Vin steered the Mako through the blasted, rocky landscape, silently thanking Harmony for the existence of air-conditioning.
"So, Wrex, you work for the Shadow Broker?" Tali asked.
"I work for anyone who'll pay me. Makes things simpler that way."
"Anyone?" Shepard asked. "Even a Salarian?"
"I might charge them higher rates, but yeah."
"Even after what they did to the Krogan?"
"Hating an entire species is a waste of time and energy. I prefer to keep my vendettas on a personal level."
"Huh," Shepard said.
"Commander, you've got incoming!" Joker shouted, his voice almost drowned out by the intercom's static and the roar of the geth dropship passing overhead.
"Yeah, I see it," Shepard replied. "Williams, get on the gun!"
Ashley leapt into action, the controls for the Mako's weapons coming down from the ceiling and folding out from the passenger-side dash. She pressed her face to the viewfinder, seeking her target.
"Oh hell," Williams swore when she caught sight of what the dropship had left for them.
Twin blasts of plasma slammed into the Mako, pushing it back and creating a wash of crackling electricity as the barriers tried to disperse the energy of the attack. Williams' first shot went wide, the machine gun sending up bursts of dust and rock as it chewed up the ground.
Vin swore as the geth began to charge their cannons for another blast, and slammed her foot down on the gas. The Mako surged forward, and any bystander unlucky enough to be nearby would have sworn she intended to drive straight into the bolts of plasma.
At the last second before they would have hit, Vin switched on the thrusters, sending the Mako leaping over one of the Armatures.
Vin was already burning steel, and as the Mako flew through the air she tracked the thick blue line that pointed at the second Armature. A fraction of a second before the Mako was directly above the machine, Vin deactivated the thrusters, adjusted the drive core, and let gravity do the rest.
The Mako landed with a metallic 'crunch,' and Shepard didn't waste any time, flooring it again and jerking the wheel sharply, trusting in Williams to be ready to fire.
She didn't disappoint, opening fire the moment the undamaged armature was visible in the windshield. The missile hit first, exploding against the geth's shields, and Williams didn't give it a chance to recover. The machine gun didn't stop roaring until the armature was a pile of scrap.
Something hit the Mako from the side, pushing it to the very edge of the lava pool and making the shields' power drop sharply.
"Damn!" Vin muttered, seeing the geth she'd landed on getting to its feet. Or whatever it had at the end of its legs.
Again, Williams proved that Anderson hadn't made a mistake bringing her onto the Normandy. She swung the machine gun around, firing off a burst that ripped through the Armature's shields and plating with ease. Its single, blazing eye winked out.
"Are you supposed to use the vehicle itself as a weapon?" Tali asked, a touch shakily. Even through the opaque faceplate, Vin could tell that her eyes were wide.
"Probably not," she admitted, making sure that she'd switched the eezo core back to its standard setting. She'd screwed that up one time in basic, and the rest of her squad had never let her forget it. "I'm guessing there'll be more of those ahead?"
"Probably," the Quarian replied. "That dropship could hold plenty of Armatures and troopers, plus a Colossus or two."
"At least we won't be bored," Wrex said with a chuckle, Williams just sighed.
It wasn't long until they encountered another roadblock, this one of a slightly more literal variety. A large metal gate had been erected across the canyon, blocking the way ahead. Of more immediate concern were the turrets on either side of the gate.
A rocket exploded against the stone, and Vin hurriedly threw the Mako into reverse, getting back behind a curve in the canyon walls that shielded them from view.
"Only a fool punches a Nathack in the mouth," Wrex remarked. "You've got to go around behind it and pull its tail."
"I have no idea what a Nathack is," Vin replied, "but I am definitely in favor of not getting hit by rockets." She shifted back to drive and gunned the engine, speeding forward and heading down a side path before the turrets could open fire again.
"Breed of Greatshell," Wrex said. "They have some of the worst peripheral vision on Tuchanka, but they're vicious and territorial."
"Turret!" Tali shouted. Ashley had already started moving, sending a missile streaking towards it and opening fire with the machine Turret's shields crumbled beneath Williams' barrage, but that didn't stop it from firing off another missile at them. Vin slammed her foot down on the thruster pedal, catapulting the Mako up and over the missile.
The guns roared again the second the Mako's wheels hit the ground, reducing the turret to a pile of smoking metal.
"Nice shooting, Williams," Shepard said, giving the woman a small smile.
"Don't thank me yet, commander," Williams said, gesturing at the sensor display. Several dots had appeared on the radar, and the rest of the display was indicating massive energy output ahead.
"Enough of this," Wrex grunted, reaching for the door handle. "I need to stretch my legs." And before anyone could object, the Krogan leapt out of the Mako and set off at a run. Vin sighed and climbed out after him, followed by Tali and Williams
A rocket whizzed past her, close enough to ruffle her hair in its wake. Ahead, Shepard caught a glimpse of several crimson-armored geth, each one bearing a rocket launcher.
"Tali, please tell me you can do something to slow them down," Shepard asked, ducking behind a mound of stone.
"They're jamming me!" Tali said, fingers dancing over her Omnitool's interface. "I might be able to do something, but you'll need to take out whichever one of the geth is broadcasting the interference."
"Right. Guess we do this the hard way," Vin said, burning steel. And that gave her an unpleasant surprise. The metal lines pointing to the geth were very faint, and a couple of them didn't have any metal lines at all.
They must be using aluminum, she realized.
Well, that meant she'd have to do this the hard way. Vin tapped speed, and became a blur.
Something flew past Ashley. She spun around, thinking that another rocket-geth had managed to sneak behind them. But all she saw was the Mako, parked several meters back, and the Quarian taking cover behind some rocks. Ashley turned back around, aiming her rifle at the spot where she'd last seen one of the geth.
Somehow, it was already down, smoke curling up from a hole in its chest.
Ashley blinked, perplexed. Wrex too far away to have done that.
Another geth moved out of cover, and Ashley brought her rifle to her shoulder again. But Shepard got to it first. The blur that had passed by earlier stopped in front of the geth, becoming Commander Shepard with her shotgun pressed against its eye.
She pulled the trigger, and the geth's head exploded in a shower of metal and sparking wires. Shepard sprinted away again, moving before the geth's body hit the ground.
As a group, the geth had three centuries of experience fighting organics. Unfortunately for these particular geth, that experience was mostly limited to Quarians. While they weren't exactly fragile, the geth's creators had proved relatively easy to put down.
Unlike, say, a Krogan.
One geth, a particularly large platform in white plating, slammed its fists into Wrex, knocking him back a few steps. It wasn't much, but that proved to be enough for the Shock Trooper to hit him with a burst of electricity that scrambled his nerves. For most species, that voltage would've been fatal. Even for some younger Krogan.
Urdnot Wrex was a Battlemaster, and he was made of sterner stuff. He pulled himself to his feet, growling deep in his throat. The geth fired at him again, the shot piercing his barrier and drilling past his armor. Wrex ignored the pain. With a roar, he thrust his hand forward at the geth.
A blue glow surrounded the machine, twisting and shifting around it. The geth tried to fire again, but the Warp was wreaking havoc with its aim, and Wrex sidestepped the shots with ease. As he fought, Wrex's breathing settled into a rhythm. It didn't calm him, precisely. This wasn't a calming rhythm. It was one of surety and confidence, one for a warrior who knew that the enemy he fought was no match for him. Wrex lost himself to the rhythm, and the geth fell before him.
Vin glanced around, expecting more geth, but all she saw were the broken shells of the ones they'd already dealt with.
"Everyone alright?" she shouted.
"All clear, Commander!" Williams answered. Wrex just grunted, bringing his foot down on one geth's head. Tali, meanwhile, had knelt down next to a geth, and was searching the synthetic for something.
"Tali?"
"Oh, sorry Commander," she said, standing and brushing some dust off her knees. "Just seeing if I could find anything in its memory core about what the geth were doing here. No luck, though."
Shepard shrugged. "I'm sure we'll find out soon enough. I have a feeling we're gonna encounter plenty more geth before we're done here. Now let's get moving."
It took them another half-hour to get close to the dig site, eventually reaching a spot where the Mako wouldn't be able to fit between the rock walls.
"Looks like we're hoofing it the rest of the way," Shepard said, hopping out of the vehicle and unholstering her shotgun.
"More geth up ahead," Tali warned as they advanced.
"How many? I can't be sure my count is right, not if they're outfitting themselves with aluminum like the last ones were," Vin said with a frown.
"At least five, probably more."
Vin nodded. "Wrex, think you can draw their fire for a sec?"
He snorted. "Of course I can. Just be sure you can keep up," he said. The air around him blazed with biotic power, a blue nimbus surrounding him. Then, Wrex rocketed forward, air rushing in to fill the space where he'd been with a heavy thud.
"Ash, Tali, you go around to the left," Vin barked, tapping speed and sprinting around the boulder in the center of the path. A few of the metal lines sprouting from her chest moved, but Vin couldn't trust those. Some of them would be pointing to Wrex, instead of the geth. She'd just have to deal with the geth without steelpushing them.
Wrex was behind the rock, in the center of a knot of geth. He appeared to be holding his own, firing off short, precise bursts from his rifle as he pressed it against the geth's shields. A few of the machines turned at the sound of Shepard's footsteps and began firing, filling the air before her with a storm of metal. Vin tapped even more speed, drawing deeply from her steelmind. Around her, the world seemed to slow, the geth looking as though they were moving through tar. Vin rolled to the side, out of the line of fire, and drew her pistol. She had all the time in the world to take aim and put several rounds right through one geth trooper's flashlight eye.
It went down in ahead, limbs suddenly limp and useless. Vin allowed herself a brief, satisfied grin, and then turned to the second geth. It fell, just as swiftly as its partner had.
And then the world caught up to her, her Steelmind running dry.
Rusts! Vin thought, I forgot to switch out for a fuller one!
It was a rookie mistake, and it nearly got her killed, the loss of her speed distracting Shepard enough that she didn't see the geth charging at her. She only noticed it when it rammed into her like a speeding car.
Her barriers took most of the hit, but Vin was still thrown back, her back transforming into a sheet of agony as it slammed against the boulder. She fell to the ground, gasping in pain, and a shadow fell over her. Vin looked up.
And up.
Rusts, a part of her thought, that thing's gotta be at least ten feet tall. That horrible grinding sound came from the massive geth, deeper than the others, and it leaned down.
No way she'd be able to Push it away. The thing was way heavier than she was. Wincing, Vin raised her shotgun and fired, pulling the trigger until it overheated. The geth's barriers flashed, but they stayed up.
"Hey!" Ashley's voice rang out from behind the massive geth. With another burst of that electronic noise that passed for speech, it turned around, taking its eye off of Shepard for a second.
It shields exploded in a burst of electricity.
Williams took the opening she'd been given and stepped forward, assault rifle snarling as she fired round after round into the geth's chest.
Vin struggled to her feet and pulled out a grenade, slapping it onto the geth's back and rolling out of the way behind the boulder, her back screaming in protest.
The explosion echoed off the rocks. Shepard gave it a few seconds, then poked her head out from behind the boulder.
What was left of the geth destroyer lay on the ground in a heap. The grenade had completely separated its upper body from the lower, obliterating where the stomach would have been on a living creature. As Vin's back oh so helpfully reminded her of its state, Tali crept forward and crouched next to the geth, focused on the lines of code scrolling past on her Omnitool's screen. Vin left the Quarian to her work, letting out a groan as the medi-gel and the Goldmind in her armor began to work their magic. With a sigh, Shepard closed her eyes and tried to ignore the pain, even as it lessened.
"You alright, commander?" Ashley asked after a few minutes. Vin nodded.
"Yeah, I'll be good to go in a minute. Nothing broken, just some bruising."
"Good," Ashley said, offering Shepard her hand. Vin took it, and the other woman helped pull her to her feet. The pain was already almost gone, so Vin stopped tapping the Goldmind. It was a pain in the ass to get your hands on a reasonably full one, and you never knew when you might need a bit of healing. Far cheaper to let the medi-gel do most of the work.
"Find anything, Tali?" Shepard asked, arching her back and popping her vertebrae.
"Maybe. I won't be able to tell for sure until I decrypt it, and I can't do that until we're back on the Normandy," the Quarian said.
"Alright. Wrex, you ready?"
"I've been ready. You're the one who doesn't regenerate fast like a sensible species," he said, without any real anger. "Let's find this Asari so we can get out of here.
Getting to Dr. T'Soni was going to be more difficult than they'd anticipated. As soon as the squad reached the entrance to the Prothean ruins, a geth dropship had flown by, dropping off a squad of geth and an armature.
"Tali, please tell me you can do something about the big one?" Vin said, leaning out from behind a storage crate and popping off a shot at one of the sniper geth.
"Get rid of the hoppers, and I should be able to bring its shields down."
Vin nodded. "You heard the lady! Take care of the jumpers, and then keep the rest from interrupting her!"
Wrex grunted in acknowledgement, and dashed out from behind another container, creating a field of shimmering sapphire light near one of the hoppers as it leapt from the wall.
The geth only skimmed the edge of the lift field, but that was enough to throw it off course. Vin capitalized on that moment of uncertainty before it landed and righted itself, and hit the geth with a Steelpush. That sent it back across the battlefield, its new trajectory ending at the pool of magma at the back of the area. It hit the molten stone and let out a brief burst of geth-speech in the seconds before the heat fried its speakers. Vin grinned savagely, and returned her focus to the battle.
Tali pointed her omnitool at the second leaping geth, taking its shields down in a burst of electricity, just as she had with the destroyer. The Quarian didn't waste time, plugging the vulnerable machine with a series of precise shots from her pistol. Next to her, Ashley swore as one of the white-armored geth created a hexagonal shield in front of itself, blocking her shots.
The second shock trooper had closed with Wrex, hitting the krogan with a blast of flame from its shotgun. Wrex snarled in discomfort, but what little of the flames had gotten past his barriers only seemed to annoy the Krogan. He growled and rushed forward, barreling into the geth and slamming it against a wall right next to Shepard.
Vin casually raised her shotgun to the side of its head, and blew it to smithereens.
Something detonated, the sound close enough that Vin spun around to look for the source. It turned out to be the smoking remains of one of the snipers, and Williams was already readying a second grenade.
She hadn't seen the armature charging its cannon.
"Williams! Down!" Vin yelled, using that tone of command she'd learned from so many drill sergeants over the years. Ashley dropped to the ground with less than a second to spare, the burst of plasma shooting over her head. "Tali, get rid of its shields!" Shepard barked, dropping a thin metal disc on the ground and pushing against it. The push couldn't move the disc, which meant she had to move instead, flying up onto a metal catwalk above the armature.
Tali worked fast, the geth platform's shields already overloading as Vin fired down at the geth, activating the Brassmind on the gun and letting it absorb the heat as she fired. The artificial Brassminds were horribly inefficient, but at least it was something. Back on the ground, Wrex and Ashley both did their part against the armature, Williams making an excellent throw and sticking it with a grenade, while Wrex surrounded it with a Warp field, the shifting biotic forces tearing it apart on a molecular level.
It took more than a minute of nonstop firing before the armature finally fell, white coolant fluid leaking from severed tubes and pooling around it.
Shepard leapt down from the catwalk, pushing against the geth to slow her fall. She landed on its neck, and gave it one last push, crushing its head against the ground. Just to be on the safe side.
"Two-hundred credits says there are more geth in there," Wrex said, nodding at the entrance to the ruins. Williams just snorted.
"I'm not an idiot, Krogan. I don't make sucker's bets."
Wrex just chuckled.
"Hello?" A voice echoed around the cavern, coming from somewhere below. "Is someone there? I am trapped, and I need help!"
"Think that's T'Soni?" Williams asked, stepping out of the broken elevator and carefully making her way along the mangled catwalk.
"It's the only thing that isn't a geth that we've heard so far. It'd better be her," Wrex grumbled.
Vin hopped down to the next level of the catwalks, boots clanging against the metal.
"Hello?" The voice said again, this time from behind her. Shepard turned, noticing the shimmering barrier that filled the oval doorway in the smooth white wall. Beyond the barrier was an Asari, trapped in a floating sphere of biotic energy.
"Are you Liara T'Soni?" Vin asked.
"Yes. Are you real? Only, I've been trapped in here for several days, and I worry that I am becoming delirious."
"Yeah, we're real," Wrex said, tapping a finger against the barrier. It made a faint, gong-like sound.
"How can we get you out of there?"
"There is a control panel of some sort back there," T'Soni said, twitching her head at the large chamber on the other end of her prison. "But I don't know how you'll be able to get there with the barrier in place."
"We'll think of something," Vin reassured her, "just hang tight."
"I cannot exactly do anything else," the Asari pointed out, "but please be careful. I think there are still more geth, and there was a very large Krogan leading them."
"Thanks. We'll have you out of there soon," Vin said. T'Soni opened her mouth to say something, but her words were drowned out by the grinding sound of geth. Williams spun, rifle appearing in her hands so fast that Vin wondered if the other human was a Steelrunner as well.
Wrex thrust his fist forward with a roar. A line of biotic explosions raced along the ground, knocking one geth off its feet and sending another one flying into a rock with a metallic crunch.
Vin's stance was steady as she fired at the nearest geth. With each squeeze of the trigger, she Pushed on the round, giving the bullets extra speed and force. The geth's shields flashed with each hit, until the barriers fell and the shots started hitting the geth itself. It let out a screech and fired at her, its weapon spitting a barrage of plasma. She tapped her second Steelmind, dashing to the side and letting the geth's shots hit the cavern wall, leaving scorch marks on the stone. The geth kept firing, long past the point that a normal weapon would've overheated. Vin glared, pushing against the gun and throwing off its aim. The shots went wide, hitting the barrier protecting T'Soni, and the Asari let out a terrified yelp.
In the moments before the geth could correct its aim, Vin leapt into the air, pushing on the broken catwalk behind her. She soared over the geth and landed behind it. With another burst of steel-enhanced speed, Vin spun to face the back of the geth's head, pressing her shotgun to it. She pulled the trigger, reducing the geth's head to a mess of sparking wires. Vin stopped tapping her Steelmind, the world seeming to slow around her.
From farther back in the cavern, a geth let out a burst of electronic noise before falling silent, the sound cut off abruptly. Wrex stomped forward, tossing a geth's head to the side with a contemptuous snort.
"Think that's the last of them, commander," Tali said, checking her Omnitool.
"Don't suppose you could shut that barrier down?" Shepard asked the Quarian hopefully. Tali gave her a look that was clearly intended to be an 'are you serious' expression. Vin was actually impressed by how much the girl's body language could convey.
"We can't go through the barrier, so why not go under it?" Williams asked, pointing at a massive machine.
A mining laser, in fact.
"Williams, you're a genius," Vin said, "Tali, can you get that thing running?"
"Of course."
"T'Soni, just hang tight! We'll have you out of there in a few minutes!" Shepard shouted. If the Asari said anything in return, it was drowned out by the blast of noise and heat from the mining laser. It lanced out, boring through the rock like a bullet through flesh.
Liara fell to the ground with a grunt, the bubble of protective energy vanishing with a faint pop.
"Oh, by the Goddess," she said, rubbing her forehead. "Thank you, human. I'm not sure how long I was in there, but I fear I would not have lasted much longer."
"We still might not," Wrex said, as a tremor shook the cavern. "Mining laser must've messed with the volcano."
"Liara's skin grew several shades paler. "There's an elevator this way! Hurry!"
The mine's exit was blocked by a squad of geth and a heavily-armored Krogan.
"Surrender," the Krogan said, "or don't. That'd be more fun."
"We don't have time for this. Take them down!" Shepard barked.
Wrex surged forward, propelling himself toward the krogan with a biotic charge. He felt the energy building beneath his skin, urging him to act, to fight. Despite the situation, Wrex's breathing slipped into a different rhythm, one of questioning. Why now? What was he doing now that let it come back?
"Working for humans, old man? That's just pathetic," the other Krogan growled, slamming into Wrex and carrying him back into the wall. Wrex's answer came in the form of a Warp field, surrounding the Krogan in twisting, shifting azure light.
"Asari, lift him, now!" Wrex bellowed, backing away.
"What?" the girl asked, perplexedly.
"Just do it!"
The Asari gave him a wide-eyed look of panic, before she thrust her hands forward. A second field of blue light joined the first one. When the two biotic effects met, they split the air in a thunderous detonation. It knocked the other Krogan for a loop, making him stagger and fall to one knee. Wrex's shotgun roared, spitting a blast of flame at the dazed Krogan. The barriers hadn't yet reactivated after the biotic detonation, and the spray of burning metal chewed into his skin, filling the chamber with the stench of burning flesh.
The Krogan leapt to its feet, roaring in rage and pain. Wrex dodged the hasty charge, mildly impressed at the younger Krogan's endurance and pain tolerance. A carnage round to the face would put most Krogan out of the fight for a few minutes. It was almost a shame he'd have to die. But at the end of the day, he was on Saren's payroll.
"Stand still and fight with honor, Urdnot dog!" The Krogan snarled, his head twisting this way and that as he tried to find Wrex. The blindness from the blast wouldn't last long, Wrex knew. Eyes were always the quickest to regenerate. And, sure enough, he could already see the cloudy discoloration fading, revealing yellow eyes blazing with fury.
"Honor?" Wrex snorted, forming a pane of energy before him and deflecting the Krogan's shots. "If you knew the first thing about Honor, you wouldn't be working for Saren."
"Saren is going to save the Krogan! And anyone foolish enough to stand in his way will be crushed!" Crimson light danced along the Krogan's forearms as he flung them forward, and Wrex's vision went red.
Vin danced away from another destroyer, pushing off of part of the elevator's machinery and leaping over it. She was running dangerously low on stored speed, even the compounded steel she'd consumed earlier. She had several more metal minds back on the Normandy, bud those weren't going to do her much good right now. A quick look around the room showed her that the others were having troubles of their own. Williams and Tali were pinned down by the geth sniper, doing their best to keep any of the other ones from flanking her. Wrex had gone flying down a corridor, followed by Saren's Krogan, and T'Soni…
Ruin, where was T'Soni? It'd be a fine mess if she'd lost the person they'd come all this way to find in the first place.
Vin took a deep breath, and focused on the blue lines coming from the geth.
The lines split, one becoming many as she noted each separate piece of metal she could see on the geth. With a grunt, Vin Pushed on the lines leading to the destroyer's gun, ripping it out of the geth's hands and slamming it against the wall. The rifle flew apart on impact, and Vin switched to the lines pointing to the geth's shoulder joints and elbows, flinging its arms wide open.
A sphere of biotic energy flew past Vin with the sound of a windstorm. The destroyer and a couple of the shock troopers floated off the ground, caught by the pull of the singularity. They started to orbit it, circling the point of swirling darkness that was pulling them closer.
"I can't keep this up forever!" T'Soni shouted. Vin nodded, and fired, the wide spread of the shotgun's blast ripping into the geth. She fired again, and again, waiting until their eyes went out to stop. T'Soni let go of the singularity. Her eyes were wide with shock, the kind Vin had seen before on people who'd never been in combat before.
"Liara, I need you to keep it together, ok?" Vin said. "Now, let's get rid of that sniper. Can you lift it for me?"
The Asari nodded, a bit shakily, but when she thrust her hands forward the lift appeared exactly where Vin wanted it. Williams popped out from behind her cover, her rifle snarling as she filled the geth with steel.
But in taking out the sniper, Williams had taken her attention off of the rest of the geth, and the second destroyer took advantage of her distraction, slamming into her and carrying her forward. Her left leg hit the stone wall with an ugly crack, and she let out a grunt of pain. The geth leveled its gun at her, and Vin tapped every last bit of speed she had stored, sprinting across the chamber in an eyeblink.
The destroyer's shot hit her barriers like a punch from a Krogan, knocking Vin back. Vin grunted, but she managed to stay on her feet, putting herself between the still-dazed Williams and the massive geth. It let out an electronic snarl of what would have been frustration in a living creature, and rammed its fist forward. The punch was too slow to trigger her barriers, but that wouldn't be much comfort when it shattered her ribs and made a mess of her internal organs.
Something orange flashed to the side, and the geth ground to a halt, its eye going dark.
Tali stepped forward, a glowing object detaching from her omnitool.
"Are you alright?" The Quarian asked, rushing forward to check on Shepard and Williams.
"I'm fine," Vin said, "Williams is the one who got slammed into the wall."
"I'm fine, commander," Williams insisted, taking Tali's offered hand as she got to her feet. That assertion was somewhat undermined by Ashley's gasp of pain when she tried to put weight on her left leg.
"Don't try and play tough, soldier," Vin said, "here, put your arm around my shoulders."
Williams did so, taking the weight off of her injured leg with a small sigh of relief.
"Not that I'm ungrateful for you saving me," T'Soni began, "but shouldn't we—aaaah!" The Asari yelped, interrupted by the sudden rumble that shook the floor.
"Wrex?" Vin shouted, "Wrex, we gotta go!"
The Krogan stomped out of the hallway, his armor smoking slightly and marred by jagged electrical burns, shoving something into a pouch at his belt.
Another tremor shook the elevator, knocking chunks of stone loose from the ceiling.
"Run!" Vin yelled, triggering her armor's Pewtermind and throwing Ashley over her shoulder.
They burst out of the mine, the tremors having grown to a constant shaking that nearly knocked Tali off her feet.
"Joker, we need an evac now!" Vin shouted into her mic.
"Hold tight, commander," the pilot replied.
"If we die down here, I'll kill him," Wrex growled.
Seconds later, the Normandy screamed by overhead, turning on a dime and opening the cargo bay door right in front of them.
Vin flared her steel and pushed off from the ramp, leaping into the open cargo bay and landing in a heap, with Williams on top of her. A second later there was a massive thud of displaced air as Wrex, clutching Tali and Liara around their waists, landed in the cargo bay.
Vin met Ashley's eyes for a moment, and Vin's heart sped up in a way that had nothing to do with the fact they'd just escaped a volcanic eruption.
The squad filed into the briefing room about half an hour later, after Dr. Chakwas had given everyone a brief check-up. Williams had a cast over her lower leg, and was tapping health from one of Chakwas's goldminds to fix the fracture there.
"Thank you, Commander," T'Soni said, as she took a seat next to Tali. "I would rather not think about what those geth would have done to me if you hadn't come along."
"Worry more about what that krogan would've done to you," Wrex said. "Geth don't torture. But that one…I've seen his kind before. Krogan like that enjoy causing pain. And Saren…who knows what that bastard'll do."
"Sounds like you're speaking from experience," Alenko said.
"I ran into him once, and it's not like we actually spoke. But I got enough of a sense of him to know that Saren's a vicious son of a bitch."
"Wrex, I'll need to know more about this encounter of yours later," Vin said. "Dr. T'Soni, do you know why Saren might've wanted you?" The asari shrugged.
"I honestly have no idea. I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around the geth attacking a human colony!"
"Maybe you should take a look at the footage of what they did to the people on Elendel Prime," Ashley snapped, her eyes flashing. T'Soni held her hands up, palms out, and shook her head.
"Oh, no, I didn't mean to suggest…Goddess, I'm so sorry!"
Williams opened her mouth to retort, but shut it again when Joker's voice came over the intercom.
"Commander, the Council's on the line. Want me to patch them through?"
"Might as well," Vin said, getting to her feet and standing at attention before the holo-projectors. After a moment, the images of all three Councilors appeared.
"Ah, Commander," Tevos said, "I trust your mission on Therum was a success?"
"We were able to retrieve Dr. T'Soni, who was under attack by Saren's geth and a krogan mercenary. I'd call that conclusive evidence that, whatever Benezia's involvement with Saren, her daughter isn't part of it."
"Excuse me, what was that about my mother?" Liara asked, but the only answer she got was a 'shhhh!' from Vakarian.
"Unfortunately, during the fighting, the Prothean site was destroyed by volcanic activity," Vin continued. Valern's eyes went wide, and he leaned forward over his podium, hands clenching the sides of it.
"What? But that site—"
"It was either preserve the site and let…let everyone on my team die, or get out of there with Dr. T'Soni!" Shepard said, hands balled into fists at her sides.
"But think of what we could've learned from that site!" Valern said.
"Knowledge that would do us no good if Saren succeeds in whatever he's planning, Valern," Sparatus said. "It may not be the ideal outcome, but she did complete the mission."
"Yes, I suppose so," the salarian said with a sigh, standing up straight and adjusting his cuffs. "Do you have anything else to report?"
"No, your honors," Vin said.
"Very well. Good hunting, Spectre Shepard," Sparatus said, giving her a curt nod. With that, the holograms winked out, allowing her to relax.
"Well, that could've gone worse," Garrus remarked. "Thank the spirits that they didn't let Valern build up a head of steam about the ruins."
T'Soni nodded. "Yes, I've heard from some of my professors that he can be rather…passionate about the subject."
Ashley's eyebrows shot up. "Seriously? He was an archaeologist? How'd he go from that to being a politician?"
"I'm afraid I have no idea," Liara said with a shrug. "Commander, you mentioned my mother earlier in connection with Saren?"
"When was the last time you spoke with your mother?"
"A year and a half ago. Why, what's going on?"
Vin blinked, surprised. "That long? Are you not close to her?"
This time it was Liara's turn to be confused.
"Of course we're close! Why would you think other—oh!" Liara lightly slapped her forehead. "Of course. A year or two is not a particularly long time to Asari, with how long-lived we are."
"Oh," Shepard said, slightly embarrassed at having to be told something that seemed so obvious in retrospect. "Well, this might be a bit much to take in…"
"This makes no sense!" Liara exclaimed once Shepard and finished her explanation. "My mother would never be involved with something so…so monstrous!"
"Well, it certainly looks like she is. Maybe Saren's blackmailing her into cooperating by threatening you? I mean, why else would the geth have been on Therum?" Shepard asked.
"Perhaps because of the Conduit?"
"Wait, you know what it is?"
"No, not at all! But I'm sure I've seen the term mentioned in some of my research!" Liara said, her eyes lighting up.
"And what exactly is your area of study?" Alenko asked.
"The Protheans. Specifically, their extinction. I've spent the last fifty years trying to discover what happened to them. And I'm sure I've found mentions of the Conduit in some Prothean writings somewhere."
"Alright, that's a start," Vin said. "Do you have any of your notes accessible?"
"Yes, I could get them if I were on the Citadel," T'Soni said. Then, her eyes widened as a realization hit her. "I…I probably need to go there anyway, to purchase new clothes. All of mine would have been consumed by the magma."
Vin nodded, getting to her feet. "Citadel it is. I'll go tell Joker. You should have something to eat. I don't know how Asari metabolisms work, but being stuck in that force field for however long you were there probably wasn't good for you.
"Yes, of course. Thank you again, Commander," T'Soni said, heading for the door.
Vin eventually tracked Wrex down in the cargo hold. The krogan had commandeered the weapons bench from Williams, who was looking on with a bemused expression as Wrex examined some sort of crystal with a set of magnifying lenses.
"So, when were you planning on mentioning that you knew Saren?" Vin asked him, folding her arms across her chest. Wrex snorted, looking up from his work.
"I don't know him. Like I said, it was a brief encounter. We never even talked."
"Well, I need to know what happened. Anything that gives me some insight into him."
"Alright. It was about, oh, ten years ago, when I was working as a pirate. The job was simple; hijack a freighter and take everything we could. I'd had a bad feeling about the job from the start, but once I saw Saren, I knew there was something else going on."
"What was he doing?" Ashley asked. Wrex shrugged.
"He was looking for something, but I couldn't tell you what. It wasn't my business. But my instincts were screaming at me to run. And I've learned to listen to my instincts, so I lit out of there like a Highstorm was on my ass. Didn't even wait to get paid. I laid low for about a year after that, just in case."
"And I thought old Turians could be paranoid," Garrus said. Wrex shook his head.
"I'm the only person who worked that job who's still alive. Everyone else, the ones who waited to get paid? Dead by the end of the week. Saren was trouble then, and he's only gotten worse in the years since."
"Rust and Ruin," Vin breathed. "And you still don't know what he was after?"
"No. After finding out that I was the only one from the job left, I decided against poking into it. Besides, I had other things on my mind."
"Alright. If you remember anything else, let me know right away," Shepard said. Wrex gave a grunt, already engrossed in examining the crystal again.
Saren donned his new armor, being careful not to let it brush against his new spike too much.
That was the major issue with the art that he had been taught. With each new spike, his armor had to be altered, adding room for them, or even incorporating them into his armor entirely. If he gained too many more, he wouldn't be able to take it off at all.
A small price to pay, to save everything he had ever known.
A shudder ran through the ship, and Saren felt Sovereign's touch upon his mind.
THE KROGAN ON THERUM HAS FAILED. THAT WHICH HE BORE WAS TAKEN.
If turians could go pale, he would have. As it was, his mandibles simply twitched. "It will be dealt with."
THE HUMAN CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO STAND AGAINST US. NONE MAY BE ALLOWED.
"Of course, Nazara."