Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

Nivea grit her teeth as she raced down the frigate’s tight corridors, trying to fix their position relative to the massive ship at the head of the Geth fleet in her mind. Growing up in the Asari Republics made her especially sensitive to mass effect fields and eezo even for a biotic, and the sheer force of the mass effect generators on that thing made her stomach clench every time their ship made a pass. She hissed as it started priming its main gun and pushed herself to run faster, using her greater height and body mass to shove people out of the way when necessary, desperate to reach her target. She would apologize later if there was anyone left to apologize to.

Ships were going down all around them, hulls sliced open effortlessly. Their kinetic barriers wouldn’t hold against even a glancing hit from that thing, much less a direct one. Nivea just hoped their pilot was as good as she thought she was. She felt the incoming energy beam before she saw it and practically slid around the last corner, eyes shut tight against the bright light as she instinctively threw up a barrier. Within seconds she felt the gravity shift as the light subsided behind her eyelids, and she activated the maglocks on her boots. There was a powerful rush of air next, and she was grateful for the training that made her activate them. Just a glancing hit, but it had sheared off part of the hull in this section as expected. The immediate power loss would force them to drop their shredded barriers and push everything they had into the engines if they had even a hope of escaping, but it wouldn’t be enough. The glancing strike just missed the ship’s drive core, but any abrupt maneuver would tear this section of the ship apart completely, which would eventually lead down into the engineering deck. They were sitting ducks if she didn’t do something fast.

Moving as fast as the boots would let her, she headed for the hull breach, expanding her barrier as she went. She shut out the panicked voices ringing in her ears over the coms and the dead bodies near the breach. No time for either. “Hull breach, port side, subdeck just above engineering.” She heard herself say without thinking, flanged voice sounding oddly disconnected even to her ears. Shock, maybe. Or strain from the biotic energy she was burning through quickly. She had no time for either. “I’m at the breach site. Do what you have to; I’ll hold us together as long as I can. Goddess be with us all.”

Arms stretched out above and in front of her to shape the barrier, Nivea could already feel the burn settling in as energy crackled along her skin. The floor was mostly intact, so she could focus all her energy above and out, at least. She felt the breach widen slightly as she approached the edge of the gap, and she reached without thinking, pulling the edges together and sealing them in with her barrier the best she could. It wouldn’t hold out forever, and neither would she, but the only other option was certain death. She closed her eyes and grit her teeth again, mandibles pressed tight against her jaw as the mass effect field bore down on her like a wave, trying to drag her under. Even at a fraction of its normal mass, the weight of the ship was punishing, the pain of her biotics eating through her energy reserves sharp and inescapable. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except holding on as long as she could.

If even one person survives, then it was worth it…

She would’ve smiled if she had the energy to spare for it. Turian after all, then. It probably wouldn’t be enough to earn her a place with her ancestors, but her mother would be proud.