Whole, Part 2 (a Mass Effect fanfiction)

Hand-to-Hand Combat

The three of them joined the thousands of other troops pouring through the streets of London, facing off against the thousands of Reaper forces already there on the ground. Shepard didn't stop to think about the civilians who must be hunkered down in pockets of rubble, or about who the troops she was facing now had been once upon a time. Her job was to clear the streets, to hold the line until Leviathan and Hackett could get the Crucible in place, to fight her way to the Reapers on the ground, to try to keep alive those allies who still survived.

At least, she started out with those high-minded ideals. Somewhere along the way, in the dirt and the crumbled pieces of concrete and the remnants of people's lives, her mind became focused on the here and now. This marauder, that husk, the next cannibal.

She listened to the chatter through the comms with half an ear—which was all it took, really, because it was all the same. Troops overrun, the way forward blocked, tanks lost, ordnance failing. They were always going to lose the ground war. She had known that. She hadn't liked it, but she had known it. She'd stopped thinking about it.

Ahead of her, a group of soldiers huddled behind an overturned tank. Alliance, mostly, but she saw a krogan in the mix and a couple of asari commandos.

"What are we waiting for?" she asked, approaching them. "Let's clear this street."

One of the commandos looked at her, eyes widening. "Commander Shepard?"

"The same," Javik confirmed.

The other commando nudged her friend. "That's the Prothean."

"I am. I have crossed thousands of years to be here at the end of the Reapers. Can you not cross a single street?"

"They have those—those things," one of the Alliance soldiers protested. He pointed, but the gesture was unnecessary, because they all heard the ear-splitting scream of a banshee ... and the two more that echoed behind it.

"Then we take them down." Shepard looked at Kaidan and Javik. "You with me?"

"Always."

She drew her gun—the small, light, easy-to-carry pistol she had taken off a CAT-6 soldier in the fish restaurant. That seemed like a lifetime ago. Aiming, she picked off a husk that was just climbing over the tank, and she left the small shell-shocked group of fighters behind her as she went around it and into the street, crowded as it was with Reaper troops.

Between them, she and Javik took out the first banshee with concentrated fire. Kaidan was off to her left somewhere, blasting away at the second with a shotgun. To her horror, Shepard saw two brutes detach themselves from the larger group of Reaper forces and head for his position.

"Kaidan!" she shouted, then again through her comm, hastily thumbing the channel open even as she ran and aimed and fired. Javik moved to the right to deal with the last banshee.

Shepard fired round after round into the brutes, with no visible evidence that the bullets even slowed them down. Then the gun jammed, the heat sink stuck in it. There was no time to fiddle with it. There wasn't even time to pull another weapon from its holder on her back.

Screaming, she flung herself on the back of the first brute, activating her omni-tool and plunging its blade into the creature's skin, over and over again. It twisted around, trying to dislodge her, but she hung on. Its fellow was still storming Kaidan's position, and she redoubled her efforts with the omni-tool. Finally the brute gave a shuddering groan and tumbled to the ground.

Shepard leaped off it, landing on her feet and racing after the other one. She punched it in the back, not even waiting to activate the omni-tool again. And when it turned to face her, she slugged it in the face. Never mind that it was half again as tall as she was and weighed probably three times what she did. She punched it in the face again and again and again, barely aware of its blows in return landing on her shields or the blaring warning from her suit that the shields were perilously close to falling.

At last a shot rang out from behind the brute, and it fell forward. Shepard scrambled out of the way before it landed on her, and looked up to see Kaidan standing there, shotgun still in his hands. "I mean, you can try hand-to-hand combat, but I find a shotgun slug is a lot more efficient," he said.

She managed not to fling herself into his arms in the burst of relief that followed the sight of him. Instead, she let him help her up, smiling at him. "Every once in a while, you have to get your hands dirty."

From their left, a familiar voice called her name, and she looked up to see Grunt emerging from the smoke. "Taking down two brutes with your bare hands. Always raising the bar, Battlemaster."

"Have to give you something to work towards." She'd have hugged Grunt, too, but he would have been horrified by the emotion, especially in the middle of battle.

"Shepard," he said, and then he was off, hurling himself into the thick of the fighting. From him, that was almost as good as a hug.

Her comm crackled to life, Major Coats' voice coming through. "Shepard, there's a missile launcher bogged down near you. The beam is interfering with the missile guidance. We need somebody over there."

"On it. Send the coordinates. I may be able to get the Normandy to help enhance the missiles' targeting capabilities."

"Do it!" Coats responded crisply.

Shepard glanced at Kaidan, and saw with relief that Javik had caught up with them. "New orders. Let's go launch some missiles."