I

He let a long sigh ease out as he stared at the readout in his hand. The words were a blur, the diagrams meaningless. But there was no mistaking the word at the bottom.

Terminal.

"We think it was extended exposure to the power cores in the mobile armor you piloted that corrupted your DNA, captain," the doctor in combat fatigues said. He knew the guy was a doctor because of the caduceus on his collar.

"The cores were supposed to be shielded, but combat wear and tear must've breached that shielding and let the rad from the core leak into your cockpit," he went on to say, trying to explain in words what the report in his hand already said.

"So, there's nothing, ..." he began to ask. The doctor quickly shook his head.

"We could've tried gene reconstruction, captain, if we were back in the Fed's core systems. But out here, on the battlefield, ..."

The doctor didn't finish. He didn't have to. The captain already knew what he would've said.

You're expendable.

He had heard it hundreds of times since leaving Boot and flying 10,000 light years to fight against an enemy that not only threatened billions of Fed lives. But had overrun the colony his family had taken refuge on as well, a world supposedly so far from the front, it would never be in danger. That attack took his wife, his son, and his eldest daughter. Took them after the government told him they'd be safe.

Casualties of war.

They were collateral damage in a war that saw thousands die everyday. Expendable, just like he was supposed to be. Yet, in his heart, and deep in his soul, they had never been collateral, never expendable, an afterthought in government records. He had fought to keep Them safe, nobody else.

Now only his youngest was left, an eleven year old daughter living with a cousin somewhere in the core systems. Eleven, with ten of those years spent without a father as he fought on distant battlefields to keep her safe. To her he wasn't expendable. He was all she had left.

And now he was going to die. Ironically not by the enemy's hand as he, and the government expected. But by being made terminally ill from leaked radiation inside the very piece of war tech meant to keep him alive.

"Is there anything we can do for you, captain?" the doctor asked, breaking him out of his reverie.

"Do I have enough time to fly back and see my daughter?" he asked, grimacing as his pain meds began to fade and the grinding agony set deep in his bones, the pain that had sent him to the sick bay to begin with, returned. The pain seemed to triple when the doctor shook his head.

"You've got days, captain," he grimly revealed. "Not the weeks needed to jump all the way back into the core."

He sighed again. He should've expected that.

"Then all I need is a data pad so I can update my will, and write a good bye letter to my daughter," he said, fighting to keep the hopelessness and misery out of his voice.

Nodding, the doctor turned and left, leaving the captain to his dark thoughts in the spartan examination room. So engrossed was he in that introspection, he didn't hear the door to the room open almost immediately after the doctor left.

"You look a little dispondant there, soldier," a hard voice dryly noted.

Instead of being startled, he felt a surge of anger wash through him at having his thinking disturbed.

"What the hell do you expect, man?" he growled. "The doc just told me I've only got days to live. I don't even have time to see my little girl before I kick it. That kinda news tends to make anybody feel a little down."

Jerking his eyes up from staring at the ground and towards the newcomer, he was about to spit something a bit more acidic when he caught the pair of stars on the guy's uniform collar.

"Uh, ... Sir," he finished somewhat lamely, his angry words prudently swallowed.

The general, a fellow with chiseled features marred by a scar that puckered his left cheek, slowly nodded as he met the captain's gaze.

"Especially when that news makes your family's future a little uncertain," the general added. "How about I give you some news that'll make you feel a bit better about all that?"

"Begging the general's pardon, but I'm not really seeing how that's possible." He turned away to stare at the wall. He was going to die and leave his little girl to grow up without a mom or dad, and nothing was going to make him feel better about That!

"Well, how about you let me tell you what that news is first before you jump back into that hole, captain." When he didn't respond, the general pushed on. "You're right, Captain Ezra Chanse. You are going to die, far from home and family, and there isn't anything I can do about that. But, instead of leaving your daughter with an uncertain future after you're gone, I can guarantee that not only will she receive your full vet's pension but we will take care of her every need as well. For as long as she lives."

Despite his dark mood, Chanse's eyes narrowed.

"Education?" he asked.

"Full ride scholarships wherever she goes anywhere in the Fed."

"Housing, food, clothing, ..."

"Completely covered. She'll never need anything for the rest of her life."

"Medical?"

"Premium Platinum," the general replied without hesition. "VIP service for the daughter of a war hero."

That brought his head up.

"Sounds too good, ..." he began.

"To be true?" the general finished for him with a smile. "You have my personal assurance that it's completely legit."

Chanse frowned.

"And the catch?"

The general chuckled wryly.

"There's always a catch, isn't there?" he said with a hint of a smile. Then he was dead serious.

"The Fed wants you to go on one last mission."

Chanse grimaced.

"One last mission to earn my daughter a future," he said. "Again, if you'll pardon me for saying, sir, but isn't that a bit cliche?"

"We're the military, son. We all dress in the same uniform, use jargon, and pump ourselves up with slogans and catchphrases. We Love cliches," the general said, once again wearing that slight smile. Then once more he sobered.

"Militaries throughout time and across cultures have used special teams to accomplish specific tasks against overwhelming odds with very little chance of survival. In the past, these 'suicide squads' were highly trained operatives that volunteered in order to accomplish a greater good. At Fed Spec Ops, we've taken it a step further. We have formed units of terminally ill soldiers, ones with only days left, to perform these strategic missions for us. There's no risk, because they're about to die anyway, and we're giving them the chance to go out on their feet instead of rotting away in a hospital bed."

The general leaned foward slightly, his eyes narrowed.

"So, what do you say, Captain Chanse? Want to take one last shot at the enemy and earn your daughter a secure future?"

Chanse looked at the general, thoughts racing. Of course he wanted to give his little girl a better life. What father wouldn't? But to do it by going on a mission where he was guaranteed to die? It was insane!

Abruptly he sighed. Not like he had many options.

"You've convinced me, sir," he said. "I'll do it if I have your word as an officer that the Fed will give my daughter everything that you've promised."

"You have it, captain," the general instantly replied. Chanse nodded. Time to bleed one more time to keep his little girl safe.

"Okay, where do I sign?"

II

Things moved quickly after that. As soon as the general had his DNA imprint as a signature, men and women in black lab coats were swarming into the room. Chanse winced as a hypogun, loaded with several vials of fluid, was pressed against his shoulder and emptied a vial at a time into his body. Each sent a ripple of sensation through him, including one that wiped out the grinding pain in his bones.

"What were those?" he asked when the gun was finally pulled away from his arm.

"A number of experimental drugs we've been working on in R&D," the general explained as Chanse looked down at the injection site before lifting a hand to rub at the lingering tenderness. "I know they're making you feel better. But before you get your hopes up, I need to tell you that they're not a cure. It's a cocktail of pain killers, suppressors and stimulants that will mask most of your symptoms, allowing you to have nearly fill function to the end."

The thin smile returned to the general's lips.

"We developed it for soldiers that were mortally wounded that we still needed to function well enough to carry out their missions before dying."

Chanse slowly nodded his understanding. The revelation didn't come as any surprise. He had seen the Fed ruthlessly burn soldiers into the ground before to achieve their objectives. Win at any cost, right?

Yet, he was pretty happy to have these med on board. They were making him feel, ... Invincible.

Then his attention was being recaptured by the general, who was waving the black lab coats aside to step close. In his hand he held two field med kits: portable injectors prefilled with antibiotics, stims, or whatever a soldier needed to keep going.

"Here," the scarred officer said, holding out the kits. When Chanse took them, he gestured at the kits.

"Those are your boosters. You just received your primary bolus in that injection we gave you. That primed your body to continue being receptive to the meds. But, like I said, the meds only mask your condition and will eventually wear off. Use the boosters if they do and you're still alive." He folded his arms across his chest.

"Make sure you only boost once the effects wear off. These are powerful drugs. Too much in your system and They will kill you, not the rad poisoning. And much more painfully, too. Now, our window of opportunity is very small, between your illness and the priority status of your mission. So if you're able to walk, we need to go. Now!"

The general had a transport waiting for them on the field hospital's landing pad when they exited the main building, it's thrusters already snarling as it balanced on an anti-gravity cushion. It didn't take long for the two officers to cover the distance and head up the landing ramp into the transport's interior.

Once inside the general indicated Chanse take one of the jump harnesses slung along the wall of the transport's cargo bay.

"We're heading directly to the ship in orbit that'll insert you and your team into the target area," the general explained as he strapped himself into another harness. "The clock is ticking so this trip is going to be short and rough."

"No problem, sir," Chanse replied. "Hard burns out of a gravity well were standard ops for most missions I've been on."

"Good. So you'll be able to listen to my briefing instead of puking all over the deck," the general said with that said thin smile that was rapidly becoming his most used expression. Then both were grunting as, with thrusters howling, the transport hurled itself into the sky and clawed for space. With that level of thrust, the transport quickly maxed out its rudimentary inertial dampers and punched the two deep into their harnesses with four G's worth of force.

"Now I know you're a spider jock, captain, but we can't use armor on this mission so you'll have to bust out your foot soldier skills for this gig," the general continued once the initial crush had eased slightly, his voice sounding a little squeezed. "You and your team are tasked with penetrating a hardened enemy comm station that's been eavesdropping on our secure signals in the Vartedrel Sector, Pandian Frontier. You take that station out, and it will give the Third Fleet a window of opportunity to muster in secret for a strike at the enemy forward ops base at Trellik Three."

Chanse nodded as much as the crushing gravity force would let him.

"Any specialists on the team, sir?"

"As in individuals with additional training and, or skill sets that would increase the mission's probability of success?"

"Exactly, sir."

"No." As Chanse frowned in disappointment, the general went on. "Just a bunch of terminal grunts lumped together with nothing to lose."

Chanse opened his mouth to comment on that. Only to let it close again without saying a word. It was a proven fact that nine times out of ten a group of desperate soldiers with nothing left to lose could do more damage than a similar group of specialists trying to be careful. 'As long as the Fed doesn't care that we'll be sloppy and noisy, we stand a good chance of actually pulling this off,' he mused. 'Because there's no price greater to pay than with our lives. And we're already selling those for cheap!'

Abruptly the pressure crushing him into the harness and he felt the familiar twist of zero G before the transport's artificial grav field kicked in. That could only mean that they had achieved orbit.

"Two minutes to dock, general," the pilot called down the short corridor connecting the cockpit with the cargo bay.

Untangling himself from the harness to take the opportunity to see what their ride looked like, Chanse quickly crossed to one of four small view ports the bay was equipped with, and looked out.

There it hung in high orbit, an ungainly amalgam of angles and shapes that looked menacing even from here. Yet as dangerous as it looked, even Chanse's untrained eye could tell this was no warship.

"The Intrepid Shadow," the general said as he joined Chanse at the view port. "One of a handful of full stealth ships Fleet has made available to us for our insertions. This one is equipped with mass drivers instead of heavy guns, which is important since we'll be using them to put your team on target."

Any further conversation was interrupted by the docking alert sending them temporarily back to their harnesses.

It took the transport a couple minutes to dock and off load it's passengers. Then the general was hustling Chanse to the general crew quarters. As they jogged down one of many corridors leading there, a klaxon sounded.

"All hands, set to hyper jump stations," a voice announced from a nearby speaker.

"Damn, that was fast," Chanse said even as he quickened his pace. Getting caught outside of the padded protection of a jump tube during hyper jump was a painful experience that often left lasting damage.

"They were waiting for us," the general revealed as they took a final corner and found themselves in the crew quarters, currently stuffed to capacity with eight foot tall cylinders that were the crew's jump tubes.

"Get in the first empty one, close the hatch and hang on. I'll see you on the other side." Then the general was gone, disappearing into the clustered tubes.

Nodding, Chanse quickly turned to make his way between the rubes. The final alarm klaxon sounding the eminent jump sounded just as he found an empty one. Throwing himself in, he just managed to buckle himself in and close the hatch before space and Reality twisted in on themselves and consciousness was wrested out of his grasp.

III

Chanse swam in unconsciousness' dark embrace for what felt like an eternity. Then, with a jolt hard enough to rattle his teeth, the Intrepid Shadow dropped out of jump space and back into Reality. Coming around, he shook his head to clear it as the all-clear klaxon sounded. A quick, cleansing breath then he was hitting the releases on his restraint harness and the tube door.

He found the general already waiting for him, hands clasped behind his back as crew members on their way back to their duty stations streamed around him.

"Sir," he said in the way of greeting as he climbed out of his tube.

"Captain," the general replied. "Now that we're in range of our objective, it's time to gear up and prep for the insertion!"

It was a short trip from the tube room to the lower front section of the ship where the mass drivers were stationed. Chanse found himself giving the massive, cannon-like structures a good look over as they passed through their midst, the general intent on some point further into the emplacement.

"Impressive, aren't they?" the general said over his shoulder. "We're going to use them to create an artificial meteor shower that will both soften up the target and hide your insertion."

"Hide our insertion, sir?

The general nodded as they stepped around a corner to come to a halt in front of a heavily armored drop pod. A drop pod that a crew of engineers were working on turning into a large chunk of rock.

The general indicated the pod with a gesture.

"Your team will go in a trio of pods disguised as meteors, fired at the same time as our artificial storm. Hopefully it'll fool the enemy's defensive network long enough for you to get to the ground. It'll also put the team close to the target, which will be in the middle of being pounded by the shower." He turned back to Chanse.

"Now, let's get you geared up and introduced to the team."

It had been a while since he had been in the heavy armor of a ground-pounding grunt, but extensive training made it feel almost like an old suit of clothes that still fit and were comfortable even though he hadn't worn them in years. So, after a slight hesitation, he was climbing into the armor with increasing confidence.

It was as he was closing the last seals that the general returned, eleven more soldiers in tow. Each was suited up like Chanse was, carrying supply packs and serviceable blast rifles.

"Here is your team, captain," the general said, indicating the others with a gesture. "I'd introduce you, but frankly I don't think any of you will live long enough to truly get to know each other so it'd be a waste of time." He folded his arms. "For the sake of convenience, mostly mine, you have all been given letters of the alphabet as your designations." He looked at Chance.

"Starting with you, captain. You are 'A'." He then went down the line, giving each man a letter on his armor with a can of spray paint and a stencil set. When he was done, he turned back to a bemused Chanse.

"Together, you and your team comprise Company D."

"D for dangerous?" one of the others asked, eliciting that slight smile from the general.

"D for Dead," he said. Then he was looking at a chronometer strapped to his wrist.

"Saddle up. We go in five. A, B, C and D in the first pod, the next four in the second, and last four in the last." He looked up from the chronometer to frown when he found the team still standing there. "I'm pretty sure being terminally ill didn't make you all deaf. I said saddle up."

"Yes, sir. We just need to know which pods are which," another soldier hesitantly said. His frown deepening, the general pointed to the nearest one.

"Number one," he said, the identification triggering a stampede towards the pods.

Already standing fairly close to pod one, Chanse quickly climbed in and strapped himself into one of the high impact crash harnesses set up along the sides of the heavily padded, circular interior. He was just as quickly joined by the other three assigned to the pod, C scrambling in just as the door began to close.

As the others strapped themselves in, the general's voice came over the pod's comm system.

"Pods are being loaded into the mass drivers Now," he said and, right on cue, the pod lurched hard to the side. "Mag acceleration is active. Targeting locked. Firing in three, two, one, ..."

Chanse grunted as a massive wall of force massed him deep into his harness. Then foam and liquid was flooding into the compartment, each component designed to absorb impact, evenly distribute force, and protect the pod's inhabitants.

Unfortunately the fluid filling the compartment couldn't keep pace with the increasing pressure and, with a final gasping breath, he blacked out.

He wasn't sure long he was out. Only that a hard jolt brought him out of it. He blinked and found himself wincing, not only from the pounding head ache but from the loud klaxon filling the compartment as well, clearly audible despite the crash fluid. Pushing the pain aside, he tried turning his head.

More a gel than a liquid, the crash fluid resisted movement, making his head turn sluggish. But it wasn't enough to prevent him from turning sufficiently to see the status display a half Metre away. Just in time for the brightly lit display to announce that the pod had hit the taget planet's atmosphere. Then Chance was holding on for dear life as the pod began to buck wildly with the start of its hard descent.

A few minutes were spent bouncing around. Then a sexless voice was counting down.

"Impact in five, four, three, two, one, ..."

Again Chanse grunted as a massive force, reaching him even through the crash fluid, smashed into him from the side. And again he was pushed to the brink of unconsciousness. This time, however, he wasn't brutally thrown over the threshold.

Instead he clung to awareness as the pod was thrown this way and that. Until, after a furious flurry of direction changes, it finally came to a halt on its side.

Instantly the hatch blew outward, triggering a geyser of crash fluid into the air as the pressure in the cabin was suddenly released. Finding himself on his back and staring across the emptied cabin and out the now open hatch, Chanse could see smoke and ash float by. They must've ignited something with their arrival. Then he was punching out of his harness to retrieve his secured gear and start climbing out.

That was enough to stir the others into action. By the time Chanse had reached the hatch, he had two others behind him, the third working on getting his gear free. Pulling himself out, the veteran soldier flipped himself around and carefully began working his way down the pod's hot and slag-covered side.

As soon as his boots hit the charred and churned up ground, the general's voice began speaking in his helmet.

"If you are hearing my voice, that means you've survived your flight and reached the ground, triggering this recorded message," the voice announced. "Here is your final briefing. By this point the rest of the meteor shower that hid your approach has hit the ground, hopefully causing considerable destruction and confusion in the enemy base. But make no mistake: your opponents are tough and resourceful. They won't stay confused for long. So you need to move immediately towards your objective."

The suit's Heads Up Display lit up to show a map. Several points were high lighted, including one that was circled.

"This is a map of the enemy base. The bunker where the comms array is located, is circled. You have exactly five hours from 1400 hrs to reach the bunker, penetrate it's defenses and destroy the array. A second longer and the mission will fail. If the team succeeds in achieving it's objective and you are still alive, you can either wait for your illness to take you. Or shoot yourself in the head. I leave that up to you. With that, I conclude your briefing. You will not hear from Fed forces again. Good luck and good hunting."

With that, the voice fell silent, leaving Chanse alone in his helmet. But not outside of it; as the recording played, the rest of the team had gathered around him, since he was the first out of the pods and on the ground. There they had listened to their own copies of the briefing.

Since Chanse's had begun playing first, it was over for him while it still played in his comrades' helmets. While he waited for them to catch up, he took the opportunity to take a quick look around in an effort to determine their location.

The base appeared to located on a rocky outcrop that overlooked a forested valley. At least, it Was forested until the artificial meteor shower flattened most of it before burning the rest to ash in the subsequent firestorm. The base, a low jumble of squat buildings and weapon emplacements above ground and a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers below, had taken a good beating from the shower as well, with most of the above ground structures leveled or close to, their ruined bones also on fire.

From where they had come in, nearly two kilometers distant from the base, he could see base personnel frantically working to put out the fires while others worked on repairing the emplacement. As he caught sight of them, the veteran soldier frowned. There was something familiar about both the way they moved, and how the base was laid out.

Then it struck him.

"Krogans," he muttered in dismay.

For good reason: out of the four race alien alliance currently invading Fed space, the Krogan were by far the ones most feared. An amphibian biped, they stood well over two and a half meters tall, or eight feet, and were fast, powerful and aggressive. They were on the forefront of the initial invasion into Fed space, and their methods of combat were infamous for their brutality and violence, traits only matched by their intelligence and cunning.

It had been krogan ground forces that overran the colony where his family had taken shelter, the massive aliens responsible for their deaths since the Krogan didn't take prisoners. Chanse had plenty of reasons to hate these bastards, and had taken every opportunity he could find to get vengeance. But every battle that he had been involved in where krogan were on the other side, the Fed had lost, usually in a rout.

That was with the fully armored might of the Fed military behind them. Now? Now it was just 12 terminal guys with nothing to lose.

"So, Captain A, any idea how we're going to pull this off?"

He looked at the speaker, a medium size human with a F stenciled onto his armor.

"Well, Private F, that's the question, isn't it. If this was any other base, I'd say we quickly advance on foot and penetrate the base while their defense grid is still down, locate the bunker, fight our way inside, set our charges and hold the door until it blows. Unfortunately none of that will work here."

"Why not?" F wanted to know.

"Because this isn't a regular enemy base. It's a krogan base."

That set off a wave of unhappy muttering.

"Frickin' kroggies eat grunts for breakfast," D hissed in dismay.

Chanse favored D with a look. And, for a quick second, his little girl's face was superimposed over his, followed by those of his dead wife, son and oldest daughter.

"Yeah, they do," he darkly agreed, grimly pushing the images and the memories they stirred to the side. "Thank the universe I was never a grunt." Then he was lifting his rifle to the ready and resolutely marching over the uneven ground towards the burning base.

"Are, ... Are you actually going in there?" another of the soldiers stammered in disbelief.

"Damn straight," he replied without slowing. "If we don't take out that array, then an entire fleet is dead, not just 12 walking corpses."

That was greeted by silence. Then, in a flurry of motion and sound, G was beside him.

"I wasn't a grunt either," he said when Chanse looked over at him. "I was an advance scout for Fed Recon and caught a parasite out in fringe space that's eating me alive."

"Man, that's shitty," Chanse said with a frown. "Weren't you quarantined for that?"

"For five months, captain. I'm now end stage, with maybe a few hours, a day at most, to live. They let me out to get a little fresh air before I kick and because none of you can catch it." He looked straight ahead. "Apparently it prefers healthy victims."

Then the thump of boots on the ground announced another soldier joining them.

"I was a comms officer," he said, a big E stenciled on his chest. "The Sato hit our base with a recombinant viral fog which inserted a termination gene into my DNA. It's supposed to kill me in ten hours, painfully and messily. Facing kroggie shock troops sounds way better than that."

"Kinda does, doesn't it," Chanse agreed with a nod.

Then they were being joined by the rest of Company D, each bringing with them their death song: what was killing them and why they decided to spend the last hours of their lives fighting a suicide battle.

"Rad poisoning," Chanse revealed at one point. "Long term exposure has twisted my DNA so badly, my body can no longer function properly. But I'm not here to die. I'm here to buy my little girl a better life."

That confession elicited a long moment of silence. Then:

"That's the best reason I've heard yet, cap," K said in a quiet voice, several others murmuring in agreement.

"Let's hope it's enough to destroy that bunker, hey?" Then he was jogging forward, his rifle at the ready. It didn't take before the rest of the company was jogging with him, each one looking resolute as they approached the base's outer perimeter.

IV

Looking almost as battered as the catered ground around it, the perimeter fence, a series of energized pylons that should've been weaving an impassable net of deadly light and sound, only sputtered fitful sparks as their approach.

"Fence is down, but for how long?" B wondered out loud. "It looks like it's still hooked into their power grid." B had been a combat engineer before his unit got sprayed with a toxic chemical soup a couple days ago, another gift from the Sato, a race that favored chemical and biological weapons. His unit died within minutes yet he was spared. But not for long; the toxins were melting his connective tissue, turning him into soup from the inside out. Only the general's experimental drug cocktail was keeping him going.

"Doesn't matter," Chanse said as he continued towards the fence while the others slowed up. He went over the fence threshold and took up a position by the burned out shell of a nearby building.

"We're not coming back this way anyway."

He carefully looked around the corner and frowned when he spotted several krogan moving towards them, each carrying what appeared to be tool belts. Engineers, perhaps?

"They don't look like soldiers," K breathed as he hunkered down beside Chanse and peered around the corner as well. "We could snipe them from cover and take them out before they raise the alarm."

"Good idea," Chanse returned as D and G joined them "Except none of us are snipers. Most aren't even combat rated."

"You are," K pointed out.

"Yeah, on spider mobile armor. Give me a spider and I'll gladly roll down there and kill those engineers. As it is, ..." Chanse flipped his rifle's munitions selector to heavy shot.

"I have to do it the hard way. And I'm definitely Not glad about it." Then he was stepping around the corner and firing.

The first two went down fast with smoking holes in their bellies. He got the third as it tossed aside a tool and reached for a side arm. Then the remaining four were charging him too fast for him to aim the high powered heavy shot plasma round.

Biting back an oath, he toggled the rifle to rapid fire and proceeded to hose the remaining krogan with a steam of energized plasma. He pointed his weapon at the big amphibians' bellies, where they had the majority of their primary organs instead of their chests, like humans. Thankfully his aim was good enough that he managed to bring two more of them down before they were too close for him to get his weapon around fast enough to deal with the last of them.

Chanse braced for the two krogan to hit him, knowing that it'd be a massive war blade getting jammed through his body next. The wickedly curved daggers, big enough to be called swords, were a favorite close quarters weapon for the powerful aliens, sharp as razors and propelled by muscles strong enough to punch the blades through his body, armor notwithstanding.

Only to see both spun to the side with shots to the body. Blinking, he reset himself and shot both in the belly, the other shots enough to knock them down but not kill them. He then looked over his shoulder at the three that had stepped around the corner to help him.

"Thanks. Now let's haul ass! It's already 1720. We have just over two hours to achieve our objective. C'mon!" With that he was running as hard as he could for the next building in the line he was starting to see leading them to the bunker.

That run, as short as it was, was almost too much for his weakened body to take even With the drug cocktail. He was staggering by the time he reached the next building, chest heaving and pain washing through his body. Teeth grit against the agony gnawing at his bones, he leaned his rifle against the wall and fumbled for his booster kit.

He was just putting the injector into his suit's med port when a puffing K joined him.

"Don't blame you, cap," he said after catching sight of Chanse injecting his booster. "I'm pretty close to needing a boost, too." Then both were reflexively ducking as powerful krogan weapons opened fire from somewhere close by.

As the powerful drugs began pushing the grinding pain back, Chanse looked around the corner and back the way they came. In doing so he quickly spotted a krogan squad moving between the buildings. These were warriors, not engineers, likely here in response to the sounds of weapon fire a moment or so ago. Half a foot taller than the engineers and sporting powerful weapons and armor instead of tools, they were monsters of mayhem. They certainly wouldn't be as easy to take down as the engineers were.

Then the nearest opened fire again and Chanse hissed in dismay as two of his squad were cut down as they tried to run to where he and K were crouched. As they tumbled limply to the ground, holes burnt through their bodies, he saw it was D and F.

"Lucky bastards," K muttered, having also looked around the corner. "They went nice and fast."

"Focus, K," Chanse growled. "We can't kick until the mission is done." Then he was snapping up his rifle and flipping the selector to heavy shot as he stepped around the corner to take aim.

His first shot hit the nearest krogan in the side of the head, the impact enough to push it into the warrior beside it. Instantly big guns were being jerked around to face him. With emitter tubes looking more like cannons staring at him, there was only one thing he could do.

"Ah, ... Shit." Then he was diving back behind the building as most of the corner dissolved under a hail of withering fire.

As pieces of wall sprayed all around them, Chanse looked over at K.

"Why aren't you firing, man?" he demanded to know. "Cover fire, a distraction, Something!"

"I, uh, ..." K managed before abruptly jerking. Then he was being lifted off the ground, the point of a krogan blade pushing out of his chest red with his blood. He had just enough time to whisper:"Thank you," before he was dead and getting tossed aside, revealing the big warrior behind him that was both K's executioner and savior, blade in hand.

The krogan with the blade got a blast in the face. Then Chanse was twisting to fire wildly back behind him, where the other warriors were still firing on his position.

Again he was surprised when one went down without him hitting it, then another. Gunning down the last one, Chanse was climbing back to his feet when what was left of the company came running up to join him, several with smoldering emitters. He did a quick head count.

"Where's H?" he asked. G jerked a thumb back the way they came.

"Took a round in the head right after D and F went down," the former scout tersely explained. "K?"

Chanse mutely pointed at K's unmoving body.

"Damn kroggies stabbed him in the back," B growled, earning him a quick look.

"They're brutal and efficient, not honorable," Chanse pointed out. He then turned to his right. If he strained, he could just make out the bunker between two more buildings. He pointed at it.

"If we can thread our way through there without being detected, we can attack the bunker entrance, ..."

Abruptly E coughed and painted the inside of his helmet with blood.

"Damn it," he burbled as blood poured out of his mouth and ear. "I don't think I'll be coming with you boys on this one. I'm done."

"Where's your booster?" C asked as he reached out with a helping hand. Waving it away, E yanked off his helmet and tossed it aside as the rivulet of blood became a torrent.

"Burnt it fifteen minutes ago," he managed to say past the liquid filling his mouth and throat. "Go!" He hoisted up his rifle. "I'll distract them." Then he was staggering into the street, firing wildly.

"You heard the man," Chanse grimly said as he readied his own weapon. "Let's move and use that distraction."

This time the company stayed together, moving quickly to the shelter of the next building in line, then the next. They actually had eyes on the bunker when the firing in the distance abruptly stopped after a flurry of answering fire from krogan weapons.

"Rest in peace, E," C murmured as the guns fell silent.

"He's got no more worries now," G said. "Unlike us. Look!"

They all followed G's pointing finger and not a few of them shook their heads in frustration to see the two full squads of warriors that guarded the bunker entrance.

"Do you think they've figured out what we're after?" J asked tautly as they stared at the heavy guard.

"I don't," B said from where he crouched close to Chanse. "Standard procedure when a base comes under attack: protect the assets." He looked over his shoulder at H. "We do it, too."

"Regardless of why they're there, we need to go through them to get into the bunker," Chanse grimly pointed out. "I don't see how we can do it without a frontal assault, ..."

"What's the yield on our charges?" That quietly interjected question came from I, who hadn't said much after revealing his death song, a wasting disease brought on by an industrial accident at a munitions depot.

"About a thousand mega joules per," B replied. "Why?"

Wordlessly I stood from his crouch. Then he was taking the pair of charges each one of them had been assigned and flipping them to active before he sprinted around the corner and straight at the guard position.

"What is he, ...?" C began to say. Then he fell quiet when he realized what I was doing. The entire company found themselves silently urging more speed to their running comrade. 'C'mon,' Chanse shouted inside his head. 'C'mon!'

"Is he going to throw it?" L wondered out loud as one of the guards cried out in alarm as they noticed the rapidly approaching human. Then both squads were opening fire on him.

The first few missed the desperately running man. Then he staggered as one hit him, then another. They watched in grim silence as he yanked out his booster and hammered it into his leg.

That was enough to give the slender man an extra gear and, despite his wounds, he rediscovered his footing and churned forward. The guards' shouting became confused as they couldn't understand why the human wasn't going down. Then he was among them and the ground shook as his charges detonated, ripping him and the guards into shreds before the shock wave created a cloud of dust, obscuring the doorway.

"Damn," Chanse breathed in astonishment. "He's cleared the way." Then, louder: "C'mon! Now's our chance!" Then he was running forward, firing as he went.

Hopefully the attack had taken out most of the guards. If not, this would be the shortest charge ever. Then he was in the dust cloud and blind.

V

A pair of steps took him to the door, which was bowed inward from the force of the explosion but not breached.

"B!" The former engineer came staggering through the dust cloud. Seeing him, Chanse jerked a thumb at the door. "Open it."

Nodding, B pulled one of his charges free and, after a quick look at how the door was bent inward, placed the charge in a seemingly harmless spot. As he was doing that, the rest of the squad appeared through the dust.

"He took out the guards, but that blast is drawing in warriors from every part of the base," G grimly noted as he stepped through last and immediately turned to face the cloud. "We might have a minute or two then they'll be all over us."

"That sounds like your cue, B," Chanse dryly noted.

The former engineer jerked a nod even as he took a step back from the door.

"Charges are placed and set to blow the door inward," he reported. "Triggering them in three, two, one, fire in the hole!"

The entire squad braced themselves against the blow back. Then the door was smashed inward by the pressure from the shaped blast. The resulting opening stayed empty for a second, maybe two before it was filled with a rush of deadly light.

J and L both went down in the vicious counterattack, leaving only B, C, G, and Chanse still on their feet. Grimacing, C flipped one of his charges grenade style into the doorway and the resulting explosion took out the defenders closest to the door.

Chanse paused long enough to pull J and L's charges free then he was turning to run into the smoke-filled doorway, firing as he went. G, C and B were right on his heels, equally free with their weapon fire, shooting at anything that moved. Running double time, they quickly traversed the short corridor the main door opened in to and to yet another closed door at the corridor's end.

"According to the schematic, the array's power core Should be behind this door," C said.

"Let's hope that intel is solid," B said as he stepped forward with the last of his charges. "We are swiftly running out of things that go boom." He began to place the charge.

It was then that Chanse noticed the panel set at about eye level. Well, a human's eye level, at least. Motioning for B to hold up for a second, he reached out and tentively touched the panel. And nearly laughed out loud when the door slid silently out of the way.

When the other three looked at him, he shrugged.

"You never know until you try, right?" he said with a smile. Then he was lifting his rifle to the ready and charging in, firing at anything over seven feet tall.

Luck was finally with them: the intel was right. This Was the power core, in the form of a throbbing cold fusion reactor sitting in the center, guarded by a couple of surprised technicians. Those Chanse cut down before they could even get out of their chairs.

"C'mon!" he barked, waving the other three in before hitting a matching access panel on the inside to close the door behind them.

"We've got a minute, maybe two before they figure out where we are," he said as the others busied themselves with getting their charges ready. "Let's get those things set then cover the door until they go off." He then took his own direction and began to prep and place the charges he had.

The power core was surprisingly small for what it was supposed to be doing. Because of that, it only took a couple minutes to place all of their available charges. And the veteran soldier wasn't the only one noticing the reactor's diminutive size.

"Are you Sure this is the power core?" C asked as he placed his last charge. "Seems awful small to be powering an interstellar communication station."

"Might just be for the uplink," B suggested as he straightened, having finished with his charges as well.

"We'll never get the chance to know," G grimly pointed out as he took up station behind an oversized console, rifle ready.

Chanse was joining him when there was a thump at the door. Then it was sliding open to let several powerful krogan warriors step through, weapons ready.

The former spider jock didn't hesitate. As soon as the first warrior was clear of the doorway, he was trying to turn it into a corpse, hosing a steady stream of deadly energy at the doorway. G was right there with him, the former scout going shot for shot with the grim captain, firing non-stop at the advancing warriors.

Not that the krogan were making themselves convenient targets. Twisting and dropping into crouches, they quickly made the most of the available cover and began returning fire. They caught C full in the chest as he tried scrambling for cover, the impact throwing him bodily back. He was dead he could hit the floor.

B they clipped, a shot spinning him around before another to the leg dropped him. Falling awkwardly, he fumbled for his booster.

"Damn kroggies," he hissed, his voice filled with pain as he tried to push the hypo spray into his drug port. "Never thought they'd actually be doing me a favor, ..." His voice faded as the hypo fell from his suddenly numb fingers. Then he was gone.

Hearing the former engineer go quiet, Chanse favored him with a quick look and saw him lying limp.

"Just you and me now, partner," G said, also noticing B's condition. "For the next twenty seconds, at least."

Firing at several krogan heads that had turned their way, Chanse silently nodded. As smoke began billowing through the room, the product of a number of fires started by the intense firefight, he looked up to see a slender figure standing just inside the nearest cloud.

While it's face was obscured by the smoke, he'd recognize that silhouette any where. 'I know you're waiting for me, baby,' he silently told his wife as she was joined by the silhouettes of his son and eldest daughter. 'Gimme just a few more seconds. I'll be right there!"

It was as the withering fire from the advancing warriors because a veritable storm of killing light that the pain returned. It pushed aside the seething chill of the adrenaline rush and the soothing warmth of his endorphins to gnaw on naked bone. Chanse grimaced but kept firing. It didn't matter now. The charges would go off in a few seconds and, after that initial flare of sensation, he would be beyond the pain's clawing touch.

For a brief moment his daughter's face hung in his vision. 'You take care, sweetheart,' he silently said in farewell. 'Daddy will look in on you from time to time.'

"Kevin," G abruptly said, interrupting Chanse's thoughts.

"What?"

"That's my name. The general said we wouldn't live long enough to get to know each other and need names." He stuck out his hand while firing with the other. "He was wrong. It's been an honor, captain."

Chanse extended to take that hand with his own.

"Call me Ezra," he said. "And the honor was all mine." Then the world disappeared in a blinding flash of light and a roar of sound before the darkness swept over them.

The general was standing on the observation deck staring off into the depths of space when his aide found him.

"Yes, major?" he asked as the other officer approached. Coming to a halt a couple paces away, the major saluted.

"You asked to be advised when the Third Fleet began their attack," the major said before dropping the salute. "By all reports they were able to jump in and catch the enemy completely by surprise. They are now fully involved in battle, but all indications are pointing towards a Fed victory."

"We've had few enough of those," the general said musingly even as he nodded in acknowledgement of the major's report. "Looks like Company D's mission was a success. Make sure all our contractual obligations are taken care of, major."

"Yes, sir," the major said, pulling out a small data tablet to make a couple notations.

Nodding once more in satisfaction, the general's expression became thoughtful.

"Let's not lose the momentum we've gained here. Do you have the portfolio for the next group of candidates and the list of mission options?"

"I'll retrieve it immediately from Operations, sir," the major replied, saluting again. Returning the salute, the general nodded in satisfaction one last time before turning back to the big window, effectively dismissing his aide.

After the major was gone the general stood and stared yet again into the vast emptiness that was space, his thoughts turning to the 12 men that had just accomplished the impossible. Sentenced to death by circumstance and fate, they nevertheless had answered the call to serve one last time. And in doing so, they gave the Fed a chance at victory in this lopsided war.

'Well done,' he silently commended that fallen 12, slowly lifting his hand to his brow in one last respectful salute.

"Well done, indeed!"