Noveria

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.

"I like the new trick," Sentry said with a smile. "Remind me never to piss you off, alright?" Braden smiled in response, sank into the Hammerhead completely, and strapped himself into his seat. Sentry could tell that the charge had wiped the young man out, so he tapped away at the console as quick as he could and sent the Hammerhead racing off in the direction of the exfil point. He could hear the base's raid sirens echoing behind them and all he could do was smile to himself.

"Hammerhead to Viper," Sentry said as he looked over the consoles one more time to make sure that everything had stabilized back to almost its regular levels, "we're approaching the exfil point now. Get her in as close as you can because I'm not running on enough energy to make an Olympic sized leap in this thing."

"You got it, boss," Darcy replied. "I'm coming in low. Just, please, don't scuff the paint."

"I don't really give a rat's ass if he scuffs the paint or not," Titus' voice rang out. "Just get back on here in one piece, Valentine. There's been enough excitement for today."

"You're fuckinay right about that, sir," Sentry replied with a laugh.



The cabin that Sentry had been given aboard the Vindicator looked basrely lived in: The walls weren't adorned with any kind of personal pictures, there were no books strewn across his desk, no clothes visible except for the ones he had on. There was only one thing that hadn't been in the cabin at the time of his move, and that was a picture frame on the bedside stand that held a photograph of a brunette woman.

Sentry tore his eyes away from the picture and looked down at the black and red leather jacket that covered his stout torso. His fingers slid across an embroidered N7 emblem on the chest and his eyes closed. He heard the door slide open somewhere ehind him and his eyes snapped open, his gaze caught once again on the picture.

"She's very pretty," he heard Titus say from behind him. "Yours?"

"She was, yeah," Sentry replied after a short silence, though his eyes never left the picture. "Every time I get back breathing from a mission, I always come back to my room and apologise over and over and over to her for not getting her out of there safely. I think she forgives me, but I just can't stop."

"What happened," Titus asked.

"Bad shit," Sentry replied, his gaze falling back to the N7 logo on his chest. "Really bad shit. Reason why I left the Alliance kind of shit. Reason why I never thought I'd wear this jacket again kind of shit."

"Sounds like a story," Titus replied as he moved forward and took a seat on the edge of Sentry's desk. "Care to talk about it?"

Sentry half-smiled and stood from his bunk, turning to his commanding officer. "Maybe some other time, sir. How's Braden doing?" Titus stood from the desk and the corners of his mouth tugged into a smirk. Sentry could tell how proud he was of the boy just from hearing his name.

"He's fine. The kid's in his room taking a well-deserved nap. I would say 'thanks for looking out for him, down there', but it seems he was the one looking out for you." Titus smiled to himself and he paced over to one of the windows in Sentry's quarters and stared into the passing abyss, beyond the blue emissions caused by the FTL speed.

"This is very true," Sentry said with a chuckle. "The boy's strong, Titus. I've never seen a biotic his age that could charge, and I've met maybe a handful of older biotics that could charge that far and that fast without passing out."

The commander nodded and replied, "Mr. Reynolds is equipped with the experimental L5x implants. While they're not the type designed for hard, fast strikes; they can up the biotic output of their user. His amps also came from the Ascension Project. So Braden has had a lot of money put into his training. Its only expected that he perform so well. But I want to be sure he's capable of doing more than just throwing his enemies around without touching them. I need him caught up to speed on everything else a good Cerberus operative needs to know. Captain Azuric Villayn - that turian in the blue armor you've seen walking around here - is training the boy in CQB. I'd like you to instruct him on how to properly handle and maintain his own weapon systems." Titus turned to face the man with a commissioning look. "Can you handle that?"

"Seems like a simple enough task, so I think I'm your man," Sentry replied with a nod. "Pick a time and send him to the armory. I'd be much obliged if we could hold out on it till tomorrow, though, if it's all the same to you."

"Very well, then. Expect him in your armory tomorrow at 0800 hours." Titus turned and started for the door, as he stepped in between the threshold, he glanced back at Sentry and added, "And Valentine... if you ever need to talk, I have an open door policy." The commander left it at that and stepped back into the corridor to allow the door to slide shut completely.