Mass Effect: Spectres [PM, M, B] - Page 2

Draith gave Kirrahe a quick stare before moving past him and heading towards the Gorot’s elevator, not bothering to acknowledge him with a salute or a wave. There was a scowl etched across his face, for all the salarians aboard to witness. A scowl that clearly stated the krogan didn’t like this ship at all, let alone its crew.

Three hours. On a ship. Full of salarians.

Even Earth wasn’t worth this shit to a krogan.

Draith entered the elevator and turned to watch the doors close behind him. He was getting to the cargo bay before anything else.

…

The doors slid open. Draith grunted as he stepped forward, into the cargo bay. He was a bit surprised at how spacious it was for a salarian ship. Such a small race could do with tighter quarters. But for the most part, it was open enough for Draith to stretch his biotics a bit before this mission to Mars.

Draith took a moment to scan the area’s contents. There were plenty of crates and containers holding… whatever they were holding, Draith never bothered figuring out what.

Draith raised his arms and exhaled a bit before biotic energy began to emanate around him. He quickly pulled his hands close to each other. A handful of containers were surrounded by the same familiar purple, pulsating energy, and immediately pulled towards the center of the ship and clustered together.

Draith slowly lifted his hands higher, and the containers rose up, floating and orbiting each other.

Draith did this every now and then either to keep himself occupied, and to remind himself of a couple of things. It made him feel in control, and a little more powerful than he knew he already was. This was kind of his form of meditation. He did this with whatever he could find nearby when he felt like it. It used to only be rocks or rubble. Sometimes it was furniture. Rarely it was some unfortunate people who happened to piss Draith off while he was in a bad mood.

Not all times the objects or people he pulled into this biotic field came out… intact.

Draith felt powerful. Draith felt… partly, in control.

This ship. Pretty much everyone on this ship, all these salarians, didn’t want him aboard. That was obvious from the looks on their faces. Krogan and salarians don’t work together, in terms of both fighting and mentality. And knowing he’d be the sole krogan aboard Kirrahe’s little ship for the duration of this effort to help humanity was not an appealing thought.

Draith was the strongest one here. Maybe not the smartest, or the most agile, but he was no doubt the strongest. He was not the most powerful or influential, though. Kirrahe took that role. He was in charge. He called the shots. Everything that has happened and will happen is because of him and Udina. And when they all reached Mars, he’d most assuredly be giving orders to Draith, most likely to just kill anything that even moves.

It’d been a centuries since he was even given an order. It was usually him doing such. A burly krogan warrior was not the kind of person you tell to go get you a drink or something. But this wasn’t ship duty… this was another little war.

Draith thought for a moment while still he kept the containers suspended in the air. He decided… he could handle this. He could stand taking orders, even from a salarian. But the moment Kirrahe, or any of these specially selected individuals for that matter, even thought they held power over him… then there’d be a real problem.

Draith kept his focus and exhaled once more, watching intently as the containers continued levitating.

A for Gerald, he made himself comfortable in his quarters. It was typical Spartan style accommodations, which didn't bother the Lieutenant at all. He had long before gotten used to the living conditions the Alliance had given him, but he was thankful that the Salarians adopted a similar setup. The only annoyance was the nonstop red blinking light line going head level across his quarters.

Can't be prefect I guess, something has to be off on every mission.

With that Lieutenant Raynor unpacked and organized his room in Alliance Inspection order, the exception being two posters which he placed at strategic locations in his quarters. The first one was a picture of of the beautiful beach front of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil back on Earth which Gerald placed on the wall next to his cot to remind him of the paradise he was trying to save.

The second was on opposite wall showing a timeline of Earth's major advances and events from the Stone Age up to Space Age, which was quite a large poster. Some of the Events boldly drawn were Ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, the Reinasance Era, Imperialistic Europe, America, both World Wars, the Digital Age, and the here and now with the discovery of the Mass Effect Relay on Pluto. It was given to him by his Military History professor who was impressed that Gerald showed dedication and respect to his homeworld's past.

The Human officer's mind began wondering how many other historical rich species and cultures now faced the threat of extinction. He remembered the Spartan's stand at Thermopylae, the Allied Invasion of Normandy, the charge of the noble six hundred, the birth of the United States of America, the Scientific, Russian, and French Revolutions, the Three Kingdoms Era of China, the Crusades, the Warring States Era of Japan, the Nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even the beginnings of the Digitial Age...

Gearld sat down on his cot and gazed at the timeline of humanity with a heavy heart. For he knew the Reapers meant to end it all. There was no Leonidas, George Washington, Patton, Tsao Tsao, Nobunaga ... no noted hero to stand up to this new threat.

Just the team on the Gorot ... and him.

As if on cue, his stomach growled, making the Lieutenant chuckle a bit and speak to himself, "Man, always happens when I get to thinking too much. Yeah, time to see if the mess hall has any edible grub. I just hope they brought along some human food."

As he exited his quarters bay he made a mental note that after eating he should head to the cargo bay and get my his gear ready.

Mars ... the Roman God of War. I'm willing to bet war is what we will find on that red hunk of rock.

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OOC: Not the best on my end, but I got Gerald settled at least. Feel free to converse with him if you wish, other than that consider him ready to deploy!

Kybur If I did something wrong with Draith, please let me know and I'll fix that. The same goes for everybody else, but they other characters were only very mildly used with no specifics. In any case: enjoy.

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The Gorot was mostly a functional ship, even with its sleek design. Quarters were spartan, terminals utilitarian. Because of this, it came as a complete surprise to Laya when she and each of her companions were each given separate quarters, unlike most of the rest of the crew. This was strange, but perhaps understandable. Afterall, they were each a different species, and what were good environmental conditions for one, might not be for another. Not to mention that if the Krogan had to sleep with anyone, he would probably eat them.

Shortly after boarding, another crate was delivered to Laya. It contained her combat suit, once again courtesy of the human councilor Udina. Her guns had been a surprise, initial she thought they had been her own, but she had received an M-8 Avenger rather than her usual M-15 Vindicator, and thus they couldn't be her own. No, the man had just found out what her usual weapons were and had delivered them. The M-8 must've been a mistake or a shortage. Still, at least she wouldn't have to go into battle empty-handed, even though she technically could as a Biotic. Her father's contacts had often said that fully trained she would likely not even be using a gun in combat. She probably wasn't there yet, though.

The suit was made by Kassa Fabrication and was completely air-tight so it could be used for combat on any world. Laya couldn't even pretend to know all the technologies that went into the suit, but she did know it was used by at least several military units, and thus it must be reliable. Reading through the manual, she discovered this particular suit was equipped with additional shield emitters and redundant generators, giving it an extra edge in the kinetic shield department.

Since they had so little time before they would arrive at their destination, she thought it wouldn't do any harm to put on the suit and get used to the feel. She actually had very little experience with putting on this type of suit, always having worked with light-weight shield generators and body armor for training.

Laying out the armour on her rather simple bed, it slowly became apparent to Laya how the whole thing fit together. She first had to put on a suit that seemed to be made of carbon-fiber, thick rough parallel strands standing out on the outside while the inside was more uniform, pressing on her skin with supple strength. The feeling was actually quite pleasant to Laya, she had always liked skintight undergarments, and this one was no different. It even caressed her buttocks and other regions quite nicely, despite not being the bottommost layer of clothing she was wearing.

After putting the suit on, she proceeded with locking herself in the chest armour, which seemed designed to be easy to use. She only had to basically step into the armour and adjust it around her chest before it automatically began to adjust itself to her shape, locking itself tightly and securely around her body. The greaves came next. Large, heavy things they were, but they too adjust themselves as soon as she stepped into them. Kneeheight was fixed to make running easy for her, and when the adjustments were done, the boots felt like they weighed almost nothing at all. Her gauntlets were more of a manual "just stick your arms in", but they fit just as snugly and comfortably as the rest.

When she finally thought she was done, she cought two more pieces beside her helmet on the bed. Shoulder pieces, apparently. Once again, she had no idea how to attach them, so she tried holding them on her shoulder to see if she could figure anything out. One automatically clicked into place. She tried the same on the other shoulder, but when she tried to remove the piece again to do it over, she simply couldn't. The thing was fixed in place, completely immovable except by rotating her shoulders. Very strange, but probably the best for in combat.

Taking the M-8 Avenger and the M-5 Phalanx off the bed, she attached them to their magnetic hardpoint on her suit. The M-8 hovered but a few millimeters behind her right shoulder, the M-5 a few millimeters off of her left hip. That left only the M-55 Argus in the corner of her room. It was the gun she had most recently been training with, yet she didn't feel ready to carry it into combat at all. She still had significant problems with its weight, and thus with aiming the damn thing, and that was something she could sorely miss on the battlefield.

Taking a look at herself in the mirror in her quarters, she felt ready. Nervous, but ready. This is what she wanted, this was what she had trained to do. Her almost black grey armour with its bright blue highlights was quite intimidating. All the little round buttons, the thick "cables" running over her arms, and the little sections in between the large solid armour pieces were all highlighted in the bright blue. Under the lights in the ship it was quite easily visible, but she imagined that under poorer lighting conditions her armour would just meld into the darkness with only the highlights being slightly visible, which was intimidating enough to some. It was common that species had a fear of the dark, actually seeing something strange in the dark made it worse. On the other hand, the armour was all sleek curves, which was somewhat less intimidating, but Laya wasn't too upset about that little detail. Taking her helmet under her left arm, Laya stepped out of her quarters into the Gorot's common areas.

She had to make her way to the center of the ship to get to a higher level of the ship before she could go to a briefing room of sorts at the back of the ship. Walking in the suit was a little awkward, but surprisingly easy given the weight she knew the suit had. She felt ready, oh so ready for what she was going to do today.

She was the first to arrive in the briefing room, but captain Rentola and major Kirrahe soon followed with the rest of her fellow recruits in tow. They all looked much more used to their armour than she was. The first words that were spoken were about just that.

"Why do we have a rookie on board?" The krogan rumbled loudly.

Hesitating as little as she could make herself hesitate, she sent a biotic throw-projectile at the krogan, followed immediately by a stasis bubble. The hulking brute easily deflected her first attack, surprisingly, but the second attack took him completely off guard. As it did to anyone, since you simply couldn't see it coming. That's why it was such an effective attack.

Calmly she pulled out her Phalanx and aimed it right at one of the Krogan's eyes, then released the bubble. "You were saying."

The Krogan only hmphed in response, but she thought she could see a glimmer of respect in his eyes. Maybe it was just her imagination.

The briefing was a long one. While the initial talk of what they were getting into was a short one, since they knew very little of what was waiting for them, the tactical planning took until they had almost arrived at Mars. The different cultures did not see eye to eye on how to approach the facility. Even the two humans did not agree, but the man seemed to give in to the woman easily. That meant she was above him in rank, Laya reasoned, though she knew all too little of human military ranks. She only knew of commander Shepard, the first human spectre who had since betrayed the council. It wasn't her problem, but it didn't exactly give her a lot of confidence about her teammates either. If humans were this fickle, would they even look out for their teammates?

Three shuttles were in the shuttle bay, and by two of them, teams of Salarian STG agents were waiting. Some of them nodded to her, she had met them before though it was hard to recognise members of a species that looked so alike under all that combat gear. The third shuttle was theirs, and theirs alone. Rentola and Kirrahe each took a different shuttle.

Five members of different species, well, apart from the two humans. It didn't seem right to Laya to send in five people who had never worked together in under no-one's leadership in particular. This wasn't going to end well at all, though she suspected it would end even worse for whoever got in the krogan's way. He looked... agitated.

When they finally set down on the ground, the krogan and the human male were the first ones out of the shuttle, each making a quick sweep of the surroundings as the others jumped out.

The shuttle left them behind as they made their way toward the nearest airlock.