"Damnit! They must have already moved it, it was sitting right there not an hour ago!" Williams, the young woman from the distress call it seemed, cursed and clenched her hands on her borrowed rifle as she glared at the bare dais sitting in the middle of the digsite like it had personally offended her. Which, honestly, was somewhat fair. Her entire unit, save one injured corpsman, had gotten wiped out because the geth wanted the damn thing, and now she finds out that they had already won away with their prize. Growling, she shook her head and gestured to the almost-road on the far side with the weapon's barrel. "If they're trying to get it airborne, they probably took it to the train station ahead to transport it to the spaceport. It's big, a bit larger -or longer, at least- than a Kodiak, so I don't think they've been able to get it airborne yet."
"Then we keep moving, fast." Shepard ordered, setting off at a brisk jog down the path, her human subordinates following her, and Nihlus' mandibles fluttered thoughtfully as he brought up the rear. She had certainly been proving herself competent so far, the only marring of the operation being Jenkins' death and, arguably, her jetting off -literally- on her own to save Williams and Bhatia. The former was in no way her fault, in fact he couldn't even argue that it was Jenkins' fault. The kid had been wearing standard Alliance heavy armor with standard shields, and they had accomplished exactly nothing against the geth drones. Sure, he could have been quieter or picked better cover, but Nihlus wasn't willing to bet it would have made too much of a difference in the end. He had been the least-protected, most vulnerable member of their group, and that fact had ultimately been what got him killed.
As for the latter, well, he was of two minds. On the one hand, risking the mission's success, not to mention splitting the team, for a pair of regular marines should be an unacceptable action. Above and beyond the beacon itself, which -and he thought this with the cold calculous of war- was far more valuable than a pair of low-ranking foot soldiers, there was the fact that she had charged into a situation without any intel on what was ahead of them, outside of the matter that there were very dangerous enemies lurking around. Not only had it put her in significant danger, but it very well could have gotten himself and Alenko killed if they had been attacked again without her there to support them. On the other hand, he didn't disapprove of her desire to save allies and comrades, or even innocent lives if they had turned out to be guarding civilians. SPECTREs had to act for the greater good, to be sure, but the last thing the organization needed was anyone else whose idea of 'protecting the galaxy and it's people' was 'as long as I accomplish my mission, the collateral damage and allied/civilian losses suffered are irrelevant'. And it wasn't as if she was incapable of handling a few geth, even alone. Spirits! She'd fought and killed a thresher maw -even if it was a juvenile- alone and on foot when she had been a wet-behind-the-ears (to use the human phrase) lieutenant, a group of synthetic soldiers weren't going to be much of a threat.
And seeing her in action certainly made him want her as a SPECTRE. To say that she was deadly would be an understatement. Not even counting her biotics -which were as strange and as potent as he had been led to believe-, she was dangerous with her twinned firearms of choice, and genuinely frightening with her sword. He hadn't caught much of her efforts, arriving with Alenko only as she finished off the last few opponents, but he had gotten to witness her quite literally take a Geth Prime apart at the seams. She was utterly unique, not just amongst her own race but amongst any of the races, with the only thing he could imagine being similar could, perhaps, be a an asari Justicar. At least according to the stories he had heard, it wasn't as if he had ever met or even seen one of them before. They rarely left the heart of Asari space, and it was even more rare that a non-asari SPECTRE was deployed into those same systems.
"Hey, what are those? Christ, are those humans on top of them?" Alenko voiced, pulling him from his thoughts, and he looked away from his sector to see what the younger male was talking about, only to grimace immediately with a small thrum of bile in his gut at the sight of several dozen humans -male and female, adult and child, soldier and civilian alike- impaled at the top of tall, spike-like spires.
"Never would have pictured a bunch of machines pulling a Vlad the Impaler thing." William muttered, sounding more than a little disturbed -justifiably, it must be said- by what they were looking at, though he noted with approval that she was keeping her eyes and weapon ready for any potential threats at the same time. He also made a note to research 'Vlad the Impaler', because (judging by the way that the other humans made various sounds of agreement and understanding) it was clearly an accurate and recognizable reference for humans. "Wouldn't that be, like, inefficient and emotion-based, instead of all logical and everything?"
"She has a point, Commander. Think there's more to it?" Alenko said slowly, sounding unconvinced but open to the possibility that the spires could be something besides, provided he understood the implications correctly, some sort of terror-tactic. Not that any of them seemed to have any idea what that could be, but Williams was correct that such things were atypical for the geth, given their lack of organic emotions and mindsets.
"I don't know, but…" Shepard started to respond, only for all of them to snap their weapons up at the semi-liquid scrape of metal on metal, and they watched as the spikes retracted into themselves, telescoping down until the dead humans were splayed across the top of the base. Nihlus frowned to himself, eying them more closely now that they weren't quite so high up. They seemed oddly emaciated for people who had died within the last hour or so, and he almost thought that he saw something blue on their bodies, electric blue, but what could…
With visible sparks, the bodies broke themselves off of the bases, turned towards the group of them, and charged.
"What the fuck?!"
He wasn't sure who said it, though he was sure they were all thinking the same thing, and -to her credit- Shepard didn't hesitate to treat them as the threats that they very obviously were, barking an order to open fire. The…creatures, whatever they were and whatever the geth had done to them, didn't go down easily, absorbing nearly twice as many rounds as a normal unarmored human would have been able to endure before collapsing. Well, all save for the one that went down instantly, after Williams managed to put a round right between it's unsettling electric-blue eyes. They hit hard as well, that had been made obvious when Alenko had put up a biotic barrier and tried to match one in hand to hand, only to find his barrier shattered and himself thrown several feet away when a couple of them got into arms reach. And they did get into arms reach, because in addition to their durability, they were fast. Very fast, crossing a hundred yards in a matter of seconds without an iota of hesitation or reluctance.
"What the hell was that?" Williams asked a bit shakily once the last one fell dead, and he frowned thoughtfully as he made is way over to one of the freshly made corpses and crouched down to examine it. They were heavily modified, with faintly-glowing cybernetics clearly visible through their bizarrely blue-grey skin. Extensive cybernetics, as a matter of fact, according to both his eyes and his omni-tool, replacing some seventy or eighty percent of the victim's bodies. That was worrisome enough as it was, but for it to have happened so quickly, well, that was even more concerning. Because if someone transported a few dozen of these to any world and managed to have sufficient secrecy -or sufficient strength- to begin converting people without much in the way interference, they could very quickly have a massive force of dangerously durable and powerful cybernetic monstrosities to unleash.
"Looks like some kind of…I dunno, cybernetic zombie. Little more than a husk of a body, stuffed full of biotics and either controlled remotely or simply programmed to attack whatever is nearby that isn't them." Bhatia remarked, poking a bit more scientifically at another, inspecting it with the trained eye of a medic. "That's why they're so durable, and that's why Ash shooting one of them in the head shut it down. They don't rely on any of their organs to survive anymore, they don't even have most of them anymore, probably, so what would kill one of us doesn't matter to them. But since the brain controls everything, destroying it shuts them down."
"This just keeps getting better and better." Shepard growled, sounding coldly furious, shaking her head and looking up the hill that the creatures had charged down to attack them. "What's up there, Williams?"
"Some prefab shelters and offices for the dig site staff and scientists, ma'am. Might be some supplies we can use there. Might be survivors, too, though I'm not sure that I believe it given how many of these things there were in the area." the Chief responded promptly, and everyone else nodded together.
"Nothing we can do but keep on moving, then." Shepard huffed, and they were off again.
As they crested the hill, the prefab structures came into view. The small compound was eerily quiet, showing signs of a hasty evacuation…or slaughter, judging by the bloodstains, datapads, personal effects, and discarded weapons littered across the ground.
"Fan out and search the buildings, survivors and supplies." Shepard ordered, determined but not particularly hopeful. "But stay alert. We don't know if there are more of those... husks around. If you see anything, call out, don't try to handle it alone."
The team obeyed, weapons at the ready as they methodically cleared each structure. Nihlus moved with practiced efficiency, ears and eyes probing the world around him for any sign of anything, and as he passed by one of the larger prefabs he was rewarded by the sound of movement inside of it. Movement, and human voices speaking English.
"Contact." he hissed into the comm. "Possible survivors in the main research building, I can hear them talking through the wall."
Shepard's voice crackled back. "Copy that. We're on our way. Don't open it until we're there. They could be survivors, or it could be some kind of trick or bait."
Nihlus was tempted to roll his eyes at the admittedly obvious instructions, but subsided with a mental chastisement to himself. He had told Shepard he was here to evaluate her, and he had placed herself under his nominal authority for the time being, so she was really only doing what she was supposed to be doing. Besides, she had a point. Spirits only knew what sort of mimicry the geth were capable of, and while he wasn't sure that the husks -Bhatia's description was as good a name for them as any, he supposed, and Shepard had used it as well- were even capable of talking anymore thanks to what had been done to them, it's not like he had any sort of measuring stick to judge by. Better to assume everything was a greater threat than he imagined until he had more information, the same way he had for most of his career. He was still alive and in possession of all of his original body parts, so it seemed to be a winning strategy.
Settling down to hold position outside the prefab, his rifle trained on the door, he waited for the rest of the team to join him, something that they did within a matter of a minute.
"On my mark," Shepard whispered, her omni-tool glowing as she prepared to override the lock. "Three... two... one..."
The door slid open with a hiss. Inside, two human scientists cowered behind an overturned desk, their eyes wide with fear, and though both were holding pistols it was obvious that neither was in any shape -or had the knowledge- to make use of them.
"Alliance marines!" Shepard called out, lowering her weapons slightly in a gesture of reassurance. "We're here to help. Are you injured?"
The more, a young-ish (he thought, he still wasn't the best at guessing human ages) woman with short-cropped red-brown hair, slowly stood. "Thank God you're here, and no, we're not hurt. I'm Dr. Warren, and this is my assistant, Manuel. We... we've been hiding since the attack began. Manuel was able to lock down the door, enough that those robots didn't make the effort to breach the door. I guess they were just too busy fighting the marines and chasing our colleagues to bother."
"Doctor Warren, Mister Manuel." Shepard acknowledged with a nod, her weapons lowering a bit further, though Nihlus didn't doubt that she could have them back up and firing in half a heartbeat if it was necessary. "Can you tell us what happened here? We need to know what we're dealing with."
Nihlus watched the woman carefully, noting the way her hands trembled despite her composed tone. Trauma, but she was holding together, which was rather impressive if he was going to be honest. Useful as well, if she could answer their questions. The male—Manuel—was another story entirely. His eyes darted wildly around the room, muttering under his breath, words tumbling over one another in a chaotic mess. He wasn't going to be of any help, poor fellow, and Nihlus put him out of his mind and returned his focus to the helpful one just in time for her to respond.
"It all happened so fast, we barely had time to react." she explained, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the distant transportation hub, running a hand through her disheveled hair. "We were working on the dig site when the attack came. Geth—can you believe it? They haven't been seen outside the Veil in nearly three hundred years. They killed the security detail first, then rounded up anyone they could find and started putting them on those…those spikes."
"The beacon," Nihlus interjected, firmly but as kindly as possible under the circumstances, sympathetic to what they had been through but focused on the over-all objective. One that they were, it seemed, rapidly running out of time to complete. "Where is it now?"
"We had just gotten it onto the transport and sent it towards the train station when the geth arrived, so it's either stuck somewhere between here and there, or it's at the station itself. Unless the geth have run off with it, but it's big and heavy. Even with mass effect technology, the transport can't move it very quickly. Not without risking damaging it, and I doubt that's what they're after."
"If they're moving slow, we have time to catch up to them." Shepard sounded pleased, perhaps coldly so, at that fact, before glancing over at Bhatia. "Nirali, stay here, lock things up behind us and don't open it until you get a verified challenge response, understood? Keep these two alive."
"…understood, ma'am." the corpsman acknowledged the order with reluctant understanding and acceptance, clearly wishing to remain with them and fight but aware of the fact that all she could do at this point was slow them down, injured as she was. Besides, having an actual soldier protecting the two sole survivors of the dig-site staff was an important task, Spirits only knew what kind of intel that they could offer once they were settled and speaking with the professionals.
Shepard nodded sharply and flashed a reassuring smile at the three of them before turning to leave, but Manuel suddenly lurched forward, grabbing her arm with surprising strength, either unaware of or uncaring of how many weapons rose in his direction. His eyes were wide and frantic, his breathing suddenly fast and shuddering, the thin veneer of stability he had evidently been clinging too long gone.
"You don't understand! The beacon... it's not just some artifact, some compendium of knowledge for us to plunder for our own glories! It's a warning, a message from the past. I've seen it in my dreams - death, destruction on a scale we can't comprehend!"
Shepard tensed but didn't pull away, studying the man carefully instead, and Nihlus had the sudden, inexplicable sense that she was somehow looking deeper at him. "What kind of warning?"
"Machines. Vast and terrible. They come from the dark spaces, harvesting all life. It's happened before, and it will happen again unless..." Manuel trailed off, his grip loosening as Dr. Warren gently pried his hand away. He blinked up at his colleague, looking a bit lost and confused, his moment of bizarre lucidity -as strange a word to use as that was for his ramblings, and as paradoxical as it was compared to his earlier thoughts on the man- lost.
"I'm sorry, Commander." she said, guiding Manuel back. "The stress of the attack... he hasn't been himself. Manuel is brilliant, but…fragile. He doesn't mean any harm."
Nihlus watched the exchange with interest, absently pleased with how well Shepard had handled that -most people didn't appreciate being suddenly grabbed by mentally disturbed individuals in the middle of combat situation-, the focus of his attention was on the man's words. Or, perhaps more accurately, Shepard's reaction to them. It wasn't automatic dismissal, nor was it credulous belief, but instead careful consideration.
"Thank you for the warning, Manuel. We'll be careful and do what we can to put a stop to things." she said softly, reassuringly, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder gently before turning again and leading the way from the shelter. The door slid shut behind them, the glowing icon on it turning from green to a deep, seething red. She glanced over her shoulder, regarding the building for a long, contemplative moment, before shrugging slightly and looking towards the distant spaceport. "Let's get moving."
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Cassie, for all her outward professionalism and trained compartmentalization, couldn't help but feel somewhat disturbed by what Manuel had just told her. As much as she wanted to dismiss it out of hand, she couldn't. She could sense his sincerity, the fierce belief permeating every word he spoke, his thoughts full of shadows and fear. Whatever he had seen, or thought that he had seen, it wasn't just a bad dream or the fraught nerves of PTSD. Though the PTSD certainly wasn't helping his mental and emotional stability, such as it was to begin with, the poor fellow.
She didn't say anything, her companions equally silent, as they jogged away from the digsite and the questions it held. There wasn't any time for questions, wasn't any time to consider the implications of his words, only focus on…
"Holy shit." Williams breathed behind her, sounding shocked and shaken, and Cassandra couldn't blame her. They had just come up over a rise, the valley holding the train station spread out before them, allowing them to see a good mile or two of the terrain in front of them…as well as the massive ship that was standing -standing, there was no other word for it- over the entire site like some sort of predator. It was enormous, probably at least a kilometer and a half in size, and after a moment's inspection she recognized it's tentacle-like 'legs' to be the imagery from the final frame of the distress call. That shot must have been it landing, and that was even more horrifying. A ship that size shouldn't, by any measure, even be capable of entering atmosphere safely, never mind actually landing. Even eezo couldn't completely ignore the effects of gravity or most of the other scientific laws.
The ground and the air quaked with pressure as a deep, throaty roar echoed around them, and before their shocked -and, yes, horrified- eyes the unknown dreadnaught lifted off and rocketed orbit-ward with astonishing speed, punching through the clouds and going out of fight in a matter of seconds. The engines on that thing had to be incredibly powerful, twice -no, three times at least!- as powerful as any Alliance ship she had ever heard of, to be able to reach orbit at such speed.
"That shouldn't be possible." Nihlus bluntly voiced what they were all thinking, sounding just as disturbed as Cassie felt, as he ran a hand over his fringe. Cassie couldn't help the absurd feeling of amusement at the gesture, a sign that turians and humans weren't so different from one another after all. It wasn't as if she didn't feel like doing the same thing with her hair, after all.
Shaking off her shock, her concern and discomfort if she was going to be honest, she forced herself once again to put something significant aside in pursuit of the mission at hand. "We can worry about giant, impossible ships -ones I don't recognize the design or classification for- later. Right now, we need to get to that beacon before it's gone for good. Fortunately for us, the main body of that damn thing was too high for them to have loaded it aboard before it lifted off, and I doubt there is a grav-lift on this planet tall enough to get it up there."
The team nodded grimly and resumed their swift pace towards the train station. As they approached, the signs of battle became more evident - scorched earth, shattered prefab structures, and the occasional body of a colonist or marine, though there were plenty of dead geth and husks as well. That wasn't surprising, the geth likely didn't see any point in recovering their 'dead' the way one of the organic races would.
"Looks like they put up one hell of a fight." Alenko observed, his voice tight despite his complimentary words.
"Fat lot of good it did them, doesn't look like they made much of a difference. They should have run for it." Williams muttered bitterly, no doubt thinking of how her entire unit -save herself and Nirali- had gotten annihilated in short order. Not necessarily the most encouraging, or even 'reasonable', attitude to take, but Cassie couldn't blame her. She'd reacted much the same when people talked about how brave and heroic and strong her fellow marines had been on Akuze. A feeling that had battled viciously with her pride that they had done their duty and honored their oaths.
They encountered sporadic resistance as they neared the station - small groups of geth and more of those horrific husk creatures. Shepard and her team dispatched them efficiently, their earlier encounters having removed the element of surprise while simultaneously educating them on their enemies abilities, only to watch as one of the two train's in the station vanished into the distance, the tall spire of the beacon clearly visible even from here. On the one hand, that was a bad thing. The enemy had escaped with the beacon. On the other hand, her team was right on their tails, and more than capable of catching up.
"Get after them, we've almost done it!" she snapped, holstering her pistols and drawing her sword again, calling up her meta-natural abilities with every intention of using them to full effect, and to full effect they were used. Moving fast and hard, trusting Nihlus and the two marines to watch her back and her flanks for anything she missed, she started to carve her way through the living -for a given value of the word- roadblocks between herself and her objective: the second train. Mechanical screeches, raspy shrieks, and the sound of flesh and metal alike being severed and punctured resounded, the world a blur of blistering aggression and deft defense, coherent thought left behind in favor of instinct and training. Kicking the last husk off over the train's railing, ignoring the squelching thud it made when it hit the ground a few dozen yards below, she double checked that her team was still with her before slamming her hand onto the controls and sending the platform into motion. Quick, but not quick enough. "Nihlus, can you do anything to speed this up with some fancy SPECTRE hacking or something?"
"I can give it a shot. These things can always go faster, once you fiddle with the safety measures." he responded calmly, not sounding particularly disturbed by the gore staining her blade and parts of her armor, as he stepped up to the console and began tapping away at his omni-tool. After a good thirty seconds, she was forced to slap her free hand onto the guardrail and hold tight as the transport leapt forward, it's velocity rapidly doubling. They were flying along the tracks now, far faster than could possibly be considered safe -or, for that matter, good for the machine's maintenance-, but that wasn't particularly important in the face of the current situation. 'The breakage', as the phrasing went, was tolerable as long as they succeeded in their mission.
"That's more like it!" Williams crowed, a wild grin on her face, breaking through the somber reserve the Chief had been displaying more or less since she had met and joined the group. Bar a few exceptions of outburst thanks to particularly shocking events, and in a way Cassie was glad to see her react to something that wasn't more bad news. She would have to make sure that there was a strong recommendation for Williams to get some hefty counselling after they got off Eden Prime.
The train hurtled down the tracks, the wind whipping past them as they clung to the railings. Cassandra used the brief moment of reprieve to assess their situation, eyes fixed on the rapidly approaching arrival platform ahead, where the other train had already come to a stop and the beacon was in the midst of being unloaded.
"What's the plan when we get there, Commander?" Alenko asked, checking his pistol to make sure it hadn't overheated or taken any damage during the constant fighting that they had endured since landing.
"Simple. We secure the beacon, eliminate any resistance, and extract." Shepard's voice was steady, despite the train's violent shaking. "Williams, you know the layout?"
"Spaceport's pretty straightforward. Main platform, cargo handling area, and a few admin buildings. Not much more to it than that, not yet anyway." Williams tensed as the platform ahead grew larger. "Problem is, this train arrives on the far side of the platform, and the only way to go from one side of the platform to the other is by using a pedestrian bridge. We'll probably have to fight our way across.
The train began to slow as they approached, revealing a welcoming committee of geth troops positioned strategically around the platform. A welcoming committee that didn't hesitate to open fire, forcing the two biotics in the squad to throw up barriers and act as living shields for their less-defended allies. Moments later, all four of their omnitools shrieked in warning. A radiological alarm, according to the quick glance that Cassie could make at her wrist as they ran for cover, indicating four nuclear weapons of sizeable power emplaced around the spaceport.
"Fucking fantastic!" Shepard snarled, shaking her head before looking at her team. "I'll draw their fire! Williams, Alenko, protecting Nihlus while he deals with the nukes!"
Her jetpack howled, and with a thunderous clap of biotics, she was soaring across the broad canyon of the train station to land amongst the geth, sword flicking and flashing in one hand while she used the other to lay down heavy, surprisingly accurate fire from one of her submachine guns with the other.
"Does she…do that often?" Williams asked tentatively, staring after the other woman for a long moment, and both males sighed.
"I've just met her today, and she's already done it more times than I'm particularly comfortable with." Nihlus grunted in response, turning on his heel to make his way towards the first of the bombs, the two humans following.
"I've know her since BAaT. She was like this then." Alenko answered, sounding both fond and tired, and Nihlus resisted the urge to groan. Something told him that this was going to be the least peaceful mentorship he'd ever performed in his career. Still, this sort of thing was why the SPECTREs wanted her, so who was he to complain too loudly that she proved to be exactly who they had expected her to be?
He just hoped the beacon wasn't damaged in all the chaos that Shepard seemed to be surrounded by. Spirits, not even surrounded by, she thrived on it!
He sighed as he dropped to his knees beside one of the bombs.
Definitely not the most peaceful mentorship, he groused to himself as he started the delicate process of disarmament. At least once they secured the beacon, nothing further was likely to go wrong. The big ship had left, they were wiping out the geth and husks nearby, and the Alliance fleet was probably arriving in the system even as he worked. All they had to do was stop these nukes and everything would be fine.
#################################################
A blaze of green light. A floating sensations. The galaxy laid bare.
"SHEPARD!"
Death!
Fear! Pain!
AGONY!
ENDLESS TORMENT!
STAND AND FIGHT!
TO THE DEATH!
NO!
Cannot win!
Run!
We must run!
All is lost!
We have failed!
Run! Hide!
Have to run and hide!
NO!
TO LATE!
Nowhere to run!
Nowhere to hide!
They are coming!