[center][h1]AMINA GALAL[/h1]
[h3]”ROGUE”[/h3][/center]
[hr]

[i]Amina slipped a fresh thermal clip into her Mattock rifle, then raising her head up slightly to survey the carnage around her. Black smoke boiled up all around, pouring from the flaming, crumbled debris of the shuttle nearby as well as the surrounding foliage that had caught fire in the fighting. Bodies were littered about, human and turian namely. The human corpses clad in white and black trimmed armor with Cerberus emblems stamped across the helmets and shoulders. Amina wore the same armor, as did the unconscious soldier slumped over next to her in the crater she and pulled him down into when the fighting first began. Craters dotted the small clearing and discarded weapons and burned out clips were strewn about.

It had all happened so fast. Aminas’ unit were tasked with snagging up a piece of alien technology located in an underground cavern, the entrance to which was right behind her at the foot of a small cliff. The item had been found originally by a Turian geological survey team, the world in question being on the fringes of Turian-Council space. Cerberus had found out about the tech thanks to one of their usual taps into alien coms and when the Illusive Man learned of the find he sent Aminas’ team straightaway to pick up the relic by any means necessary and bring it to Cronos Station.

By the time Amina and her unit had arrived a turian response team was on scene, granted in small numbers. The shuttle made a softening strafe on them and Amina and her comrades rappelled down catching the turians in a blitz. Those that survived scattered. The CO ordered the Cerberus force to dig in and hold position while the relic was brought up out of the cavern. The relic had just been loaded onboard the shuttle when it was hit by a barrage of rockets from the nearby ridge, destroying the shuttle and presumably the relic. Turian forces took up positions on nearby ridges and the last thirty minutes had been a short but vicious firefight, turians perched on the cliffs rained down rockets and sniper fire while the Cerberus troops spread out and relied on their own scopes and marksmanship. Amina’s ears still rang from the constant blasting of the Mattocks and the explosions. The turian forces had pulled back again just minutes ago after suffering more losses.

Amina glanced around looking for surviving members of her group. She had seen at least three duck back inside the shaft for cover and two more had dove into a crater on the opposite of the destroyed shuttle. The man next to her, Geoff, had been knocked out by the force of a blast that had also charred his armor. He was alive but wounded, blood caked on his arms and legs. Their transport was destroyed and with the presumed destruction of the relic their mission failed. There were no other Cerberus vessels or personnel nearby to help and Amina knew that if captured escape from the turians would be anlmost totally impossible. At least she would get to perish on a beautiful planet with its’ bright red and gold colored fauna that snaked and wrapped around the nearby hills and ravines like something from a poem. She knew Cerberus would tell her family, in that Amina held comfort as she rested her weapon on the edge of the crater and placed her finger on the trigger - ready to die for the true human cause and take as many turians with her as she could. 

A shot rang out nearby followed by a scream, and then another shot and a scream. Amina’s head swiveled to see the most bizarre of sights. From behind the blackened wreckage of the shuttle came an asari, strolling in the most casual way unconcerned with the bloody battlefield on which she walked. In her right hand was a pistol and of all the things to be wearing she had on… a dress. The asari had rather uncommon minty green skin and white face tattoos and even from meters away Amina could see her smiling - looking directly at Amina. Amina spun around and impulsively raised her rifle, about to call out for the asari to freeze and drop her weapon, when she felt a tap on her left shoulder. 

Amina turned around again to be met with a towering turian, face tattooed white and patterned into a grinning skull. Amina froze, unable to move and wanting to scream. The turian smiled at her just as the asari had - or as close a thing to smile as his kind could manage - then raising a large pistol of his own and blowing Amina’s brains out of the back of her head.[/i]

[hr]

Amina breathed in sharply as her eyes opened. She was “back” in Svalbard, laying in her bunk curled into a fetal position the sheets twisted around her. Her heart was hammering and her forehead moist. It was night still, after the party and after Amina had gotten a ride back and retired to her own bed for the night. Her head swimmed and pounded, a potent hangover taking up the whole of her skull. [color=ffb302][i]Damnable asari booze.[/i][/color] Amina reached back and rubbed at her head fiercely as she unwound the wadded up sheets from her legs and lower body, rolling over on her back. She remembered that flop of a mission so well - too well. She remembered how after she and her surviving comrades drove the turians back they managed to hijack a turian long range shuttle and get off-world. She remembered how they barely got out of turian space and dumped the craft in Council turf before having to manage a flight to where the closest Cerberus contact was to be found. And she remembered how displeased the Illusive Man was at the loss of the relic. His men too, but mostly the relic. 

Amina recalled what the relic looked like. An eight foot pillar of a deep blue color and twined with hose-like cables and topped with a spiked pedestal. Reaper tech - she had seen enough of it on Cronos Station in the labs, and then there were those fragments of Sovereign. In hindsight she was glad that she and the others did not have to ride with that thing all the way back to the Horsehead Nebula. They say indoctrination is that way, some can last for days or longer without so much as a twitch while others’ fates are sealed within just an hour of being around a Reaper device. Amina often wondered how long she could resist the sway of a Reaper, or if she had already been tainted by them during the war only to be saved by their eradication breaking their subtle link over her. She found her thoughts drifting to Janiri and how the asari had been exposed to that orb that Banes and his lackeys had. The Reapers were gone and yet their black legacy remained, their stain on the fabric of the galaxy. Amina hoped the asari was not a liability, as cold as it was to feel that way, and that she was under constant monitoring and tight security.

Amina placed her open palms over her eyes and made slow circling motions, groaning ever slightly. She had experienced her fair share of hangovers but this was just all but unbearable. [color=ffb302][i]Soft people, hard drinks.[/i][/color] She could only imagine how bad it would be had she gotten completely tanked off of the esala. She knew not what the time was but guessed it to be between two and four in the morning, if not a little earlier. Some water would be good but Amina was not in the mood to get up and walk about. Besides, she did not wish to stumble into Nadara or Solveig or Zelifa or anyone else who may have stayed up extra late. Amina knew “running” was childish and futile and she would have to address her storming out like that at some point, but not now. Right now she was just too embarrassed - and angry about many things. 

[color=ffb302][i]What is wrong with me? Why am I feeling like this? Why did I act like that last night? It is because… is it because they wear the masks of my enemies? Those once my enemies, now my allies? [/i][/color] Amina felt a cold, treacherous chill roll down her neck and spine. 

As she lay there awake for perhaps half an hour Amina realized more and more what she really wanted was for this inner turmoil to end. It had to, as she could not truly face up to any of the others - the aliens namely - until she had come to some inner resolution. Whatever it may be. How does one go from hating a race and thriving off of killing those among it to serving beside members of that race and calling them brothers and sisters in arms? [color=ffb302][i]Can it even be done? Can I… change my outlook on things? Can I put aside what so long I embraced as a truth - as my own truth? Who is wrong? Me? SRN? What is truly right and wrong about all this?[/i][/color] Were the things Amina did during her time with Cerberus truly part of a fight for greater things, or had it always been just a narrow minded bigots’ way of seizing power and conquering those deemed lesser? Was Solveig right? Did Amina just need to open her mind and soul up and cast aside the propaganda pumped into her by Cerberus in their now obvious bid for greater power? Was Amina the brainwashed bootlicker and not Solveig? Had it all been for nothing? Leaving the Alliance, abandoning her service and life because of a paranoid fragile outlook on the galaxy? Was she doomed to live and die alone and mangled of the mind and heart - her only thing to hold close and cling to a crumbling racist ideology she had been taken in by?

For a long time Amina lay there, one arm across her throbbing eyes, deep in anxious thought - her mind swirling. At some point the hangover and fatigue took over and Amina finally slipped back to sleep for the rest of the night.