The Normandy returned to normal space metrics in a flash of light. The warp drive had finished its work, but its plates were still vibrating, spreading their crystalline song through the ship's power system.
"Transition completed successfully," Joker reported, as focused as he ever was at the helm, transforming from a slacker into an ace capable of piloting anything. "Error is ten-millionths of an astronomical unit. No damage."
"I'm detecting a squadron in orbit around the planet!" the lidar operator began his report.
"Judging by the gravitational signatures in the database, these are Salarian ships," the gravisonar operator added, cross-referencing with data provided by the ship's AI. "Detecting the arrival of Pegasus and escort forces!"
"Battle stations for the squadron," grim Shepard gave the order. "Launch the drones."
The operative had already contacted the commander of Pegasus via the neural network, giving him command of the space forces, while simultaneously establishing a connection with the landing parties that would be involved in the operation.
Finding himself at the center of the tactical network, the lieutenant colonel felt the echoes of the landing party's emotions and thoughts, where among the business-like composure, one fighter burned like a bright, impatient star. With a mere mental desire, the search algorithms loaded the tactical unit's personal file into the officer's mind. A moment for full comprehension of the information – and Shepard's face contorted as if from a toothache.
"Diva," the word, reinforced by a mental image, went to Shepard's personal group. A moment later, his squad had the same grimace on their faces when the associations brought them understanding.
"She needed a spanking!" Risa commented first with a very eloquent mental symbol, who, like a cat, didn't understand excessive cooing.
"In this case – justified," Miranda's mental message echoed concisely, who was impressed by the hurricane in human form, not the fighter.
"We're screwed," Rex's thought was the quintessence of all the squad's deliberations. "A thresher in a skirt, not a woman..."
"Understood," the senior officer after him on the bridge replied to Shepard, taking tactical command of the ship and returning the operative to reality.
"How did such a daughter come from the Seleznev family..." Shepard thought mournfully, assigning the younger Selezneva to the vanguard of the landing party, hoping that with her heavy walker, she could clear the bridgehead alone if necessary. "The girl who always has something happening to her, and if nothing is happening, then it already has. If I became famous for unconventional solutions and cursed luck, then she is for finding a 'Napoleon' class anomaly where everything has been checked, and more than once! That's why her callsign is 'Diva'... because where the prima performs on stage, there will be many of her comrades' corpses. For others, it's not all smooth sailing."
"Petrovich! We have Diva. Possible hearse. Beware!" the lieutenant colonel decided to warn the senior paratrooper on board the Normandy.
"Damn!" the paratrooper almost swallowed his cigarette from what he heard, instantly shedding his usual unhurriedness. Coming alive, he almost kicked the Red Army soldiers, feeling all the scars on his back ache at once. He had encountered Diva once, and that's why he remained alive, unlike the platoon. That story with the purple balls still haunted him from time to time...
The younger Selezneva, Alisa, a junior lieutenant of the Argentum detachment, Diva, was already in her walking tank, fixed on the launch table. The girl, who wholeheartedly yearned for adventure, craved victories and the execution of real combat missions. For her, this was just another adventure that would inevitably end well!
Her fanatical enthusiasm made everyone connected to the tactical network shiver with phantom sensations of burnt flesh, blood, and the smell of death, drawn by associations. Where the Argentum operative saw an adventure, the battle-hardened soldiers saw the horrors of war, not romanticizing them...
Before Shepard could leave the bridge, he received a communication request from an unknown subscriber. Realizing that the ship's AI wouldn't have let a third-party call through just like that, especially after the dressing-down she had given it, the lieutenant colonel, cursing, pulled his "Chebetar" from his uniform pocket.
"I'm listening," the mental response to the call was dry as a desert.
"Human..." the interlocutor transmitted the words slowly, as if choosing them. His "inner announcer's" voice was creaky, with a gruff intonation, emphasizing for knowledgeable sentient beings his lived years. The subscriber was not just old, but ancient. "Are you in charge?!"
"Let's assume so," Shepard suppressed his irritation, already feeling the breath of trouble behind his back.
"I demand Soviet citizenship!!!" the interlocutor howled, breaking into a wooden creak. "I feel your thoughts. You came for the history of this world... but you will only get it by saving it from an ancient horror that these reptiles have found somewhere!"
"Who are you and where can you be found?" the lieutenant colonel resigned himself to another strange individual on his ship. He had no other choice. He didn't have time to check if the interlocutor had information or not, especially considering the Salarian ships in orbit.
As if mocking him, the universe made its move. In familiar flashes of biological plasma, the first ship of the Salarian fleet disappeared. The lieutenant colonel, connected to his ship's surveillance systems, saw it in all its glory. If he wanted, he could zoom in to see the fan of debris and bodies scattering, but he didn't.
"From where?!" Shepard asked the universe, recalling in an instant what could have done such a thing, but the universe remained, as usual, without an answer.
"Transmitting coordinates," the interlocutor's intonation became calmer, which spoke of his telepathic abilities. "My name is Torian. Hurry if you want to know what you need so badly! They are tearing apart my creations..."
The Red Army soldiers landed on the planet only an hour later. Despite the efforts made, the frog squadron could not be saved. Although they didn't have large volumes of biomass, the ancient biological weapon, receiving a boost from the polymer fertilizer, was able to grow the necessary bioconstructs.
Following its patterns, it, driven by its instincts, sought to destroy everything that resembled a mechanical device. Simultaneously, as it grew, the plant horror absorbed all available biomass, trying to adapt the assimilated genome to itself.
The ships of the Salarian Union were simply in a zone of guaranteed destruction, essentially defenseless against fire from the surface. The biological weapon, specially developed cycles ago, was designed to counter forces actively using mass effect, that's all...
The plant mutants were engaged in heavy positional battles with the local flora. Each side sought to gain more biomass to overwhelm its opponent with numbers.
The indigenous species was slowly losing, although it acted more creatively and had more impressive abilities. Its spores caused shock pain to the invader's constructs, and with a successful outcome, they took control of the infected unit.
The humanoid structures grown by them, although stronger than the mutated constructs, lost to them in numbers, which became increasingly critical. Two monsters were literally and unceremoniously devouring each other, racing in speed, where the local species couldn't keep up with the creation of the decayed scientists...
Therefore, the USSR forces began with a simple orbital bombardment in this case. After the episode in the Pandora sector, the General Staff of the Defense Aspect developed tactics for countering such threats. They became mandatory training for all officers, as the galaxy is large, and one doesn't know what else might be lurking in its darkness.
Having suppressed the mutant-built air defense with a raid of unmanned aircraft, the fleet forces approached the planet, taking positions for firing as if in exercises. The Red Fleet's guns didn't need to fully bombard the entire surface. Heavy calibers processed the area around the desired section, creating a safe bridgehead for the landing forces.
Only after that were the heavy machines dropped, among which was Diva's walking armor. An ultra-heavy structure, created by Soviet scientists as an alternative to a tank division, intended for breaking through fortified areas, unleashed the power of truncated ship-based barrels. Having lost their extreme range, but not their lethality, the machine's guns simply changed the landscape with each salvo.
The heavy eight-barreled flamethrower installed on the walker completed the picture of destruction, turning the perimeter into a branch of hell. With each shot, Alisa felt how she was benefiting her comrades. The girl, who had become one of the Union's best mech pilots, simply made the heavy machine dance in a dance of destruction...
Distant from Diva, who had gotten her hands on ultra-heavy armor, the main forces landed, under the cover of unmanned aircraft. Quickly taking their positions on the armor, the column advanced to the designated area.
Drones eliminated individual bioconstructs either with their weapons fire or by self-detonation. Created cheaply and disposable, they bore the brunt of the losses. The USSR's industry could afford this, saving the lives of its soldiers in this way.
Along the route of the mech column, transport shuttles dropped off cybernetics squads. Combat robots provided additional cover for organic fighters, pushing the perimeter even further back, allowing the engineering units of Skaven and Octopods to begin digging in, literally before their eyes building a echeloned-nodal defense, preparing for the influx of mutated plants. Their task was to delay and buy time for the deployment of a planetary mine. The threat of ancient weapons was a valid reason for detonating the planet...
"Secure the perimeter," Shepard briefly ordered the soldiers, dismounting from the armor with his group, joined by Garrus, Liara, and Javik.
Giving mental instructions to two Nagas and a Krogan to take positions around the entrance to the dungeon, the operative boldly stepped into the darkness, breaking into a run. Behind him followed other operatives of the squad.
The Argentum fighters didn't need commands or mental communication. Now they were one whole. Minds united through the neural network formed a single organism in multiple bodies. Their support forces complemented it, completing a flawless pattern, compensating for the chosen specializations and individual weaknesses of the operatives.
"You didn't hurry..." the owner of this place greeted them with a replica.
The ancient root, exhausted by the onslaught of mutants, was in no mood, even for such an ancient creature as it was.
"You want to leave this planet alive, although last time you were not too polite," the lieutenant colonel hinted at its rudeness, who, after the conversation in orbit, decided to find out everything about his interlocutor.
"You didn't touch me and didn't threaten to burn this world, and I allowed you to dig in its ruins. A deal," the plant reminded him.
"But you kept silent about both the Reapers and the critically important information for us," Shepard continued his offensive. "How can I believe you didn't lie? Huh?"
"Trump card. You are too persistent. The Reapers didn't touch me because I knew my place, living in the shadows. Your efforts destroyed that shadow. I see where this is going..." the Root said maliciously. "You forced me to choose a side and an action. Let's end this. I'm ready to become part of you. You get information, I get existence. A deal."
"We don't do that. In the USSR, everyone contributes as much as possible, receiving according to their needs!" the lieutenant colonel remarked the obvious, taking out an ampoule with neuropolymer.
"Survival requires effort," the Torian admitted his defeat. "Do what you must..."
The officer nodded, throwing the ampoule into the plant's gaping maw.
"A remarkably nasty weed," Javik muttered to himself. As a warrior, he found such bargaining for one's life repulsive. If one reasoned from his moral standpoint, the root, without much resistance, acknowledged the USSR's superiority over itself. "It should have been eradicated centuries ago."
"Can he really know what we need?" Shepard asked the last Prothean again.
"Most likely. This bush was known in my time," was the answer.
"How much easier it would have been to examine ordinary ruins..." Liara remarked, her gaze carefully sweeping the room. "But to my uninitiated mind, knowing from your files about the ability to absorb other life forms and create their copies, inherent in this creature, one can conclude that our friend might have captured a couple of Javik's kin in the distant past, with the logical outcome."
"Female, you were just admiring that this could devour my kin?" the warrior of the fallen empire feigned surprise.
"I would have admired it if he had devoured you years ago. The departed goddess knows it would have been easier for me to explore dead stones and brush your skulls clean of dirt," the Azarian maiden snapped back.
"Stop talking shit, we have problems, damn it," Petrovich didn't let the argument escalate...
The Helldiver and the engineer hastily rolled away to avoid being trampled by the heavy walker, not ceasing to curse its pilot. It was noteworthy that in five minutes, the old and wise warrior never repeated himself, rolling over Diva's biography like a steamroller, starting from the moment she was born.
Once again, the fifteen-meter machine elegantly dodged a slap from a gorilla-like construct assembled from tree shoots and stones, adorned with pieces of ancient ruins. Truncated ship guns boomed, scattering its skeleton, but, as if mocking them, the mutant plant's creation reassembled itself, scattering seeds around that immediately sprouted.
Seeing this, Petrovich cursed this green sludge too, hastily installing turrets, hoping that the cow-ballerina of juvenile production wouldn't knock down his efforts in an elegant elephant-like dance. He hadn't even managed to assemble a dozen deadly autonomous firing points, acting like a rabbit with pepper under its tail, when he had to intervene, albeit not without pleasure.
Showing restraint and miracles of training, he first created a trench with his polymer manipulator from himself to the rim, and then covered it with a polymer surface, allowing the walker's machinery to take a step, rather than place its foot in another spot. The pilot, who was fighting without paying attention to where the machine was placing its feet in the heat of battle, didn't notice this, which the exasperated Helldiver took advantage of.
The polymer underfoot disappeared, and the heavy armor fell to its knee, letting a whistling stone from the second giant pass over it, which, if Petrovich hadn't intervened, could have turned the pilot's cabin into a mess. The stone, whistling and whistling, flew in a good arc and crashed into the approaching armored personnel carrier, which the Helldiver simply didn't have time to help.
"Why is it that while saving this idiot, someone always dies, you bitch?" Petrovich blurted out after he stopped cursing again, having run to the armored vehicle. "Damn, I was incredibly lucky. Private, is that you?"
To the veteran's relief, the armored vehicle was empty, except for a pale, non-Negroid-looking driver.
"I think I broke my leg..." the private barely managed to say from the pain.
"Want me to make you forget about your leg?" the Helldiver said, examining his comrade. It wasn't that he needed permission, but he was almost polite.
After receiving a weak nod, Petrovich took his hand... and broke his finger with a quiet yelp.
"You broke my finger, you bitch!!!" the wounded man howled.
"Comrade Benson Winifred Payne, you've learned to speak like a real soldier, damn your thresher ass!" the veteran exclaimed, listening.
The automatic injector of the private's armor beeped quietly, injecting him with a painkiller.
"See, and you were scared. Not even your damn little skirt got wrinkled. Learn, student, while I'm alive. For this shit to work, you need to get properly fucked up, not just a little boo-boo on your leg. Otherwise, maybe you busted your virginity from straining, and the state is spending incredibly useful drugs on you. Didn't I tell you, comrade, change your shit for newer shit, damn it? Now wipe your snot and pull yourself together, Uncle Shep is about to spit, blow, and fuck everything alive, firmly securing it with tape, starting with this smiling bitch!"
The smell of ozone filled the air, confirming the Helldiver's words. Shep, along with other operatives, leaving the evacuation of the Root to escorts, began to hold the perimeter, starting with clearing the approaches.
"But this bitch is beautiful," he mused to the private. "I'd let her visit my dick in the future. Why are you silent?"
Seeing the soldier's semi-conscious state and realizing that the drugs were starting to work, Petrovich added,
"Well, congratulations. You're a fucking train now, you managed it," he shouted the last part from a distance, returning to the fight, remembering his fate. If only he had joined the construction battalion, as they suggested...