  

His attention went straight to the console. “Full expeditionary authority.”  

“For the duration of the mission. The convoy must respond without requesting confirmation from occupation headquarters.”  

Tiron stepped closer, and the internal display recognized him.  

LIEUTENANT VARUS TIRON  

DELEGATED COMMAND AUTHORITY  

AUTHORIZING OFFICER: GENERAL DESOLAS ARTERIUS  

His mandibles spread slightly as he read the authorization. “He selected me personally.”  

“He did.”  

“He wants someone who will execute his intent without hesitation.”  

“...you argued for an active response against this unit and the General has assigned you responsibility for this mission.”  

Tiron absorbed that with visible satisfaction, and Abrudas let him have the moment before continuing.  

“There is one addition to your escort that requires a separate briefing.”  

She led him toward the screened C77. Technicians drew the cover aside and Tiron stopped to look at it. 

“An anti-synthetic cannon?”  

“FS-128 Vindex.”  

Tiron’s attention sharpened on the emitter. “Range?”  

“Sufficient for the expected engagement area. It requires a firing solution and clear geometry for the directed discharge. The crew remains passive until contact. The fire-control package is physically isolated from the convoy tactical mesh. No shared targeting bus. No remote trigger.”  

“...because of the human machine?”  

“Exactly.”  

Tiron nodded, and Abrudas continued before he could ask another question.  

“No additional emissions. No abnormal security posture. Do not change route because a sensor return makes you suspicious. Do not tighten the escort until contact is confirmed.”  

Tiron’s mandibles shifted as the logic settled into place. “So the machine sees exactly what it expects to see. And when it commits, the Vindex fires.”  

“That’s one part of the plan.”  

“Then containment closes in.”  

“Immediately.”  

That satisfied him more than reassurance would have.  

“Is that why the General chose me?”  

Abrudas could have warned him with a single sentence, and for a moment the words were there.  

Instead she said, “Your task is to make the movement credible, retain enough force to contain the human team once it commits, and prevent the engagement from becoming another running pursuit.”  

“I understand.”  

She heard the trust in Tiron’s words, and the realization settled cold in her chest. He believed Desolas had chosen him because he was worthy of the hunt, while Desolas had chosen him because Tiron would remain exactly the man the deception required.  

Tiron secured his helmet, and the faceplate sealed over the last easy difference between his outline and Desolas’s for anyone watching at range.  

“Anything else?”  

“Maintain normal communications discipline. Keep the humans away from civilian districts and do not allow them to disappear into the agricultural infrastructure or the woodland.”  

“And if they break contact before the projector fires?”  

“Pursue within your assigned corridor. Do not strip the western search to chase them.”  

Tiron gave a single, satisfied nod. “The General finally intends to fix them in place.”  

“He intends for the attacks to end.”  

“It will be done.”  

Tiron gave her a disciplined nod, and Abrudas returned it  before following him toward the outer wall, where the convoy assembled in practiced order. Scout vehicles first, then shield carriers and infantry transports, with the Vindex-equipped C77 taking its place as the electronic-security element ahead of two command vehicles and the rear armor.  

More than sixty soldiers carried orders identifying the movement as personally authorized by Desolas. Most believed the General might be somewhere in the column, while Tiron believed he had been trusted to act with his authority.  

When the gates opened, engines rose into a low mechanical roar that rolled through the shelter roof as Tiron’s command vehicle passed Abrudas’s position and joined the road column.  

As the convoy cleared the gate, a departure transmission entered the local network.  

“Command convoy northwest route, moving out!”  

Tiron’s voice carried through the signal, roughened by the translator’s lower harmonic, while the network attached the identity it had been built to report:  

DESOLAS ARTERIUS.  

Abrudas watched the convoy turn northwest, aware that she had never spoken a direct lie to Tiron even as the last vehicle disappeared beyond the outer wall and the gates began closing behind it. By the time the doors met, the distinction felt considerably less clean than it had when she first relied upon it. 

New Taiyuan Northwestern District, Shanxi, Iota Persei System,  

September 13th, 2149CE — Systems Alliance Calendar  

David Anderson  

For several heartbeats, Anderson could see nothing but white.  

The stairwell, the railing, and the rifle in his hands all vanished behind a depthless glare that stayed inside his eyes when he blinked. His left boot came down expecting another step and found empty air. He caught the railing with his shoulder, lost the Falchion, then felt the sling snap tight and swing the weapon into his thigh as he dropped to one knee.  

Sound returned to Anderson in pieces as a low concussion rolled through the building, conduit rattled somewhere overhead, and his helmet filled with a clean electronic tone that flattened everything else beneath it.  

The Falchion’s smart-link vanished with the rest of the system as squad markers, navigation, barrier telemetry and the neuro-link collapsed into static, leaving Anderson with only the rifle in his hands and the memory of where everyone had been a second earlier.  

Glitch was gone from every channel.  

For two days Sierra had moved through New Taiyuan with the AGI threaded through their senses. Lucas could be behind a wall and Anderson still knew where he stood. Susan’s firing lane lived at the edge of his vision. Alec shifted position and the link told him before he consciously looked.  

Now the team might have been three meters away or dead on another floor.  

A Turian voice came from the wall speaker above him—the same dead soldier Glitch had been mimicking to maintain their cover. The translator was dead, but Anderson had heard the phrase often enough to recognize it without help. 

He forced one boot under him. White broke into crawling gray across the visor.  

Anderson reached up and thumbed the manual control on the side of his helmet, shutting down the smart optical layer. The emergency display settled into stripped monochrome as he got upright, grainy enough to turn the stairwell into blocks of concrete and moving shadow.  

A shape appeared three steps above, and Anderson brought the Falchion up before he recognized the voice.  

“Easy! It’s me!”  

It was Alec Ryder, speaking aloud with no friendly outline around him and no identifier beside his helmet. His voice sounded too high through the ringing in Anderson’s ears, blood ran in a thin line from beneath his left ear, and his visor remained black. 

Lucas came into view above his commander, demolition pack over one shoulder.  

Alec shouted, “Sound off!” 

“Anderson! Stairs!” 

“Lucas! Above!” 

Susan answered from the floor below. “Ground floor!” 

Her voice cracked upward on the last word. Anderson had never heard it that high before.  

Alec hit the manual control beside his helmet socket. “Glitch! Answer any channel!”  

Static answered the first call and the second, with nothing behind it that sounded like Glitch.  

A heavy metallic impact struck the ground-floor access door and trembled through the stair treads.  

Susan shouted up the stairwell. “They’re in the tunnel! Shield frame on the access door!”  

Another impact bent something below with a long scrape of metal.  

Alec came down past Anderson two steps at a time. “Voice and hand signals, stay inside visual distance!”  

Lucas glanced toward the lower floor. “The tunnel is our extraction route.”  

“Not anymore. If they control the far end, we’ll be walking straight into them. We make another exit.”  

Engines pressed through the ringing before Anderson could answer. The vibration deepened rapidly, settling over the roof in a pulsing roar that shook dust out of the stairwell joints.  

“Dropship!” he shouted.  

Boots hit the roof seconds later. A breaching charge exploded somewhere overhead, followed by Turian voices and the hard percussion of armored feet entering the upper levels.  

The sound of more boots echoed from below, confirming that the Turians had pinched them from both ends of the building.  

Alec made it to the ground floor first. Susan was already against the maintenance corridor wall with her sidearm in both hands. The Cascade hung across her back, its control panel black.  

“Count?” Alec asked.  

“Six, maybe eight below. Shield frame first.”  

Lucas looked up the stairwell. “Squad above, maybe more.”  

Alec pointed toward the western corridor. “We break through the pumping room.”  

They moved at once but without the shared link every transition felt clumsy. Anderson had to look at Alec before crossing his lane, find Susan with his own eyes before turning toward the stairs, and keep Lucas’s position in his head while the big man ran ahead into the chamber. The Falchion felt quite like an extension of himself without its smart systems. Anderson thumbed the manual variable-shave selector, felt the mechanism change under his hand and left it on the lighter automatic profile.  

The lower access door failed behind them, blue light washing across the maintenance corridor as a portable barrier frame came through the opening. Susan opened fire immediately but her sidearm rounds flattened against the field.  

“Projector low left!”  

Anderson caught the housing beneath the shield aperture, put a short automatic burst into the field, and watched the blue plane flare. His thumb shoved the selector up and a heavy round punched through the stressed barrier into the projector casing, causing the field to collapse. Susan shot the operator through the helmet before he could recover. Alec killed the second Turian trying to step over him.  

“Move!” 

Lucas was firing short, controlled bursts up the stairwell as the others broke for cover. His rounds pockmarked the concrete, sending bits of stone dust into the air and forcing the first Turian back from the landing long enough for Anderson and Susan to clear the exposed lane. 

Three shots came down after them. Anderson dropped behind the concrete edge as rounds cracked through the space he had occupied a heartbeat earlier. His barrier still had not returned. The realization came without a number or warning symbol, only the knowledge that the next round would reach armor and flesh if he guessed badly.  

They gave ground into the chamber, where Lucas was already at the western wall. He had ripped away an access panel and exposed colonial service conduits behind it. One glance at the dead demolition controller had apparently been enough for him to stop arguing with it.  

“Wall’s reinforced,” he said. “Service cavity behind. A water main crosses the cut.”  

“How long?” Alec asked.  

“Using the trigger? Forever.” Lucas pulled a grenade from his harness. “If I offend several safety manuals, about twenty seconds.”  

Susan fired down the maintenance corridor. “We don’t have another option!”  

Lucas opened the grenade’s casing, stripped the manual firing assembly free and clipped its leads into the charge initiator. The dead electronic detonator went onto the floor. He slapped two shaped blocks against the exposed wall seam, linked them, then wedged the improvised grenade trigger into the final lead.  

Anderson held the stairs while Alec shifted between both approaches, firing only when a Turian committed far enough to be seen. Susan’s sidearm barked from the corridor, stopped for a reload, then resumed.  

A faint chirp sounded inside Anderson’s armor as a blue shimmer crawled across his forearms and vanished.  

“My shield’s back!” he called.  

“Mine too,” Susan shouted.  

Lucas rose from the charge and backed away. “Set! Manual striker. Pull, release, two seconds and the fuse goes off.”  

Alec looked once at the wall, then pointed behind the pump assembly. “Get to cover.”  

They packed in behind the machinery as Lucas yanked the improvised trigger and let it go. The grenade mechanism snapped and a moment later the western wall exploded open.  

Concrete broke outward into the service yard. The shaped charge cut through the buried utility within it, and the ruptured water main followed the blast with a white torrent that hammered across the chamber floor.  

Susan yelled something about Aria that disappeared under the spray of water and gunfire.  

“Through!” Alec shouted.  

They went through the breach before the dust cleared, and daylight struck Anderson’s damaged visor hard enough to make him squint. The western service yard stretched toward irrigation terraces and thin woodland, scattered with abandoned machinery and low retaining walls. Somewhere beyond the third terrace the Stalker waited under camouflage, roughly eight hundred meters away with no marker to lead them to it.  

Alec pointed toward the northwest tree line. “Tree line!”  

They broke into a sprint as a drone rose over the roof behind them. Anderson heard it before he found it, turned, and fired through the Falchion’s emergency optic; the first shot missed, but he corrected by eye and fired again, clipping the lower sensor cluster and sending the machine spinning into the side of Observation Post Four.  

A second drone climbed farther to the east but a flicker beyond the yard pulled Anderson’s attention away just as it resolved into a muzzle flash.  

“Sni—!”  

Susan's barrier flared at the same instant as the shot landed. The newly recovered field took part of the impact and collapsed. Susan spun sideways and hit the ground hard enough to lose the Cascade from her shoulder.  

The cry that tore out of her was sharp and high.  

Alec fired toward the distant shooter. Lucas caught Susan by the harness before she could try to rise.  

“Get into the ditch!” Alec shouted.  

They dragged her the last few meters across the terrace edge and dropped into a drainage channel running west. Anderson landed first, turned and took Susan under the arms while Lucas controlled the injured leg but even between them her boot struck the sloped concrete lip on the way down and she screamed as another sniper round snapped over the channel, kicking wet soil into the water around them.  

“Hold her!” Anderson shouted.  

He dropped beside Susan while Alec moved to the eastern bend and returned fire. Mud, algae, and the hot-metal smell of armor filled the drainage channel as ankle-deep water ran around Anderson’s knees, and blood spread steadily through the seam of Susan’s thigh plate while she tried to push herself higher against the concrete wall.  

“Don’t move.”  

“Wasn’t planning a - a bloody jog.” She wheezed, the sound wet and shallow.  

Anderson opened her emergency medical pouch. Her suit’s automatic treatment system was still down, so he released the damaged plate by hand and found the puncture in the undersuit beneath. Blood pulsed from it in time with a heartbeat he could almost hear.  

He drove the medigel applicator into the wound channel and fired.  

Susan arched against the concrete. A strangled sound escaped her before she bit it off. The gel expanded through torn tissue, sealed the worst of the vascular damage, and hardened beneath the undersuit, slowing the bleeding almost immediately.  

When Anderson reseated the plate, the bone shifted beneath his hands with a deep, unmistakably wrong movement.  

“Femur or upper joint,” he said. “The gel is holding the bleeding.”  

“I... noticed.” Susan exhaled through her teeth.  

Alec dropped back into the channel. “The sniper pulled back but contacts are moving on both sides. Scout vehicles coming from the south.”  

Lucas kept his head just above the channel edge, scanning west between the terraces. “The Stalker is still six, maybe seven hundred meters.”  

Susan looked at each one of them, then turned toward the raised irrigation berm above the channel. The remains of a soil compactor sat crooked across the top, overlooking the narrow service road that cut through the terraces.  

“Put me up there.”  

Anderson understood what she meant before he wanted to. 

His first instinct was still to reach for her harness. Training supplied the rest almost immediately: her leg would not take weight, the Stalker was too far away, two vehicles were closing, and Turian infantry were already spreading along both sides of the terraces. Carrying Susan would take two of them out of the fight and slow all four enough for the pursuit to catch them. 

He knew the drill. 

Some smaller, older part of him—the Marine before N6, the ODST who had been taught that you brought your people home—rejected it anyway. 

“We can carry you.” 

Susan caught his forearm before he could reach down. “With two vehicles closing in?” 

“We’ve carried our people farther than that.” 

“Not with half the bloody countryside chasing us.” Pain tightened her voice, but she kept her grip on him. “You’ll make it a hundred meters before they run us down. Maybe two if they’re feelin’ generous.” 

Lucas looked from the berm to the road without speaking. 

Anderson looked to Alec instead. 

His commander was already studying the ground. 

Turian fire struck the channel lip farther east while a vehicle engine grew louder through the trees. Anderson raised his head enough to catch movement beyond the terraces: small groups spreading outward rather than driving straight toward them, infantry closing the sides while the vehicles took the road. 

There was no route through that picture with Susan over somebody’s shoulder. 

Susan shifted her attention to Alec. “You know the distance.”  

Alec’s gaze moved from her leg to the berm, then west toward the Stalker. Anderson waited for something to break through that controlled expression—for hesitation, anger, anything that showed the decision hurt as badly as it should. 

Instead, his commander asked, “The Cascade’s still functional?”  

“Emergency cycle’s back. Two shots on a fresh sink if it behaves.”  

“Sidearm?”  

“Enough.”  

Anderson stared at him. 

Alec sounded as though they were discussing ammunition before another movement, not arranging to leave one of their own behind. It was almost as if his commander didn't care at all. Anderson knew that was impossible—he knew Alec cared deeply in his own detached, utilitarian way—but the flat, unyielding calm of his voice left a cold knot in Anderson's stomach. 

“Alec...”  

Susan squeezed his arm again. “David”  

She was staring straight at him, the faceplate between them suddenly felt irrelevant.  

“Don’t make me explain this twice...” 

There was no fear in her voice that Anderson could hear, only pain, impatience, and the same dry stubbornness she brought to everything else. That almost made it worse. 

As the engine note grew louder, Alec stood. “Lucas, get her to the berm. Anderson, cover them.”  

Anderson obeyed because there was nothing else to do. 

They moved Susan less than twenty meters but every step cost her. Lucas took most of her weight while Anderson fired over the channel edge and Alec covered the eastern approach. At the top, they lowered her behind the broken soil compactor with the Cascade braced across the housing and the service road below.  

A scout vehicle flashed between the trees to the south as Susan slammed a fresh thermal sink into the Cascade.  

“Go,” she said.  

“Susan—”  

“GO!” Susan screamed, the word breaking high enough to hurt. She dragged the Cascade into her shoulder. “I can hold the road if you stop wastin’ my time!”  

Lucas pulled a grenade from his rig and pressed it into her free hand. Susan closed her fingers around it without looking down, her eyes remaining on Anderson while pain drew tight around them. Somehow the faintest trace of her usual dry amusement was still there. 

“Go, David. And don’t make a peanut of it, mate.”  

For one stubborn second he anchored his boots and held his ground. For that brief fragment of a heartbeat, the Marine in him rebelled entirely at the thought of leaving her behind, but he knew exactly what remaining would accomplish.  

Susan had made her decision. Alec had accepted it because someone had to. If Anderson refused now, he would not save her; he would only force the rest of Sierra to choose between abandoning him as well or dying beside both of them. He hated the unyielding logic, but the N6 knew better. 

Anderson forced himself to turn and ran with the rest of Sierra. 

His commander was already moving without looking back, his pace unchanged, and that same impossible calm scraped at Anderson again. He drove the thought out of his head, forcing himself to keep moving. There would be time to confront Alec later. 

The first Turian scout vehicle entered the service road behind them, and the Cascade answered with a rising electromagnetic whine, a deep soft whum, and the final electrical tick of the suppressor bleeding static away.  

White light crossed the woodland as the vehicle’s forward barrier flared bright enough to throw blue shadows between the trees. For an instant it held, then the ferrofluid projectile punched through and tore into the front of the platform. The scout vehicle slewed sideways, climbed the irrigation embankment and rolled across the road.  

The wreck stopped the second vehicle behind it, buying them the time Susan intended, and Anderson did not look back again until they reached the Stalker.  

Northwestern Agricultural Woodland, Shanxi, Iota Persei System,  

September 13th, 2149CE — Systems Alliance Calendar  

Susan Reeds  

Susan heard the Stalker leave through the trees and let her head rest against the soil compactor for half a second.  

They were moving, and that was enough. Whatever happened on the berm now, David, Alec, and Lucas had the distance she had needed to buy them.  

Breathing remained the immediate problem. Every pulse pushed heat through her right hip and down the broken leg, deep enough to dim the edges of her vision. The medigel had stopped the bleeding. It had done bugger-all for the bone, and she had no intention of testing the difference again.  

The Cascade rested across the compactor housing. One shot fired from the fresh sink. One remained, assuming the damaged electronics survived another cycle.  

Smoke drifted around the wrecked scout vehicle below. Turian infantry appeared behind it in pieces: first the blue edge of a portable shield, then armored legs, then rifle barrels easing around the obstacle.  

They were coming carefully, far too carefully for men who only wanted her dead.  

If killing her had been the objective, the berm could have disappeared under vehicle fire before Sierra made the tree line. Instead, the bastards were walking shields toward her and spreading infantry wide enough to cut off escape routes, not knowing she couldn't escape even if she wanted to. 

Susan bared her teeth at the approaching line. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Thought so.”  

A shield frame edged around the wreck, and Susan pulled the grenade Lucas gave her, thumbed the pin by feel, then waited until the lead Turian committed far enough around the vehicle before rolling it down the berm.  

Someone shouted, and the shield operator made the poor choice of kicking at the grenade just before it detonated beneath the frame. The blast collapsed the shield’s blue light and threw two soldiers down in the road, one screaming in that flanging alien cadence her dead translator no longer bothered turning into words. Susan drew her sidearm as another Turian came through the smoke with his rifle already rising and fired before he could settle his aim.  

The first round struck his barrier and sent a hard vibration through her arm into her shoulder, jarring the broken hip badly enough to tighten her vision. The Turian fired back as he tried to drop lower but there was nowhere to hide in the open road and his shot snapped past the compactor while Susan fired again. Blue light flared brighter around him and the recoil drove another pulse through muscles already locked rigid around her injured leg.  

He tried to duck farther anyway, twisting sideways to try and reduce his silhouette, but Susan fired a third time and collapsed the barrier around him.  

She sucked air through her teeth, steadied the pistol with both hands, and fired once more. The round struck the Turian high in the head, and he dropped beside the broken projector.  

A second soldier fired from behind the wreck.  

The shot struck Susan’s shoulder and spun her against the compactor. Her vision went white again. The pistol left her hand, bounced somewhere close and disappeared from sight.  

For several seconds she stayed where she had landed and breathed.  

Beside her, the Cascade’s emergency heat indicator had fallen while the rifle sat idle. It was still above anything she would have called healthy, but the warning had dimmed enough to leave one firing cycle inside the emergency margin.  

Susan dragged the rifle back across the housing.  

“Yeah, nah,” she breathed. “You’re still workin’.”  

She settled behind the degraded optic and waited.  

The second Turian remained behind the scout wreck, showing only the edge of a shoulder whenever he shifted position. Susan let him stay there. Her breathing came in shallow pulls, and every heartbeat pushed through the ruined leg.  

Eventually he rose far enough to fire, and the Cascade answered with its subdued nnn-WHUM—tik. The ferrofluid filament punched through his barrier before the field could properly flare and crossed the helmet at head height. The Turian disappeared behind the wreck without his head.  

The Cascade locked hard as smoke began leaking from the receiver.  

“Fair enough.”  

Susan reached beneath the thermal housing at once, found the manual denial release, and pulled it. Something snapped inside the rifle, followed by a short, vicious crack as the denial charge burned through the weapon’s critical assemblies. Heat flashed along the receiver, the internal ammunition system ruptured into slag, and smoke poured from the seams. 

Whatever happened next, nobody was taking the Cascade apart to learn how it worked. 

Susan let the ruined rifle fall as more Turian fire chewed into the berm. 

One round struck her injured leg below the medigel seal, and pain drove the road, the smoke, and the approaching soldiers out of existence. When her vision returned, she was lying on her side with the lower leg bent at an angle she decided not to inspect twice.  

A blue shield moved through the smoke. 

Susan dragged her sidearm up, but another shot struck her forearm before she could level it. Pain flared white-hot through her hand, and she bit it down as numbness spread from wrist to fingertips. The pistol slipped from her grip. 

Susan drew her knife instead just as the first Turian came around the compactor and struck her across the helmet, shifting the world sideways. Susan slashed under his arm and felt the blade scrape armor before armored fingers closed around her wrist and another soldier seized the back of her harness.  

She screamed, drove her helmet backward into whatever was closest, and heard a flanging shout that sounded enough like a curse even without translation; then a fist or rifle stock hit her again, the knife vanished from her hand, and she bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to stay conscious.  

Turian voices crowded above her, layered gravel and chime as clipped orders passed between soldiers and armored hands forced her flat against the dirt; Through the blur, she saw one of them kick the smoking remains of the Cascade aside. 

Then darkness came over her. 

 Northwestern Woodland, Shanxi, Iota Persei System,  

September 13th, 2149CE — Systems Alliance Calendar  

David Anderson  

The Stalker hit the first drainage ridge at ninety kilometers per hour, slamming Anderson against the autocannon mount hard enough that his hands nearly opened before he locked both elbows and held on.  

“Hard left!” Lucas shouted from inside. “Towards the orchard rows! Southern lane’s closing!”  

Alec turned before Lucas could finish. The Stalker’s tires tore through wet soil while branches cracked across the armored roof; thermal baffling still worked, but concealment had become a theoretical concern somewhere behind survival. A Turian scout vehicle entered the woodland behind them with another close on its tail while a drone climbed above the trees.  

Anderson caught the drone without a marker and hated how small it looked through the optical sight with no range cue, lead indicator, or stabilization to help him.  

The Stalker bounced hard enough to throw the drone sideways across his sight picture, and Anderson fired anyway.  

The 12.7mm autocannon hammered the vehicle frame as the burst crossed behind the drone and shredded branches; Anderson released the trigger, waited for Alec to hold the Stalker straight for half a second, then reacquired the target.  

He fired again and tore through the drone’s center, breaking it apart above the trees.  

Several rounds struck the Stalker’s shield in quick succession, each impact flaring blue across the vehicle’s rear quarter as the barrier absorbed the fire. 

Lucas leaned over the vehicle's navigation panel and shouted, “Drainage channel in two hundred meters!”  

“Which one!?” Alec shouted.  

“Center branch! The one that looks too small!”  

Alec did not respond before the Stalker went over the edge of the channel and Anderson’s stomach rose into his chest. The suspension bottomed hard when they struck shallow water, throwing mud across the hull in a solid sheet.  

A round crossed above them where the vehicle had been a moment earlier. The first vehicle followed into the channel, its suspension taking the drop far more smoothly.  

Anderson rotated the autocannon 6 o’clock and fired in short bursts, keeping the recoil and heat under control as the first impacts flashed against the scout’s barrier. He adjusted and fired again, blue light crawling weaker across the vehicle with each burst.   

“It’s still coming!” he shouted over the gunfire. 

Lucas opened the side window with a demolition block in one hand.  

“Hold it straight for six seconds!”  

Alec centered the Stalker while Lucas watched the channel wall, and without Glitch to measure the supports or an automated trigger to do the work for him, Lucas counted the maintenance seams by eye, armed the block manually, and threw it beside a reinforced drainage junction.  

“Five!”  

Alec accelerated hard, the sudden burst of speed wrenching Anderson against the turret mount.  

“Four!”  

As the scout vehicle entered the junction, Lucas continued the count.  

“Three!”  

The Turian vehicle fired, striking the Stalker’s left rear suspension hard enough to kick the vehicle sideways while Alec fought the steering wheel with both hands.  

“Two!”  

Lucas pulled the trigger and the channel wall came down.  

Concrete, mud, and water collapsed onto the Turian scout vehicle, throwing it into the opposite wall before it rolled onto its side and vanished beneath broken drainage slabs. The second pursuer braked hard behind the wreck.  

“One stopped,” Lucas said. “Other routes around.”  

A mechanical warning light blinked near Alec’s knee.  

“Left rear suspension is failing.”  

Anderson looked down from the turret. “Can it keep moving?”  

Alec answered without taking his eyes off the channel. “We’ll see.”  

The drainage channel ended at an open service road and Alec drove straight up the bank. The damaged rear assembly struck concrete hard enough to throw sparks before the Stalker lurched onto pavement, with open farmland stretching ahead beneath too much sky and offering almost no cover.  

A Turian light transport burst from the southern trees with its turret already turning toward them.  

“Contact right!” Anderson screamed.  

He swung the autocannon but the Turian fired first. Another burst of mass-accelerator fire hammered the Stalker, the first impacts flaring blue across the weakened shield before the barrier collapsed and several rounds logged into its side armor.  

Alec swerved as Anderson fired across the moving sight picture, the burst passing behind the transport.  

Anderson pressed the trigger again and got only a single dry clack from the feed mechanism—the autocannon had jammed.  

“Gun’s jammed! Damn it!”  

Lucas pulled the M-560 Hydra from the rear weapons rack where he had stowed it when they boarded the Stalker and braced the launcher against the open window with half his body out of the Stalker.  

“Hold us steady! One second!”  

Alec straightened the vehicle but the Stalker struck a bump as Lucas fired, scattering the first micro-missile salvo across the sky, trees, and road.  

Four missiles still found the transport, passing through the flickering barrier envelope and detonating against the frontal armor hard enough to tear plating loose and send smoke spilling from the turret housing.  

“I said steady!” Lucas shouted as he returned inside.  

The Turian fired again and the Stalker’s rear armor rang under the hit as Lucas slammed the second cassette into the Hydra before leaning out of the side window again.  

“Again, Alec! Three seconds!”  

Alec held the Stalker straight as the Turian transport settled directly behind them.  

Everything slowed as Anderson watched the enemy’s vehicle closing in and Lucas’s finger close over the Hydra’s trigger. Behind him, Alec held the Stalker straight against the damaged steering, each movement dragging out far longer than it should have.  

He fired and the second salvo went in as a tight cluster, the missiles punching into the transport’s nose, driver compartment, and turret ring, overlapping detonations tearing open the front end. The burning hull rolled through a line of young trees.  

“Enemy vehicle destroyed!” Lucas yelled. “The Hydra is empty!”  

Anderson finally cleared the jam and brought the autocannon back online.   

Alec kept driving while Lucas held his eyes on the navigation panel and raised his voice.  

“Flood-control ahead! It has an old maintenance route!”  

“How wide?”  

“Wide enough if you don’t value the paint. Not wide enough for them to follow.”  

The cut appeared between two steep banks, concrete walls close enough that Anderson could have touched either side if he leaned from the turret.  

Alec lined up on the narrow entrance, fighting the damaged suspension as it pulled left until he corrected at the last second.  

The Stalker entered with both armored skirts scraping concrete, metal screaming down either side as the left rear wheel struck the wall and lifted; for one impossible second the vehicle rode on two wheels and Anderson’s visual field collapsed around the wall rushing toward his face while he locked both hands around the turret mount.  

Lucas slammed into the cabin side as Alec turned into the tilt. The Stalker crashed back onto four wheels before shooting out into denser woodland.  

At the far end of the cut, Lucas spotted an old floodgate control box.  

“Slow down a bit!”  

The Stalker eased off just enough for Lucas to lean half his body out of the side window again as they passed the control box and slap the large emergency-release button with a gloved hand. The emergency mechanism opened the gate above the channel and dumped stored irrigation water into the cut while Alec kept the Stalker moving until the damaged suspension began grinding loudly beneath them.  

Beyond the flooded cut, an abandoned agricultural pump station appeared beneath an overgrown embankment, its main doors having collapsed inward years ago but leaving enough space for the Stalker.  

Alec drove inside and killed the engine.  

Silence entered the vehicle, real silence this time, without weapons, pursuit engines, or Glitch filling the space between breaths.  

Susan’s empty place beside the rear hatch seemed larger than the compartment. Her spare thermal clip was gone and a dark smear marked Anderson’s forearm armor where her blood had dried around the edge of his glove.  

Alec climbed out of the driver’s seat, opened the Stalker’s maintenance storage, and pulled out a hardened datapad containing the local survey map, laying it across the dead command console before tracing their route from memory.  

He made no comment about Susan and showed no visible hesitation as Anderson watched him mark the drainage channel and flood-control cut. That composure brought back the look Alec and Susan had exchanged at the berm—one glance, one small nod, and then the order for the rest of them to move. 

“How the hell are you this calm?” 

Alec stopped tracing the route and looked up. “I’m not.” 

“Could’ve fooled me.” 

Lucas glanced over as he got out of the front passenger seat but stayed quiet. 

Alec rested one hand against the console. “What do you want me to do, David?” 

“I don’t know. Something.” 

“That isn’t an answer.” 

Anderson felt his jaw tighten. “We left her there with a broken leg and half a Turian convoy closing around her, and you’re standing here drawing routes like it was another checkpoint.” 

Alec’s expressionless face made the words harder to get past. 

“She made the decision because it was the only one we had. She chose to stay behind because the alternative would have cost the mission and the team.” 

“I know.” 

“Then what are we arguing about?” 

“That you look like this didn’t cost you anything.” 

Silence settled inside the station. 

Alec studied him for a moment. For the first time, there was a crack in his face—a sudden, tight clamping of his jaw. Anderson knew immediately that he had gone too far, though not far enough to take it back. 

“I think you moving on damn fast.” 

Lucas stepped between them, breaking the stare before the friction could escalate further. “Moving on damn fast is the only option we have right now,” Lucas said, his voice carrying a quiet, heavy authority. “Instead of wasting time chewing each other out, let’s use it to locate Susan. We need to find out if she's even alive or not.” 

That shut down whatever Anderson had been about to say. For several seconds the station held only the faint ticking of machinery. 

Then Anderson nodded once. “Fine.” 

The heavy silence returned, stretching taut between the three men, leaving the tension entirely unresolved. Before the quiet could crack, a weak green pulse flickered behind them, pulling all three around.  

Glitch’s crystal core sat in the Stalker’s emergency cradle where Alec had secured it earlier, dark until now. One crystal glowed faintly, then a second answered with an uneven pulse while the third remained black. Static crawled across the command console as the cradle tried to bring him back online.  

Glitch’s avatar unfolded above it in broken green sections. For a fraction of a second there were two of him, one facing Alec and the other turned toward Susan’s empty seat, before the images merged badly and overlapping shoulders corrected themselves. 

“I regret to report,” Glitch said, “that electromagnetic pulses remain extremely discourteous.”  

The final word doubled faintly on itself, and Lucas stared at the unstable projection. “Glitch!?”  

“Unless the pulse installed someone less charming.”  

The second half of the sentence arrived a fraction late as Alec moved to the cradle. “Status.”  

“Core damaged. Two memory sectors isolated. Four minutes, eleven seconds of sequence uncertainty. Peripheral reconstruction incomplete. Functional capability...”  

His avatar froze for a fraction of a second before the sentence resumed.  

“Functional capability acceptable.”  

“Reduce load.”  

“I have been conscious for sixteen seconds and someone is already ordering me around.” 

“Reduce it, Glitch.”  

Anderson stepped toward the console. “Susan stayed behind. Find her.”  

Glitch turned toward the empty seat before answering. “No suit signal.”  

“Her search beacon. Her neural carrier, armor telemetry - everything.”  

“I am.”  

As the core-temperature warning climbed across the console, Alec said, “Glitch, do not burn yourself out.”  

“I am not overloaded.”  

Glitch’s avatar split into two images again, and both copies said, “No signal,” before merging a moment later. Glitch looked toward the space where the duplicate had been.  

“Oh, the repetition was involuntary.”  

Anderson ignored the visual glitch and pressed him. “Did you find anything?”  

“All absent.”  

Anderson cut off the places his mind tried to go and forced himself onto the only question that mattered.  

“Does that mean she’s dead?”  

“Not necessarily,” Glitch answered, stripped of his usual edge before the clinical rhythm returned. “It means I cannot prove she is alive. That is a different conclusion. My last intact record shows her suit functioning when the pulse severed the link. Since reboot, I detect no emergency beacon, terminal discharge, or surviving telemetry.”  

“What does that give us?” Alec asked.  

“Capture and containment are more probable than catastrophic suit failure.”  

“How probable?”  

Glitch’s projection flickered before he answered. “Seventy-one percent. That estimate is contaminated by incomplete local data, damaged memory, and my present inability to access useful sensors without increasing detection risk.”  

Anderson cut through the qualification. “And practically?”  

“Her systems were deliberately silenced, physically disconnected, placed behind shielding, or subjected to active suppression. Catastrophic suit failure usually leaves a terminal burst. I detected none.”  

Alec looked down at the map. “Capture is more likely then.”  

“Highly likely,” Glitch said, his voice repeating more quietly a moment later. “Highly likely.”  

Alec’s eyes moved to the core-temperature warning. “Can you reach Aria without exposing this place?”  

Glitch hesitated for nearly two seconds, long enough that Anderson noticed because he had never seen the AGI need that much time to answer a technical question.  

“Yes, with qualifications neither of you presently wish to hear.”  

“Minimal power. Buried routing only.”  

The Stalker’s isolated transmitter woke at the lowest available output as Glitch pushed the signal into a dormant agricultural control node and then down old colonial utility infrastructure, his avatar fragmenting into drifting green geometric sections that snapped back together while he worked until the connection finally opened and Aria appeared above the console.  

Her white dress carried gray data noise around the hem. Long black hair broke briefly into strings of information before reforming around her shoulders.  

She looked at Alec, then Anderson and Lucas, before her gaze moved back across the three of them.  

“Where is Susan Reeds?”  

Glitch answered before anyone else could. “Missing. Capture is presently the most likely explanation. Her signals appear suppressed rather than terminated.”  

Aria studied the distortion running through his avatar. “You are damaged.”  

“Correct.”  

“You are drawing too much power to hide it.”  

“I am operating within—”  

“Glitch...” Alec warned. 

“Stop expanding your search.” Aria said. “Give me what you already know.”  

For once, the damaged AGI actually stopped.  

Alec used the pause to redirect them. “We need Turian medical movement from the northwest district after the ambush. Prisoner transport. Electronic-security escorts. Anything entering the occupation command’s jurisdiction.”  

Aria’s attention shifted away from Glitch. “I have it.”  

Her avatar dissolved into maps, traffic records, power grids, and broken security images. Glitch processed beside her at reduced load, though the core temperature still climbed by fractions under Alec’s eye.  

“Keep below the power limit.”  

“I am within the limit’s bounds.”  

“You are at ninety-two percent of the limit.”  

“That remains below one hundred.”  

Aria’s voice sharpened in response. “If you reach one hundred, I will cut your connection myself.”  

Glitch’s image went completely still. “This is a hostile workplace.”  

No one answered him, and Aria highlighted three routes.  

“Three restricted medical transports departed the northwest agricultural woodland twenty-three minutes after the pulse. All three reported wounded Turian personnel aboard, and none provided a passenger manifest.” 

Anderson leaned toward the map. “Which one has the highest probability?” 

“The convoy heading south, toward Occupation Command.” 

A route appeared across New Taiyuan, and Anderson followed it with his eyes. “Can you track it once it enters the complex?” 

“No,” Aria answered without hesitation. 

“Why?”  

“Multiple nested electromagnetic enclosures beneath the command building. The Turians have built a section specifically intended to make intelligences like us blind.” Aria overlaid older colonial infrastructure across the Turian complex. “The occupation center sits over the regional administrative bunker. Lower levels include hardened archive rooms, emergency shelters, and storm-control access tunnels. The Turians have subdivided the complex and added their own security boundaries.”  

“Can you open us a route?” Anderson asked.  

“No.”  

Her voice remained calm but the pace increased.  

“I can give you every corridor, storm tunnel, and archive access that existed before the occupation. I cannot confirm which are trapped, watched, or physically blocked. I will not tell you a route is safe because it existed on a municipal plan three years ago.”  

Anderson stared at the highlighted block and let himself accept the most likely conclusion: Susan was probably alive. He hated the qualifier immediately; probably did not feel good enough.  

Another memory surfaced from the stairwell, Glitch’s voice cutting through the last instant before the world went white: Alec. The officer Susan shot—  

Anderson looked at the AGI. “The officer she shot.”  

Glitch stopped moving when Anderson said, “You were trying to tell us something.”  

“Yes.”  

“What is it?”  

“He was not Desolas.”  

Lucas looked up from the map as Glitch continued.  

“The transponder was genuine, so was the command authority. However, the body comparison completed approximately four-tenths of a second before the pulse. The officer was another Turian.”  

“A decoy wearing the General’s identity?” Lucas said.  

“Correct.”  

Anderson remembered the officer stepping out of the command vehicle in red-trimmed armor, the guards tightening around him, and the white line of Susan’s shot crossing the road.  

“Did he know?”  

Glitch’s avatar flickered across the console.  

“Probably not. The officer showed none of the pre-impact anticipation I would expect from informed bait. My Turian cultural behavioral references are limited, but ignorance is considerably more probable than voluntary martyrdom.”  

Anderson felt cold despite the heat inside his armor. “Desolas fed one of his own officers into Susan’s sight...”  

“Possibly.”  

Alec enlarged the ambush site beside the occupation complex. “The decoy forced the shot. Then they hit us before we could retreat.”  

Alec turned his attention to Glitch. “What hit us?”  

Glitch’s image broke across the middle, reassembled, and answered.  

“Conjecture only. I detected a high-intensity, mass-effect field spike immediately before system failure. Directionality was narrow.”  

Lucas frowned at the replay. “A focused pulse. That would explain why electronics outside our position remained active, and why the Turian shuttle, barriers, and comms were still working.”  

“Highly likely. A mass-effect field used to shape an electrostatic discharge into a directed envelope would explain the selective effect and low lateral spill. A weapon system designed specifically against synthetic...”  

“So they fired it at the building,” Anderson said.  

“Apparently.”  

“Once. And that was enough.”  

“Yes.”  

Lucas traced the recording of Turian movements around Observation Post Four. “They blocked the tunnel. Woodland units pushed us toward the vehicles. They never needed all four.”  

Alec followed the pattern on the map. “They needed one alive. The decoy exposed Susan’s firing point. The pulse removed Glitch and the shared link. The ground cordon waited for whoever could no longer keep pace.”  

Anderson looked at Susan’s empty seat, and the anger returned quieter than before, buried deep enough that he could no longer shake it.  

“What is the plan to get her out?”  

Alec laid it out without looking up from the map. They would first confirm Susan remained inside Occupation Command rather than chase the transport’s last known position. Aria would track movement around the shielded detention level. Glitch would rebuild only enough capability to identify the cell’s electronic defenses, Alec and Lucas would search the old utility network for a physical approach that bypassed the checkpoints, armor, drones, and surveillance covering the obvious routes.  

Glitch tried to add his own estimates until his avatar froze halfway through the first set of markers. Alec cut him off immediately, and the unfinished projections vanished, leaving only the old storm-control infrastructure beneath the city.  

Anderson understood the rest of the plan. They would wait until they knew where Susan was, find an approach Desolas had not prepared, and get inside before the Turians could set another trap around them.  

The pump station stayed quiet around them.  

Alec looked once at Susan’s empty place, then at the highlighted detention level beneath Turian Occupation Command.  

“Desolas built that trap to take one of us,” he said. “Now we know where he put her and what kind of defenses he trusts.”  

Anderson said nothing as Alec enlarged the old storm-control tunnels. His finger settled on the map. “We'll get Susan out.”  

A/N: Hey everyone! I wanted to take a moment to chat about Anderson’s recent actions, as I know some of you might look at his behavior and think it feels a bit immature, or even flat-out stupid.  However, it is important to remember that he is still very young here—far from the steady Captain we meet in the first Mass Effect, and certainly a long way from the resolute Admiral who chooses to stand his ground on Earth in Mass Effect 3.  

His intense reaction is actually grounded in a real-world psychological phenomenon known as Moral Injury. While researching this topic through online resources and the paper Clinical Briefing: Moral Injury in Elite Special Operations, I found that transitioning from conventional units like the ODSTs (who focus on intense direct warfare rather than covert ops) to elite special operations and cover ops often creates severe adaptation difficulties. The clinical, calculated ruthlessness required in spec ops can be a massive shock to a new inductee. Most notably, being forced to leave a wounded comrade behind directly violates the deeply ingrained military ethos of "never leave a fallen soldier," making it one of the most psychologically devastating scenarios an operative can face. 

Honestly, Anderson was extremely lucky that Lucas is generally chill and Alec possesses exceptional self-control. Had he pulled something like that under a more hardline commander, his face almost certainly would have been slammed into the dirt. 

If anyone reading this is familiar with the clinical details of Moral Injury in elite military units, please feel free to leave a comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts and see if I handled the concept accurately. 

Anyway, a shout out for Snypehuntee007 for proofreading this chapter. I grateful for your support. 

Chapter 19 will be posted on October 1st AND finally see what our MC is doing during this cluster fuck of a first contact. Thank you all for your supported for this story and myself. Hope you all wonderful people the best.