2177 – Akuze

The sun was extremely hot, as usual, and glaring down through the scattered clouds upon the people that were brave enough to leave the cool of the air conditioned buildings. The only people who were outside and who didn't show a sign of sweat were the Alliance soldiers, their armour providing perfect air condition for them. They were patrolling the borders of the main camp, watching out for something. I didn't know what because I've lived here all my life and never seen anything that might require a soldier to get rid of it.

As I am a student engineer, not by choice, I am not too familiar with the Alliance tasks here. I knew that they paid us a sum of money for the research we did here. And that from time to time they would send people over to examine the colony. Once a year more colonists would come to Darya, the main colony here.

Though the days here aren't as long as Earth days, or so they say and all the tech seems to agree because of the updates we have to run every time we receive a shipment of tech or anything else with a watch, they feel far longer. The relentless sun sets for only seven hours until it's back with it's annoying glaring. The shield that was set up to filter the UV rays did it's job though because most of the colonists, me included weren't tanned. I am pale but with black hair and blue eyes. Quite a weird sight to see for whenever I catch a glimpse of me in the mirror.

Mother was, at the moment, in the Mako, fixing it after the last excursion to the coast. This particular Mako had driven down into the water and got it's battery burned, along with a few other circuits.

'Do you need help?' I asked, hoping for an unlikely no.

'Sure. Could you check the barrier routine? I don't know how it's affected by my tweaking.' she replied lightly, her torso hidden under the huge rover.

I checked my omni-tool.

'You've locked the system, mother.' I answered, rolling my eyes. 'I'm not going to hack it for you.'

'Oh, right! Sure, wait a moment.' she said, getting up.

He face and arms were covered in black grease.

'Wow. What happened to that thing?' I asked, surprised.

'After the battery cut off the barriers collapsed, opening a few leaks that we'd been keeping sealed with the barrier.' she replied. 'So I'm patching them with, ah, stuff.' she shrugged.

I just shook my head. Though the regulations were clear on what you were allowed to do with the Alliance owned Makos few colonists really cared. Scrap metal is cheap and abundant.

'Alright, I'm online.' I said as the rover's drive appeared on the holographic display of my omni-tool. 'And this is weird. You can touch the Mako?'

'Yes. Why?' she frowned.

'The readings say that the barriers are on full strength. You shouldn't be able to touch the metal. I'll kill the power to it and start a C-protocol to keep it from blowing up.'

She frowned and laughed.

'That's odd. Get on it. I have two more leaks and then I'm done anyways.' she said, submerging herself under the rover again.

I pushed a few buttons haphazardly until the power regulation standards were showing and then had it search for protocol settings. They were all empty.

'Ah, mother.' I said in an urgent voice. 'If I were you I'd stand back. When the power died then it really died. There is no record of safety protocols for it at all. You guys butchered the Mako.' I shook my head in mock sadness.

If any other teenager had said that my mother, or any other adult, would have come to double check my findings. But I was top of the class, probably as good as the teachers if not better and so my mother got up and simply allowed me to make the changes.

I entered the local protocol settings and restricted the power flows to the main three barrier generators, making an equal division of power to them. Removed the restrictions and gave power back to the rest of the rover. A few tweaks with the power routes that were off and the final restrictions.

'Done.' I said after a moment of double checking that I hadn't ruined anything. 'The leaks are covered now too, though.'

She shrugged and threw the working gloves into a bin.

'Oh no.' she said, smiling. 'Whatever will I do with all the fifteen minutes of spare time? Should I sleep, or should I eat?'

'Don't go to work.' I said simply. 'They won't notice.'

'Yeah, because Sanders won't mind at all that his favourite rag-doll isn't there.' she rolled her eyes. 'And we need the creds.'

'We need the creds? Are we in some debt?' I asked, worried. I didn't like debts because they had a funny way of growing without you purchasing anything.

'Nope. But there is a colonist enlistment form at the station.' she said with a glint in her eyes. 'On Eden Prime. And your father is going to be sent off to Eden Prime for his next post.'

I smiled, genuinely surprised.

'For how long?' I asked, getting down from my perch on the toolboxes.

'Which?'

'For how long is he stationed there?'

'They need a force of Alliance soldiers there for permanent residence. Two hundred in total. He'll be one of them.' she said and then added with infliction. 'Permanent.'

'Great! I hear that they have great beaches. And no UV filters. A paradise.'

'You'll still be studying and I'll still be working, you know.' she said, warningly. 'It is still a colony and that needs a lot of work to keep running.'

'Well... yes. But they are way ahead of any colony here on Akuze.' I said. 'They can't need that much more. It's just construction and agriculture stuff that needs to be done.'

'And who'll be doing it, I wonder.' said mother, looking at me intently.

'The hillbillies. They aren't much good for anything else, might as well dig and shove.' I shrugged.

She threw her hands up in exasperation.

'What?' I asked. 'You said you wanted me to be an engineer. If I start digging stuff I'll make you unhappy. And I don't want to make you unhappy.' I said as innocently as I could manage.

'I forgot. I'm talking to a child here.' she groaned. Then she looked at her watch and groaned again. 'I'm gonna be late. See you at dinner. Buy a pizza, I'm sick of potatoes.'

I nodded and she left. I looked at the watch too. My class had started two hours ago. I wondered whether I should fake an illness and stay at home. It seemed like a very compelling thought.

Sighing I started off towards the school building, which was an old garage for tanks. As the colony had expanded the tanks couldn't get through the buildings so they had to make a new one and we got the garage as school. It was a rather large building with twenty classrooms and a very confusing and twisting corridor where things were very neat at all times. No one had the time or energy to ruin anything and no one who was careless got a scholarship.

I should probably tell you that I am an eighteen years old girl. Both of my parents are from Japan, their parents being amongst the first colonist to depart the station at Singapore to Eden Prime. My parents were only toddlers back then.

I'm not sure how we ended up on a dreadful place like Akuze, but now that the prospect of leaving it was real, I realized that I would miss it. Maybe.

'You are late!' exclaimed professor Madin as I enter the classroom. 'No, not even late. You are terribly untimely!' he said, his three chins wobbling with outrage.

'Sorry for being late, professor.' I said, not meeting anyone's eyes.

'You should be!' he exclaimed. 'Preposterous!'

I sat down and did my best to ignore him completely. I didn't like him and I knew that he loathed me. Few teachers liked me, mainly because I've been putting them down in class a lot. Doesn't mean that they haven't put me down as well, they are after all bookworms.

'Hmph. Well, as I was saying,' he continued whatever he had started. 'The drives one would see on a frigate will always be bigger than on any transport because of the increased power usage withing the mass effect cores. In theory, we would be able to power a ship of a size that is ten times bigger than any of ours as long as it lacks the Fusion Atros shielding. But without it the ships won't last in fire fights.'

'But I thought that ships were only equipped with barriers, because of the speed they travel at makes shields less effective, burning up in gases and oxides.' I said, raising my hand belatedly.

'Which is what I explained before you entered.' said the professor smugly. 'The two-ordered frigates of the turian fleet, which make up a fifth of their fleet, aren't able to enter FTL and can't sustain a mass transfer through a relay for long enough to make a significant difference. Instead they are defensive vessels that orbit the planet in question and are damn effective at beating down raiders and pirates. The tow vessels of the salarians are used when they hit another planet or when relocated.'

I nodded and pretended to ignore him again. This wasn't that important, I'd never seen a turian in real life, only in vids, and even if I ever did manage to get on board one of those ships I'd be kicked out immediately, unless I was taken prisoner.

There was the [thirty years war](check sources for length of FC-war =P) that was still fresh in everyone's memory but that I had managed not to be born during. The way everyone retold it, the war sounded a lot more like humans bumping into a wall and belatedly realizing that it was intelligent. At least that was our impact on the turians.
Their fleets had nearly wiped out ours in the first strike and any later strike was usually in their favour.

Eventually they simply sent their fleet home and the Destiny Ascension had come to welcome our kind into the Galaxy and to make peace between our races.

The turians were cool about it and the humans didn't want to lose without compensation for so a diplomatic battles ensued and as far as I know is still going on.

There was one outstanding person in the war, some general Owen that had beaten five turian warships with his one frigate and went on to save lesser fleets from annihilation. Or so the old people and the history books said.

I was brought out of my reverie as my bench began to vibrate. A few seconds later I realized that I was vibrating as well. And so was the room.

'Ah... hang on, I'll go and check on what's going on.' said professor Madin. He wobbled out of the room.

The vibration stopped for a moment and then resumed stronger than before. I hear a crash and the rumble of earth.

'Forget this, I'm leaving to check up on mother.' I decided, getting up and out of the classroom. If this had something to do with their research...

And then I saw what was going on from the window in the corridor. The professor was standing there, frozen in shock. It startled me as he started and began running as fast as he could, shouting at the top of his lungs.

'Thresher maws are attacking! Evacuate now! Thresher maws are attacking!'

And they were. Huge worm-like creatures erupted from the ground, dozens of them, and destroyed buildings and tanks with their massive strikes.

Soldiers were taking cover behind prepared barricades but no barricade would stand against such creatures. One strike with the forehead and a squad of Alliance soldiers dead. Another strike and another squad dead.

I saw one woman running from cover to cover, ignoring the orders of her commanders. I gasped as thresher maw struck at her but she was well out of the way before the strike connected with the ground. With an impressive display of acrobatics she climbed a ruined building and shouted something. One of the thresher maws looked about at her and as it did so she fired from a grenade launcher. She hit it in the eye, blowing up it's brains and something gooey and disgusting leaked from the eye hole. The skull remained intact with no apparent signs of damage from the explosion. No one else seemed to notice what she had done though because they were too busy running for their lives or to try and kill them. Several of the things were now blind in one or more of the eyes but the bullets made little difference.

One more fell, after a lot of intense fire but more were erupting from the ground and the soldiers' numbers were dwindling way too quickly. The tanks were completely useless as they were all destroyed and the few that weren't were stuck under rubble. The shuttles tried to attack from the air but the thresher maws were spitting some kind of acid that melted through the barriers and down to the plating, killing the engines eventually. In the brief moment that I watched, two had already gone down.

'Mother.' I thought in panic and started running. But my mind was mainly on the creatures. I didn't kid myself that we had a chance. That brave Alliance chick had been lost in the crowd after her daring manoeuvre and I couldn't be sure that she was even alive. The formation of the creatures had been very gathered, much like a pack and they were working outwards.

A plan came to me and I began counting. The soldier were holding, if dying in the process. I knew of many things that could make a blast powerful enough to reach them. And I knew what could make a blast effective enough to kill them.

As soon as I left the school building I ran into someone. It was that Alliance soldier that had blown up the brains of one thresher maw. I'd need her. My plan involved going past the creatures.

'Hey, wait!' I shouted as she had resumed her fast running.

'No time!' she replied.

'I know how to stop them!' I shouted.

That brought her to a reflexive stop.

'Talk fast!' she said, impatience and fury mixed in her eyes.

'We get the tainted chems and the turret tower and blow them up in the centre of these monsters!' I said as urgently as I could, gesticulating to show an explosion. She started turning away.

'That would take too long, and wouldn't kill them.' she said dismissively.

'It would! The tainted chemical solution is a powerful acid that the researchers use for removing matter from around stuff like platinum and iridium! And I can control a worker's shuttle as easily as you wield that that grenade launcher!' I shouted over the noise of gunfire and the shrieks of thresher maws.

She thought as quickly as she could.

'Fine, lead the way!' she said.

As I began running towards the thresher maws she grabbed my arm.

'I didn't mean go and die! What the hell?'

'The chemical disposal is over there and so is the west turret tower.' I pointed at the turret that was firing wildly and inaccurately and very pathetically. Bigger calibre means higher collision rate but less pressure, which is key to getting through the armour of such creatures. The turrets had been designed to fight ships, not worms.

She groaned but nodded and we started off towards the turret tower where main controls for the area resided.

'I need you to enter you ID code.' I said. 'Only Alliance are allowed to use this.'

She did.

'Welcome Alliance Marine, Jean Shepard.' said the control array.

'Hi.' I replied dryly and began to push buttons.

I quickly found the shuttle controls and put them onto my omni-tool, connecting all the surviving crafts. I made them take hold of the turret and the containers of different acidic and generally degenerative solutions.

'This is Shepard, we are going to blast these creatures with tainted chems, take cover on my mark! I repeat, we are going to blast them with tainted chemicals, don't let them stray from point and take cover on my mark!' shouted the soldier into her com. She waited for affirmatives and someone shouting at her. 'How the hell should I know? Just fire and get behind cover on my command!' she replied. 'How soon?' she asked me.

'A few seconds.' I said. The turret had stopped firing and marines came down the stairs to aid the rest. They must have noticed the shuttles outside of the tower. I unlocked the turret from the neck of the tower and released the chemical containers. Five shuttles had to carry the containers and three shuttles the turret.

'I'm releasing them on three!' I said to the soldier.

'On three, take cover!' she relayed to the com.

'One. Two. Three. Now!'

I gave it two more seconds and then dropped the turret which had received a self-destruct order set on two seconds along with the containers. I wasn't sure how they would explode but I was sure that they would, along with the shuttles that were now plummeting towards the creatures instead of trying to circle and fire at them. The explosion shook the walls and the ground. The tower made a creaking noise and bits of it fell down. The soldier pulled me out of the way as everything collapsed.

'Report.' she said into the com.

I heard the buzz of the intercom and was glad to hear that they had gotten out of the way from the blast. Not dallying any longer I started of towards the south research platform where my mother was stationed, ignoring the shouts of the Alliance soldier.

I ran by the school, or the wreckage of it at any rate, turned a corner that was more like a chuck of gravel rather than a corner and saw the platform. Or rather, I saw where it was supposed to have been. It was gone.

The platform was supposed to have been raised upon reinforced metal poles with a strong foundation to support it. With all this grumbling of the ground and the burrowing of the thresher maws the platform must have fallen down the cliff. With all the engineers. With my mother. Who the hell set a platform on a cliff? Seemed stupid in retrospect.

I couldn't really comprehend what was happening but a pain in my legs and arms made me look down in time to see them raw and bleeding.

'What?' I asked stupidly, not moving anywhere.

They seemed to be burning only without the fire as an excuse. What was going on? As I felt drowsy and suffocated I realized that I'd forgotten the fact that you had to vent an area of the poisoned chemicals before entering it. Or you died. The soldiers would be fine because the shields had been designed to filter this sort of radiation, the only radiation they were capable of filtering. But I was unprotected. So I would die. And see mother. But what if she wasn't dead? She could have left the platform and gotten to cover amongst the soldiers, safe even now from the radiation.

Now I began panicking. I could feel it ruining my eyes and eyelids, the pain making me gasp for breath which in turn gave way to more pain.

'There she is!' someone shouted.

A person ran over to me and the noise of radiation in my head stopped. It was one of the soldiers.

'Where is my mother?' I asked as calmly and sternly as I could. I then realized that they wouldn't know who my mother was. 'She is one of the engineers that worked on that platform. Her name is Agatha.'

I couldn't see at all any more but it wasn't really my primary concern. I wanted to make sure as well that no one else was exposed to this radiation.

'Calm down.' said a female voice. 'Doc, I need you here. She's falling to pieces.'

I winced. Had something fallen off?

'I'm coming. Give her anaesthetics. She is degenerating rapidly!'

'Why? Why aren't we affected?' asked the soldier.

'This radiation acts irrationally, moving in much the same way that electrons do, only much slower. Still fast enough for the shields to burn it off.' replied the doctor soothingly.

'She's behind shields!' pointed the soldier out.

'But she got too damaged for autonomous recovery. She'll need medical aid to survive this. There are a few acids that counteract this and the proper dosage of glucose could give her better chance of fighting this out.' replied the doctor, now urgently. 'Can you hear me?' she asked.

'No.' I said, forgetting the question instantly but knowing that I had to respond or they would think me dead, forgetting that they'd see me breathe.

'Good. Stay calm and don't move. Medi-gel will remove most of the exterior wounds but it will still burn and hurt under the skin, the damage goes deep.'

'Wait.' I said, trying to remember through the very persistent pain. 'Where is my mother?'

There was a silence and I felt my arms burning. I tried to scream but couldn't find my voice. I wasn't sure if I was out of it or not.

'You are Numine, right?' asked the doctor as I felt the pain subside. She was giving me painkillers.

'Yes.' I said.

'I'm sorry, Numine.'

I did understand. Why was she sorry? She didn't know? I didn't know? That made no sense. And then my vision came back. My head felt as if it was about to explode from pain as my eyes began seeing light and I did my best not to rub them. I then realized that I was so successful because the doctor was holding my arms down.

'Give her these.' she said to someone and I felt water being poured onto my eyes. Instantly they felt better. I couldn't quite see anything aside from vague silhouettes but it was enough. I began to get up again.

'No, don't get up. You are in a very bad shape. Moving will do irreversible damage.' said the doctor. 'From what the scans tell me almost your entire body has been affected, brain included. Medi-gel keeps it from falling apart but moving is dangerous.'

I wanted to nod and say I understood but then I realized that it would be moving and so didn't nod.

'Alright. But where is my mom? Is she hurt? Is she shielded? If not, she needs help.' I said, reasoning.

'Numine-...' began the doctor.

'Min. Call me Min.' I interrupted. Stupid name.

'Your mother died, Min. The ground didn't hold the platform. She and half of the engineering squad died. I'm sorry.'

I tried to understand what the doctor was saying but it was much like trying to hold water in my cupped hands. I couldn't quite get it.

'What do you mean?' I asked, not sure if my question was stupid or not.

Before I could get an answer there was shouting and I could hear gunfire coming from alarmingly close at hand. There were sounds of beasts, much like the thresher maws only they sounded squeakier, compared to before at least.

'Retreat! Everybody pull back!' someone shouted. I wondered if that included me or if I should just remain on the ground. I felt much better now, but the doctor was right, if my brain would fall apart by me moving then I had better refrain from doing so.

'Get her! We can't leave her!' someone shouted.
My heart sank. I opened my eyes and I was alone, everyone else were far away now. I looked down my legs and saw something very curious growing larger and larger. It took me a while to realize that these were some kind of bugs swarming down on me. Forgetting all the warnings from the doctor and the pain in my head, painkillers didn't mute that, I began to get up and move away.
I hadn't realized before how weak I had become, but I should have known seeing as most of my muscle tissue was melted off by the radiation. I couldn't move much beyond a slow and painful crawl.

I shrieked in horror as something very hard and heavy collided with me, expecting death very quickly. It wasn't death. It was that soldier from before. She was carrying me away.

Everything turned red and brown at first and I thought that I was going blind again, my vision failing. No such luck. We were swarmed by these giant, bug-like things who were stabbing and spitting at the soldier. I could see the mucus slowly melting at her armour.

Not that she wasn't putting up with a fight. She was and a damn good one at that, blasting open the heads of any bugs that came too close.

'Go to the river.' I said as one of the bugs came dangerously close to my head with it's claw.

'Can you swim?' she shouted back, firing as rapidly as she could.

'I will float if necessary.' I replied. Drowning felt a lot easier than this kind of death.

She turned around and began sprinting, discarding the overheated shotgun. I dug in her pocket and found a number of explosives. A small number, true, but if it could halt the flying bugs then hey, why not? All in all, three grenades. I took the time to read the name on them. These were manufactured by some corporation called ExoGeni. I threw one to see what would happen.

It blinked three times and then exploded in a very unsatisfactory way. The bugs were rattled but not unduly so. And there seemed to be more of them as well.

I tweaked the explosives a bit, to force them into a position for easier ignition. I threw it.

Three blinks and the following explosion took out five of the bugs. It also made the soldier carrying me across her shoulder stumble.

'Sorry.' I said.

She didn't reply. Her breath was heavy and I could feel her discomfort under me. But I could also see the river from here. What more, I could see the large amount of bugs swimming in it. I hadn't thought of that. Looking about I saw a barely standing building with three floors. It had no doors.

'Run through that place!' I said, pointing.

'Why?' she asked, heading towards it.

'We're taking as many of them as possible before they take us! Don't stop, just run through!' I replied.

I tweaked the explosive again, my last one, and threw it close to a very bearing wall at the end of the building. As we ran out of it the explosive went off with a huge bang. The building didn't stand too long. One of the bugs managed to get out before the structure collapsed on the rest.

'Kill it!' I shrieked, as it's spit missed me by an inch.

The soldier turned around and shot it five times in the head, killing it.

She let me fall to the ground, breathing hard. I felt as if part of me were indeed falling apart, my vision shifted between focused and unfocused, colour and sepia so often that it was disconcerting. Nothing changed when I closed them. I could taste blood and was sure that one of my ribs was broken.

'Now... what?' gasped the soldier.

I looked around me, trying to see what we had to work with. The bugs at the river didn't seem content staying there and began to quickly approach us.

'We can't kill them all by doing what we've been doing so far. How many more are there?'

She seemed to look about and then checked her omni tool. She cursed.

'The colony is overrun.' she said bitterly.

'Tell everyone to head towards a tall structure.' I said, another plan in the making.

'More running?' she asked.

'Yup. We're going to drown them.' I said, as she lifted me and slung me across her shoulder. It hurt like hell but I suppose that it was still preferable to death.

'How? The fire extinguishers?' asked the soldier, heading in their direction.

'No. The aqueducts. And the pipes. Find a place where they meet and blow it up. Have as many bugs there as possible. Even if they don't drown the sheer pressure of water will kill them.'

She looked to her omni tool for a while as she ran.

'We are headed towards such a place.' she said. 'It's just outside the mining mess hall.'

She turned a corner. She swore.

'What?' I asked, trying to see. What I saw, though incomplete, didn't seem encouraging. There were many bugs. All of them coming from the mine.

'There's another one further south!' said the soldier, running fast now. 'How are we blowing them up?'

I hadn't thought of that. I looked through her weapons. The handgun had a funny addition of incendiary ammo. That would do. I realized why it was odd. The handgun was burned out.

I threw the thing away and fixed the incendiary ammo to the assault rifle ammo. It looked shaky so I removed some of the actual ammo and bypassed the heat sinks. Inspired further I took the barrel from the sniper rifle, having broken parts of it in my attempt to remove it, and swapped it for the assault rifle barrel. I connected the ammo modification to the barrel, again past the heat sinks.

My home made bomb-thrower was done. I wondered if it would explode at all. At any rate, it didn't look less shaky.

'Well?' asked the soldier more insistently as we reached the crossing of a hot water pipe and the aqueduct.

'I've got it covered.' I replied. 'Get up there, wait for the bugs to fill the streets and pull the trigger. The hole made will be wide enough to drown this place in a few seconds. You can leave me in there.'

I pointed towards what seemed to be an alley.

'That's a light pole.' she said, beginning her climb. 'And I'm not leaving you.'

'You can't-...'

'Years of military training.' she said, interrupting me. 'I'm quite fit.'

'Have you contacted the others? This place will be under water very soon.' I said.

'No one else responds. As far as I can tell, all military is dead. There's no way for us to contact the other colonists. Are we doing this?'

I weighed the cons against the pros. People would be able to see the flood and hide, even if they aren't warned. But some might not make it in time. They'll just be washed away. Then so will the bugs. This is a hundred degrees Celsius water. It will scar people, if nothing else. The aqueduct is rather cool. The bugs will kill me if I don't do this.

And that was the dominant thought. Also, little to no research would be destroyed this way, compared to a nuclear blast from a ship, this is a way more preferred way to deal with things.

'Do it.' I said.

She nodded.

I could see the massive swarm of bugs coming closer and closer. They didn't actually fly that well, coming down to ground after a second or so. From my unfocused eyes it looked like the armies of hell, descending on us. I hugged the soldier to me. If this didn't work I'd die. I would have been a waste of space and resources. My life would have neither meaning nor consequence. No one would know that I was here. My father would. My father. We could have moved to Eden Prime. What had happened? Thresher maws aren't native to Akuze. What the hell? And the huge bugs? Is this a bad sci-fi movie?

I couldn't be sure it wasn't. The quality was rubbish at any rate.

The bugs were surrounding us completely now. I hugged her even tighter to me. She pulled the trigger.