Mass Effect: Revelation Page 3

  The turians were allies of the Human Systems Alliance now, at least officially. And the Skyllian Verge was too far removed from turian territory for them to get involved in any conflicts out here. But there were other species vying with humanity for control of the region. The Alliance was in direct competition with the batarian government to establish a presence in the Verge, but so far the two rival species had managed to avoid any real violence in their confrontations. Anderson doubted they’d start with something like this.

  Still, there were plenty of other groups out there with the means and motive to hit an Alliance stronghold. Some of them were even made up of humans: nonaffiliated terrorist organizations and multispecies guerrilla factions eager to strike a blow against the powers-that-be; illegal paramilitary troops looking to stock up on high-grade weapons; independent mercenary bands hoping for one big score.

  “Might be helpful to know what Sidon was working on, Captain,” Anderson suggested.

  “They’re a top-security-clearance facility,” the captain replied with a shake of his head. “I can’t even get schematics for the base, never mind get anyone to tell me what they were working on.”

  Anderson frowned. Without schematics his team would be going in blind, giving up any tactical advantage they might have had from knowing the layout of the battleground. This mission just kept getting better and better.

  “What’s our ETA, sir?”

  “Forty-six minutes.”

  Finally some good news. The Hastings followed random patrol routes; it was pure chance they happened to be this close to the source of the distress call. With luck they could still get there in time.

  “I’ll have the ground team ready, Captain.”

  “You always do, Lieutenant.”

  Anderson turned to go, acknowledging his commanding officer’s compliment with a simple, “Aye-aye, sir!”

  In the black void of space the Hastings was all but invisible to the naked eye. Surrounded by a self-generated mass effect field and traveling nearly fifty times faster than the speed of light, it was little more than a flickering blur, a slight wavering in the fabric of the space-time continuum.

  The vessel altered its flight path as the helmsman made a quick course correction, a minor adjustment to the trajectory that sent the ship hurtling toward the nearest mass relay, nearly five billion kilometers away. At a speed of nearly fifteen million kilometers per second it didn’t take long before their destination was in range.

  Ten thousand kilometers out from their target, the helmsman took the element-zero drive core off-line, disengaging the mass effect fields. Blue-shifted energy waves radiated off the ship as it dropped out of FTL, igniting the darkness of space like a flare. The illumination of the blazing ship reflected off the mass relay growing steadily larger on the horizon. Although completely alien in design, the construction closely resembled an enormous gyroscope. At its center was a sphere made up of two concentric rings spinning around a single axis. Each ring was nearly five kilometers across, and two fifteen-kilometer arms protruded out from one end of the constantly rotating middle. The entire structure sparkled and flashed with white bursts of crackling energy.

  At a signal from the Alliance vessel the mass relay began to move. It turned ponderously on its axis, orienting itself with a linked relay hundreds of light-years away. The Hastings picked up speed as it headed straight for the center of the enormous alien construct on a precalculated approach vector. The rings at the relay’s heart began to spin faster, accelerating until they were nothing but a whirling blur. The sporadic bursts of energy emanating from its core became a solid, pulsing glow, growing in strength and intensity until it was almost impossible to look at.

  The Hastings was less than five hundred kilometers away when the relay fired. A discharge of dark energy swept out from the spinning rings like a wave, engulfing the ship. It shimmered momentarily, then disappeared as if snuffed out of existence. Instantaneously it winked back into reality a thousand light-years from its previous location, emerging from apparent nothingness with a bright blue flash in the vicinity of a completely different mass relay.

  The drive core of the Hastings roared to life and it jumped to FTL, vanishing into the darkness with a red-shifted burst of heat and radiation. Rapidly left behind, the receiving relay began to power down, the rings at its center already decelerating.

  “We’ve cleared the mass relay. Engaging drive core. ETA to Sidon twenty-six minutes.”

  Huddled in the cargo hold with the other four members of the ground team, it was almost impossible to hear the sound of the voice coming over the shipboard intercom above the roaring of the engines. Not that Anderson needed to hear the updates to know what was happening. His stomach was still churning from the jump through the mass relay.

  Scientifically, he knew the motion sickness shouldn’t happen. Travel between relays—the jump from an originating, or transmitting, relay to the destination, or receiving, relay—was an instantaneous event. It took no time to occur; therefore, it couldn’t possibly have any physical effect on his body. But while he acknowledged this theoretical fact, Anderson knew from firsthand experience that it wasn’t true in practice.

  Maybe this time the tightness in his gut was just a bad feeling about what they’d find when they reached the Sidon facility. Whoever had attacked the research base had been willing to take on fifteen Alliance marines. Even using the element of surprise to their advantage, they must have been a formidable force. The Alliance should be sending a troop transport in as reinforcements, not a patrol frigate that could only assemble a five-person ground team.

  But nobody else was close enough to answer the distress call in time, and most Alliance vessels were too big to go planet side anyway. The Hastings was small enough to enter a world’s atmosphere and touch down on its surface, and still be able to take off again. Anything bigger than a frigate would have to ferry troops down using shuttles or drop ships, and they didn’t have time for that.

  At least they were going in heavy. Every member of the ground team was wearing body armor equipped with fully charged kinetic shield generators, as well as three-quarters visored headgear. They each carried half a dozen grenades and the Alliance’s standard issue Hahne-Kedar G-912 assault rifle. The ammo clip on each weapon held over four thousand rounds; miniature pellets smaller than grains of sand. When fired at sufficient velocity, the nearly microscopic projectiles were capable of inflicting massive damage.

  That was the real problem. No matter how advanced defensive technology got, it was always a step behind. The Alliance spared no expense when it came to protecting its soldiers: their body armor was top of the line and their kinetic shields were the latest military prototype. But it still wasn’t enough to withstand a direct hit from close range with heavy weapons.

  If they were going to survive this mission, it wasn’t going to be because of their equipment. It always came down to two things: training and leadership. Their lives were in Anderson’s hands now, and he could sense their unease. Alliance marines were well trained to deal with the mental and physical stress of the human body’s natural fight-or-flight instincts. But this was more than the normal adrenaline rush of impending combat.

  He’d been careful not to expose his own doubts; he’d projected an image of absolute confidence and composure. But the members of his team were smart enough to figure things out on their own. They could put the pieces together, just as he had. Like the lieutenant, they knew ordinary raiders wouldn’t attack a heavily defended Alliance base.

  Anderson didn’t believe in giving motivational speeches; they were all professionals here. But even for Alliance soldiers, those last nervous minutes before a mission were harder to endure in total silence. Besides, there was no sense hiding from the truth.

  “Everyone stay sharp,” he said, knowing the rest of the team could hear him clearly over the rumbling of the engines through the radios inside their helmets. “I get the feeling this wasn’t just some slavers pulling a quick
grab and run.”

  “Batarians, sir?”

  The question came from Gunnery Chief Jill Dah. A year older than Anderson, she’d already been an Alliance marine on active duty back when he was still taking N7 training at Arcturus. They’d served in the same unit during the First Contact War. She stood just over six foot three, making her taller than most of the men she served with. She was stronger than a lot of them, too, judging by her wide shoulders, the well-defined muscles of her arms, and her generally large but not ill-proportioned frame. Some of the other soldiers in the unit had called her “Amy,” short for Amazon…but never to her face. And when the fighting started they were all glad to have her on their side.

  Anderson liked Dah, but she had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way. She didn’t believe in diplomacy. If she had an opinion she let everybody know it, which probably explained why she was still a noncommissioned officer. Still, the lieutenant realized that if she asked a question it meant most of the others were probably wondering the exact same thing.

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions, Chief.”

  “Any idea what they were working on over at Sidon?” This time it was Corporal Ahmed O’Reilly, technicians expert, asking the question.

  “Classified. That’s all I know. So be ready for anything.”

  The other two members of the team, Private Second Class Indigo Lee and PFC Dan Shay, didn’t bother to comment, and the team lapsed once more into an uneasy silence. Nobody felt good about this mission, but Anderson knew they’d follow his lead. He’d brought them through the fire enough times to earn their trust.

  “Approaching Sidon,” the intercom crackled. “No response on any frequencies.”

  That was grim news. If any Alliance personnel were still alive inside the base, they should have answered the Hastings’s call. Anderson slammed his visor down to shield his face, and the rest of the crew followed suit. A minute later they felt the turbulence as the ship entered the tiny planet’s atmosphere. At a nod from Anderson his team made a final weapons, com, and shields check.

  “We have a visual of the base,” the intercom crackled. “No ships on the ground and we’re not picking up any non-Alliance vessels in the vicinity.”

  “Damn cowards already cut and ran,” Anderson heard Dah mutter over the radio in his helmet.

  With the Hastings’s quick response time, Anderson had been hoping they’d arrive to catch the enemy in the act, but he wasn’t really surprised there were no other ships in the area. A raid against a target as well defended as Sidon would have required at least three vessels working together. The two larger ships would land on the surface and unload assault teams while a small scout vessel would stay in orbit, monitoring the nearby mass relay for any signs of activity.

  The scout must have seen it spring to life as the Hastings approached the connecting relay on the far side of the region and radioed the ships on the ground. The advance warning would have given them just enough time to lift off, clear the planet’s atmosphere, and engage their FTL drives before the Hastings arrived. The ships involved in the attack on the base were long gone…but in their hurried escape they might have been forced to leave some of their troops behind.

  A few seconds later there was a heavy thump as the ship touched down at the landing port of the Sidon Research Facility; the interminable waiting was over. The pressure door of the Hastings’s cargo hold hissed open and the gangway ramp descended.

  “Ground team,” came Captain Belliard’s voice over the intercom, “you are cleared for go.”

  TWO

  Gunnery Chief Dah and Lee, the two marines on point, scuttled down the gangway. Weapons drawn, they scanned the area for a possible ambush while Anderson, O’Reilly, and Shay covered them from the hold above.

  “Landing zone secured,” Dah reported across the radio frequency.

  Once the entire team was on the ground Anderson took stock of the situation. The landing port was small—room for three frigates, or maybe a pair of cargo ships. It was located a few hundred meters from a pair of heavy blast doors that led into the structure of the base itself: a rectangular single-story building that barely looked large enough to house the thirty-three people assigned to the project, let alone any kind of labs for research.

  The exterior looked eerily normal; there was no hint that anything was out of the ordinary other than a half dozen large crates near one of the other landing pads.

  That’s how the attack began, Anderson thought to himself. Equipment and supplies coming in would have been ferried by hand from arriving ships on cargo sleds up to the doors. Sidon must have been expecting a shipment. When the raiders touched down they would have begun unloading the crates. Someone inside would have opened the blast doors and two or three of Sidon’s security detail would have come out to help with the cargo…and been gunned down by enemy troops hiding inside the holds of the ships.

  “Strange there are no bodies out here,” Dah noted, echoing Anderson’s own thoughts.

  “Must have dragged them away after they secured the landing port,” Anderson said, not certain why anyone would want to do that.

  Using hand signals he motioned his team across the deserted landing port and up to the entrance of the base. The sliding blast doors were featureless and smooth—they were controlled by a simple security panel on the wall. But the fact that the doors were closed didn’t sit well with the lieutenant.

  Anderson was at the head of the team; they all stopped short when he crouched down and held up a raised fist. He held up two fingers, signaling for O’Reilly. Hunched over, the corporal moved to the head of the line and fell in beside his leader, resting on one knee.

  “Any reason those doors should be closed?” the lieutenant asked him in a sharp whisper.

  “Seems a little weird,” he admitted. “If someone wanted to wipe out the base, why bother sealing the doors when you leave?”

  “Check it out,” Anderson told his tech expert. “Take it slow and careful.”

  O’Reilly hit a button on his assault rifle, causing the handle, stock, and barrel to fold in on themselves until the gun was a compact rectangle half its normal length. He slapped the collapsed weapon into the locking holster on his hip. From a pocket on his other leg he pulled out an omnitool and crept forward, using it to scan the area for faint signals that would indicate the presence of any unusual electronics.

  “Nice catch, LT,” he muttered after checking the results. “Proximity mine wired to the door.”

  The corporal made a few adjustments to the omnitool, emitting a short energy pulse to jam the sensors on the mine so he could creep forward close enough to disarm it. The entire process took less than a minute. Anderson held his breath the whole time, only releasing it when O’Reilly turned and gave him the thumbs-up to indicate that the trap had been rendered harmless.

  A nod from Anderson sent the rest of the team rushing forward to breach the door, taking up their preassigned positions. Anderson and Shay moved to either side of the entrance, backs pressed against the exterior wall of the building. Chief Dah crouched low in line with the door, a few meters away. Behind her and slightly off to the side Lee had his assault rifle raised and pointed at the entrance, providing Dah’s cover.

  O’Reilly, crouched down beside Anderson, reached up and punched in the access code on the panel. As the doors slid open, Dah tossed a flash-bang grenade from her belt into the foyer beyond, then dove to the side and rolled for cover. Lee did the same as the grenade detonated with a blinding flash of light and a fog of thin, wispy smoke.

  An instant after the blast Anderson and Shay spun in through the door, rifles raised and ready to gun down any enemies inside. It was a classic flash-and-clear maneuver, executed with flawless precision. But the room beyond the door was empty, save for a few splatters of blood on the floor and walls.

  “All clear,” Anderson said, and the rest of the team came in to join him. The entry was a plain room with a single hallway leading off the back wall deeper into th
e base. There was a small table flipped in the corner and several overturned chairs. A monitor on the wall showed an image of the landing port outside.

  “Guard post,” Dah said, the evidence confirming for her what Anderson had suspected earlier. “Probably four of them stationed here to keep an eye on the space port. Must’ve opened the blast doors when the ships landed and went out to help them unload their cargo.”

  “I’ve got blood smears heading down this hallway, Lieutenant,” Private Indigo called out. “Looks like the bodies were dragged out of this room and back into the facility.”

  Anderson still couldn’t figure out why anyone would drag the bodies away like this, but at least it gave them a clear trail. The ground team slowly made their way deeper into the base, following the smears of blood. The trail took them through to the cafeteria, where they saw more overturned tables and chairs, as well as holes in the walls and ceiling—clear indication that the room had recently been witness to a brief but intense firefight.

  Further in they passed two separate dormitory wings. The door to each individual room had been kicked open and the interiors, like the cafeteria, were riddled with bullet holes. A picture formed in Anderson’s mind: the attackers, once inside, systematically going from room to room, massacring everyone in a hail of gunfire…and then dragging the bodies away with them.

  By the time they reached the back of the building they had yet to see any sign that enemy troops were still here. They did, however, make a separate discovery that none of them had been expecting. At the very rear of the facility was a single large elevator going straight down into the earth below.

  “No wonder this base looks so small,” O’Reilly exclaimed. “All the good stuff is buried underground!

  “Damn, I wish we knew what they were working on,” he muttered a moment later in a more somber tone. “God knows what we’re about to walk into.”