The Two Towers

Beta Team was quiet as we waited in the back of the rental truck approaching the Dantius towers. We would arrive on the ground floor of the tower under construction and provide a distraction while Alpha Team would slip past the mercenary and mech defense force searching for Thane Krios. The plan didn't last a minute as we arrived to find Nasanna's mechanized guards gunning down her salarian civilian night workers in a last minute attempt to remove any doubt that the asari business tycoon deserved the street justice Thane intended to dispense on her blue ass.

The worst part was that the woman expected to get away with this massacre. She'd been conditioned by a lack of consequences for her actions for so long that she saw no problem in slaughtering her employees.

Dying at Thane's professional hands was too good for this bitch. She deserved to be thrown to a pack of hungry varren, but a ride on the Grunt Express straight to hell would have to do.

Alpha Team had come out of hiding and we found Shepard doing some emergency field patchwork on an injured salarian. Fortunately there was a poorly defended terminal nearby with access to 4800 credits for me to distract myself with while the salarian described the situation for the teams. Basic rundown, dozens of mercs he'd seen personally and their robo allies. We'd have to get to the second floor of the building to access the service elevator that would get us up to the bridge that spanned the two towers and led to the penthouse from which Nasanna ran her evil empire.

We advanced around the U shaped first floor of the tower and hit stiff opposition, and a team of three would have had a fair bit of trouble handling the constant flanking maneuvers by the mercs as their robo forces advance in suicidal charges, but we were a collection of eleven of the galaxy's greatest warriors and smothered any type of strength the well varied and planned defenders could muster.

The next level fed us the enemies in four ten man teams that we disassembled with great prejudice. I managed to snag another terminal housing 4200 credits and a mint M-97 Viper marksman rifle. The Viper kicked the Mantis's dusty ass when it came to long range engagements due to the prevalence of shielding and barriers preventing single shot kills. With a base 12 shot capacity and a fire rate of 240 RPM the Viper's significantly weaker per shot output outperformed other weapons in its class by the virtues of pure quantity. More shots down range faster is better at both killing enemies and keeping them from rushing you, not that they'd ever be stupid enough to rush me without the guidance of poor programming.

We had another encounter with a pair of salarian workers who Thane had saved from the mercs and the Commander sent Jacob back to escort them to safety. The guy just didn't stack up with the rest of us. He had a lot of experience, and was a well rounded combatant, but he was the weakest biotic on the team, the weakest technician on the team, and his weapons expertise didn't stack up against the gunslingers on the team. He was Miranda's sidekick and his face when Shepard sent him back proved he knew it too.

Not that Miranda ranked very highly on my estimation of our companions. Despite our similar origin stories, I'd rip through Miranda with my arms tied behind my back. Of course I could do the same to everyone on Alpha Team besides the Commander and maybe Jacob, but I don't think Miranda could actually take anyone on Beta Team in a fight except Tali, and the quarian wasn't a trained fighter.

Mordin and Katsumi brought the least firepower to the team, but I'd put my money on them beating Miranda in a fight. Mordin was just too quick in mind and body to not be absolutely dangerous to someone as unarmored as the superhuman Cerberus agent, and Katsumi is damn clutch with her flanks and ambushes.

Samara, Jack, Garrus, and Zaeed were all deadly and damn tough. I'd favor me in a fight against them because no one can stand and bang with me, but I wouldn't be surprised if any of them managed an upset.

The only member of the team that I'd give the edge to over me is Commander Shepard herself. The woman is a freak athlete. Strong and fast like no one's business with lightning reflexes, and that is before you factor in her training as both an infiltrator and soldier. Her stealth skills almost match up to Kasumi Goto, a master thief, and even if she doesn't wreck someone right at the start of the fight she is still a master combatant who can fade in and out of sight every handful of seconds.

Fighting the Commander is my definition of a nightmare.

The opening of the service elevator brought me out of my musing and a krogan Bloodpack bounty hunter charged out with two female Eclipse sentinels. I snatched up one by the ankles and smacked the krogan with her. In response he grabbed the other and we started smashing each other in a demented pillow fight. Surprisingly the team didn't gun him down and when we both stopped laughing and swinging our broken beat sticks he slapped me on the shoulder.

"That was damn fun!" He declared, "Let's go get some fucking tacos!"

I dropped the shattered corpse of the Eclipse sentinel and laughed.

"I am pretty fucking hungry!"

"Babe," Jack interrupted, "money."

"Ah shit." I grumbled, "I gotta kill your boss and find some drell, but then TACOS!"

"Nakmor Draug," the bounty hunter introduced himself, "I'll see you down there after you finish the bitch."

"Chief Gatatog Grunt." I told him while shaking his armored hand.

Draug walked away and Shepard commanded me, Samara, Zaeed, and Tali to come with her in the service elevator while Garrus would keep the leftover team moving up each floor looking for survivors.

"I am pretty sure Draug and Grunt just performed the krogan Rite of Besties." Zaeed smirked as we went up the tower in a steel box.

"It was an incredible and disturbing display of raw strength and lack of regard for sentient life." nodded Samara in some kind of agreement with the grizzled hired gun.

When we hit our stop we saw a distracted merc on a call. The fact that an armored 250 kilo krogan snuck up on him meant he deserved me shoving him through the window and to his descending death.

"There is no way this glass is up to code." I speculated, "Just another crime that lies on Dantius's head."

"I'm sure it is up there with assassinating her sister and murdering her workforce in her books." Tali commented as we moved down the hall and I picked up the datapad containing the Kirosa family genetic records. The next room offered another firefight and after that Shepard picked up another mint Viper rifle and we emerged at the last completed floor of this tower.

The violence kicked off immediately with a flanking force from the left that ended up eating a full clip from my Claymore before I engaged with my bayonet for the quick finish. Next up was a pair of goons standing next to a fuel container that I overloaded to explode, killing them in a fiery blast. Their buddies all died popping out of cover one by one as we advanced. Their leader, an asari Eclipse commando, tried to fall back but proved I ran faster angry than she ran scared. I knocked her down and fired off a pair of shotgun blasts in her back, cutting her in half. I tossed her shotgun to Zaeed who reloaded it then grinned.

"Nice." he chuckled darkly.

What was nice was the 12000 credits I found on a dead mercs PDA.

Up next came the battle of the bridge, a long ranged slog against an entrenched and heavily armed force. Fortunately, we brought three of the team's sharpshooters and slowly but surely we popped heads from one side of the bridge to the other.

On the other side Nasanna tried to flood us with her remaining elite forces and they met a furious exploding electric hammer retort. The disoriented and shaking mercs were almost all ended with that one strike, but another asari commando had put up a strong biotic barrier to save herself. It failed to stop me from sweeping her off her feet then playing whack-a-mole with her till she popped. I tossed her shotgun to the Commander and we blew the door to Dantius's penthouse.

We didn't stop to chat with the scum of the earth business woman and instead pumped her remaining trio of guards with high speed buckshot. Thane dropped from the ceiling during the brief firefight and performed a rather intimate execution on his pro bono target.

"You got this, Space Momma." I nodded to my leader, "I am off to go get some fucking tacos."

I called up Jack on our comms.

"Babe." I greeted, "Tacos."