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Snippet #1875823

located in Noveria, a part of Mass Effect: On the Edge, one of the many universes on RPG.

Noveria

A frozen planet in the Pax System, Horse Head Nebula.

Setting

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Braden Reynolds Character Portrait: Stephen "Sentry" Valentine Character Portrait: Sibyl Carson
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As soon as Sentry vaulted up and out of the Hammerhead, Braden grabbed his rifle and unbuckled the harness around him. The barrel of his Avenger popped up out of the access hatch immediately after Sentry’s boots were out of the way. It would be his second time to actually use the gun against Aurora troopers, and this time they would be firing back at him. The young man took a deep breath and steadied his aim as he brought the sights up to his first target. When he exhaled, he paused his breathing and squeezed the trigger for a brief second. A short controlled burst of mass accelerated rounds pummeled the soldier square in his chest. The barriers absorbed the rounds, but Braden could tell by the electrical arcs around him that its strength was failing.

The second burst of rounds ensured the barriers were no longer a problem, and final punctured the soldier’s chest before he could stumble behind cover. Two soldiers later, Braden glanced around to take a look at Sentry’s progress. The man was busy applying what had to be Omni-gel to the damaged and exposed electronics just inside the Hammerhead’s hull. Sentry glanced up and, with a shocked expression, yelled, “Hey! Eyes on the fight, kid!”

Slightly annoyed, but nonetheless determined to obey, Braden spun back around in the hatch and concentrated his focus on the task at hand: protecting Sentry while he worked his engineering magic. More soldiers came pouring out of the woodwork within the base, all sprinting at full speed in a desperate attempt to overwhelm the helpless Cerberus attackers. The majority of them were running past a large supply platform, complete with crates, Helium-3 drums, and what were the unmistakable silhouettes of several combustible containers. Thinking fast, Braden brought the sights over to the containers and let loose with several more bursts from the triggers. It took several rounds, but he finally got the right puncture to do the trick. The resulting explosion sent more than a dozen Aurora troopers flying in every direction away from the concussive blast.

Braden smiled to himself as he admired the carnage, but his attention was quickly drawn to the lone figure about sixty or seventy meters to the left of the Hammerhead’s position. He didn’t need to look twice to recognize a missile launcher. The single trooper had used the distracting horde of his fellow comrades to his advantage and managed to flank Braden and Sentry. Braden glanced back to the devastation he had caused to make sure no one else was running for them from that direction, before he vaulted out of the hatch completely and jumped down into the snow. Despite the inner warmth his enviro-suit offered, he still felt a shiver of cold running along his spine whenever his boots pounded onto Noveria’s frozen surface.

“Sentry!” he yelled. “I’ll be right back!”

“WHAT?!” the man bellowed, even though he kept working on the damage.

Braden broke into the fastest run he could manage in the tall blanket of snow and ice. The trooper had yet to fire his missile, and with Braden closing in so quickly, he wouldn’t get the chance. As the teen approached the platform the trooper was using as a height advantage, he lowered the launcher and reached for his Striker sidearm. With only ten meters between him and the trooper, the teen charged up as much biotic energy as he could while running and channeled it into a mass effect field around his body, decreasing his personal mass. This allowed him to move faster, being as light as feather and virtually unhindered by the elements around him.

The man fired his pistol too late and Braden was well clear of the round’s path. Before his opponent could even register what had happened, the teenager struck the side of his hand hand down on his wrist, effectively disarming him. The biotic used the elbow of the same arm and jabbed downward into the man’s gut, forcing him to buckle forward and stumbled back. Braden then refocused the energy forging the mass effect field around him, releasing it into a devastating, channeled pulse from his palm, pointed toward the dazed the rocket trooper. The man was hurdled nearly thirty yards across the ground until his helmet slammed into the bulkhead of one of the structures, either killing him or simply incapacitating him; either way, Braden was simply thankful he did all of that in the nick of time.

As he rushed back to the Hammerhead, he felt a slight dizziness in his head, but it strangely wasn’t that hindering. After that kind of biotic display, someone his age would have definitely fainted, but something was different. He felt stronger, more stable, more… energetic. Perhaps it was just the adrenaline, or maybe it was the training he had done with Villayn and the gradual increase of his own use of biotics. Whatever it was, he was grateful for it.

Braden ran up to the Hammerhead and jumped up to the hatch on top. As he settled in, he reached over his shoulder and grabbed the Avenger off its magnetic clip. “Sentry; how’re we doing?!” He glanced around to find the engineer. To his terror, the man was nowhere to be found. A second later, he felt a rough hand grab at his leg inside the hatch, and he practically jumped high enough to actually land outside the hover tank again. Only when he glanced down inside to see Sentry’s laughing face below him did he relax.




Janis sat comfortably in the white arm chair centered directly in front of the Operator’s desk, with legs crossed and hands holding up one of the newer data pad models. The entire body of the pad was an atomized haptic interface, braced and projected by all four sides of a light, black-polished alloy frame. It wasn’t has cheesy looking, or nearly as heavy and bulky, as the old key-input data pads the rest of the galaxy was still using. This one was convenient, longer-lasting, and – best of all – Alliance-manufactured. Agent Freeman loved to study other species, even loved making friends with them, but in the end, he was definitely the pro-human type; though he was careful to keep his personal prejudices personal.

The blue screen on the pad projected all sorts of information gathered on Cerberus by Oracle. Being one of the organization’s top information analysts, he already knew everything his eyes were scanning across, but it never hurt to refresh one’s memory; especially before an assignment as crucial as the one he was about to given by the Operator.

Sibyl Carson finished sending off the e-mail she had busied herself with composing while Agent Freeman brushed up on his Cerberus knowledge using her data pad. After ensuring the proper digital signature was attached, she tapped the send button on her screen and sat back in her chair. It was just the two of them in her office... her large, all-white office. It was difficult to tell, unless you were really looking, where the floor met the walls and the walls met the ceiling. Even the Operator’s desk and executive chair were white. The only colors that stood out were the clothes on their backs and the blue haptic interfaces on her desk and arrayed behind her in a series of three, large screens. Each of the large projections displayed a multitude of data about the galaxy: Oracle mission taskings, Citadel-sanctioned operations, inter-stellar stock ratings, even activity in the Terminus. None of this really awed Janis, however. He had been in the Operator’s office nearly a hundred times by now. Oracle’s headquarters was practically his second home – even out of the four hundred and thirty-eight Oracle safe houses in the galaxy (or the four hundred and thirty-eight that he knew of, anyway).

“Find anything new?” Sibyl asked after a while.

Janis rubbed his chain before tapping the standby button on the edge of the pad’s frame, shutting off the haptic interface to save power. “Nope,” he said, returning the hollowed pad to the Operator’s desk. “Nothing I don’t already know. Our friend, the Illusive Man, is keeping his secrets close these days. He’s making it increasingly difficult to gather inside information.”

“Yes, but with Omni Cell’s recent activity, we may finally have a chance at breaking that pattern.”

“I’m listening.”

Sibyl stood up from behind her desk and walked over to gaze at the center screen behind her, propping an elbow on an open palm and tapping her chin. “The Illusive Man may never let his guard down, but his followers are becoming increasingly careless. I have a… contact onboard one of their vessels; the Vindicator. He’s an old friend, but definitely a Cerberus loyalist.”

“You want to use him?”

“I’d rather have you do the using, Agent Freeman,” she said, turning her head to look at Janis through her peripheral. “There will come a time where he’s going to realize that he’s on the wrong side; and hopefully that time will be soon. When this realization occurs, he’s going to need our help. And you’ll be the one to offer that help. I’ll have Prophet forward you all the necessary information and mission parameters later.”

“Understood, ma’am.” Janis stood up from the chair, bowed slightly as any customary gentleman would, and then turned to leave.