Mass Effect: The Requiem Saga: Genesis.
Volume 1.
Chapter 10.
A barrel pointed straight at me. I had been shot at before on this day, but this was the first time I’ve felt helpless when a gun is pointed at me.
Bartok: Die, human scum.
BRUHKOWH!His gunshot down at me, but using pure instinct, I rolled right out of the way and onto my knees.
“Anderson! Get down!”
I burst off my knees as he began to turn the gun toward me again and I grabbed his pistol, slamming him and the gun against the wall, pinching my fingers somewhat.
I punched him once in the face and then smashed my forearm onto the arm he was holding the gun with, breaking his grip with the pistol.
Bartok: Rrgh!
Bartok then slammed his elbow into my face, knocking me to the ground and causing me throw the pistol over the railing and down to the bottom of the hangar.
Bartok: All right, scum. You want to fight a warlord hand to hand?
I scrambled to my feet, looking at him in the eyes as he charged toward me.
Bartok: Then let us fight!
I moved out of the way as if I was bullfighter, then he immediately span around, trying to hit me with a swinging right hook, but missing by a mile.
“Hn!”
I kicked at his calf and he faltered, allowing me to come at him with a left jab, but with quite surprising strength, he just shoved me back, almost causing me to lose my footing.
Bartok: Grgh!
Bartok came in with a left hook to the body, hitting its mark, then a right one to my other side, hitting it as well.
“Guh!”
Bartok: Your kind is pathetic.
While I flinched in pain, he came at me with a hard left straight, dazing me to the point where I barely felt the pain of his next punch to my jaw, only the impact.
Bartok: Soft and weak. Tch.
I fell back onto the cover I had used earlier, grabbing it to stop me from hitting the floor.
Bartok: Graah!
I shot out a desperate thrust kick with my left foot into his stomach, hitting him and pushing him back slightly. I followed it up with an upwards-snap kick with my right.
Bartok: Hoofh!
Then, quick as anything, I flew forward with all my weight and landed a strong overhand haymaker with my right hand, knocking him straight to the floor.
Thank God for those self-defense classes, mom.
Bartok: Hnh. The human knows how to fight.
Before I could get into a ready position, he swept my legs out from under me, jumping onto me and began to rain down punches.
Bartok: Grgh! Rah! Die!
I defended, but I was getting hit enough times where it was hard to think of a way out of this. I attempted to grab one of his arms and go for a gogoplata of some sort, but he angrily swapped the attempt away and hit me again.
Bartok: Gah!
Bartok looked up, seeing Anderson who had hit him with a PDA in the back of the neck. Bartok stood up quickly, grabbing Anderson and throwing him to the floor.
Bartok: Fool!
Bartok attempted to go for a strike on the downed Anderson, but I leapt to my feet and tackled him full force in the back, but I went upward slightly, being able to push him into the air and next to the table filled with PDAs and other documents that Anderson was attending to. However, there were also a few weapons.
“Anderson, get the hell out of here!”
Anderson nodded after I helped him to his feet and limped out of the way.
Bartok: Fucking… humans…
Bartok stood up, nearly growling. He looked at the table and grabbed the grenade launcher that Anderson was saving up in case we needed it. He looked over at me and leveled his shot.
Bartok: Burn in hell!
Bartok pulled the trigger and the shot burst out of the barrel and toward me. I panicked, but it was slow enough that I was able to jump out of the way, hearing it shoot past me and hit a pair of docking clamps that held one side of a starship up.
The starship creaked as one side fell down as gravity began to affect it, ripping the other two docking clamps off as it fell. The starship fell down into the bottom of the hangar and an explosion erupted, the flames that licked at the bottom of the walkway taking the form of a spreading fire.
Bartok: Damn…
Bartok was getting ready to fire another shot at me, but by then, I was angry enough and was filled with enough adrenaline that I had already bolted over there and tackled him into the table.
He grunted in pain in response, throwing an elbow down onto my shoulder, which I met with a shoulder block into his stomach. I stood up, rearing to my side and coming back with a full-force right hook, then a left one. Both hitting their mark, he tried to retaliate with an uppercut to the gut, but I hit him with a forearm smash, causing him to fall back onto the table.
Bartok: Gah!
Bartok kicked his legs out and shot me backward and onto the floor. I stood up by rolling to the side quickly, finding myself near the railing and near where Jervis’ body was. The Batarian warlord saw as my eyes caught on him.
Bartok: You’ll be dead along with your human brethren soon enough, boy.
Bartok advanced and immediately, I shot a kick into his stomach, following it up by grabbing him by the armor and slamming him into the railing.
Bartok: Agh!
I let him fall to his knees, but he swung his fist back, striking me with enough force to break a bone in my stomach. I keeled over to the side, barely being able to keep on my feet. I don’t think anything broke… I hope.
Bartok: Hrgh!
The warlord grabbed my arm I was holding my stomach with and wrenched it backwards, ripping off all the armor from my right shoulder downward. He was incredibly strong, even for someone of his race. Or maybe that was normal.
Bartok threw out a thrust kick into my side, pushing me onto the walkway and causing me to trip over Jervis. I was still clutching my stomach as I writhed on the floor from the pain.
Bartok: I can’t wait to rip the eyes out of your corpse, cut off your head, and mail it back to your family.
My family… my father, my mother, my sister… I love them to death. They might be in another universe, in another time… but I can’t let them down. I can’t let anybody down. No matter where I am, what time I’m at, I have to keep going.
So I pushed myself back to my feet, despite my whole body screaming no at me, and looked around me. I was on a somewhat narrow walkway with railing on either side. I could charge, but there’s a good chance he could throw me overboard by just overpowering me with his strength advantage.
Bartok: Oh, the little human wants to fight? Good, it’s already boring enough fighting a human, one with no heart would be even worse.
So I tried something that I never thought I’d ever do. I saw something like this once in an MMA fight and my self-defense trainer was able to do this. I ran forward, but before he could retaliate, I jumped to the side, using my right foot to push off the barricade, and then kicked him hard through the head.
Bartok: Hrnh!
From the force of the kick, Bartok flipped straight over the railing. He was able to stop himself and grab onto the bars for a moment, but he fell down into the fires below. One leg was halfway over the railing from the kick, causing me to nearly fall over as I balanced and situated myself on the walkway.
Bartok: AAGHHH-…
His screaming faded out as the fires began to grow more intense. I looked at my arm first. It was exposed and it was my shooting arm, if something even grazed it, I’m done for. So I looked over to see Jervis’ body on the walkway ahead of me.
I kneeled down beside him and looked at his right arm armor and his right shoulder pad. There was a red stripe inside of a white stripe that went all the way down. I noticed it before but didn’t ask. I recognized it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, as my brain was too frazzled from the fight.
So I gingerly took off his right arm armor and put it on me, looking down at the red and white stripe and realizing that it looked pretty good on me.
Holy shit… I actually beat a trained soldier at his own game with a Hail Mary kick. I… I actually did it.
But it’s no time to celebrate. The fight is still going on.
So I ran over to the table, grabbed the grenade launcher, and took cover near the exit of the hangar as the flames began to cover more and more ground.
Immediately, I saw a scene that caused me to flinch. The pirates had pushed back the colonists and Galen to the point where they were nearly directly in front of the room.
So… I took a deep breath, then ran forward and shot out a grenade, taking out maybe four or five of the many pirates.
Galen: Shepard!
The colonists nearly cheered, but were preoccupied with the battle.
“Push back! Push them back to the entrance! For your family, for your home, for Elysium!”
The colonists erupted in a passionate war cry as they went all out against the enemy, bursting with enough ferocity that the pirates began to slowly move back to the entrance with the aid of my carefully placed grenade launcher shots. I grabbed Galen’s shoulder.
“Galen, get everyone in the storage room and you bring them out here. A fire is spreading and they may get caught up in it.”
Galen: Roger. Leave it to me.
Galen ran back to attend to the wounded and Anderson as we continued to push forward.
Batarian: Don’t fall back! Pus-
I shot a grenade at the Batarian’s feet, taking him and two others out with the explosion. The pirates were losing morale quickly and were nearly retreating by this point.
“Push! This is our final stand! Push, dammit, push!”
I was screaming out orders and anything that I could think of, sending our colonists into a passionate and rage-filled frenzy as we ran them outside.
Then we saw outside and for a moment, we hesitated. Down the ramp leading to the docking port, many other troops were still waiting, an armored vehicle ready to pick us off was stationed, but we did not stop. We pushed on, taking cover as their full force and ours got into a full-blown firefight.
“Dammit… do not falter! Don’t stop now, whatever you do! Go! Fire!”
We made our way onto the ramp, taking cover with whatever we could.
And then, suddenly, a concussive shot blew into my side. I flew back along with one other colonist, sliding across the floor from the shot.
“Hrrrnghhh…”
The air from my system had left me and I was gasping, clawing for breath. I watched the late night sky and the colonists as they continued firing as if I was still there leading them. It was… inspirational.
I looked down the ramp to see the armored vehicle come to life and it seemed to start moving to get its sights on me. I needed to move… but I couldn’t. I’d already put my body through a lot and the lack of breath coupled with panic made it hard to move my upper body or lower body at all.
I clawed at the air for breath, my panic earlier already making it hard to breath, barely holding on when I noticed a sound.
“Ggh?”
The sound grew… and grew… until lights appeared. But those weren’t just lights. They were explosions. Huge ones.
And then a cheer erupted as a barrage of artillery rained down from the sky, taking out the Batarians below. The armored vehicle exploded in a rain of sparks and fire as the continuous cheer continued.
I could see bursts of light in the night sky. Explosions of ships. Pirate ships.
More artillery fire throughout the colony came into vision when I looked up to see a starship, a frigate of some sort, firing down upon the pirates.
And the symbol on the side?
The Systems Alliance.
I… I did it. We did it… we held out… we won… we… hrngh… we…
And then everything faded into unconsciousness…
To Be Continued…
