AN: Hey everyone, thanks for the patience in waiting for this chapter to upload, it's been a long time since I've updated any stories but such is life. This one took a long time to write and get to a point where I felt like adding it. The original idea for Chapter 4 I scrapped due to it's lack of real importance to the story. To answer the question, yes, this is a MShepard/Nyreen fic, but it's following Nyreen for the majority of the story. We all know what Shepard's story is, but this is one we do not know fully. Now, without further wasting your time, enjoy.
Chapter 4:
Ghost-Ship
The life of a mercenary was often plagued by a distinct lack of morality. It wasn't necessarily true that all mercenaries were good or evil in morality, but they were soldiers who fought for money, often literally to the highest bidder. The lack of direct loyalty and responsibility for one's actions often created trouble when they were utilized by anyone with political authority or accountability.
In these scenarios private military contractors were typically acquired through larger corporations such as the Elanus Risk Control Services. The contractors in the Terminus Systems typically didn't have a need for subtlety. The Blue Suns were known for a degree of professional skill, the Eclipse for technical superiority, and the Blood Pack for sheer brutality. These organizations were popular in the Terminus Systems, but none of them were particularly welcome in Citadel Space, or Systems Alliance territory.
This lack of diversity among the mercenary companies allowed a niche for the freelancers to operate. These mercenaries typically worked alone or if in conjunction with one another, only at the behest of their employer.
It was as a freelancer that Nyreen found contracts. While in a technical sense she was on the payroll of the Talons, she wasn't actually a member of that organization. She was simply a frequent hire of Derius' and not bound by their practices or needs outside the individual contract.
This was a particular boon for her when she received contracts from Aria's gang. They tended to air on the violent or morally reprehensible side, but they carried better pay than any other, and although she'd never agree to the goals or methods Aria maintained, she could still concede that Aria stabilized the Omega Nebula, and maintained one of the necessary trading hubs for the Terminus Systems.
It was from Aria that she had received her current contract after spending the majority of the next six months following the scouting job living on the pay from small jobs running security for merchants or mapping the tunnels through the slums for Derius. In all she'd been moving most of that time, jumping from off-station jobs for some time. After that however, Nyreen's path always lead back to Omega, and the life she'd maintained there.
"The target vessel looks to be a frigate. Human design. Ship's showing no records, didn't hail the station, and looks to be running on low energy. This thing's a ghost, and Aria doesn't like ghosts in her territory." The Batarian pilot explained as he aligned the Kodiak class assault shuttle towards the Mass Relay and the ship hiding nearby.
The rear of the ship was designed to fit a dozen armed soldiers at maximum load though at significant discomfort to the occupants. It was fortunate that the ship only comprised two armed individuals in the crew compartment.
Nyreen slapped a thermal clip into her Phaeston rifle, feeling the click as the weathered old weapon's internal components locked the cooling packet into position. It was a familiar sensation, something she could do purely from tactile skill, ingrained in her senses through the intense repetition of the Turian Hierarchy's training and the subsequent combat service she'd performed.
The weapon was fully loaded and ready for use as she let it rest in position on her lap. Along her waist, a trio of grenades sat ready, their soft purple insignia giving away their biotic nature.
She could see her "partner" for the mission was readying her equipment as well. The other woman was an Asari, her blue skin and scalp tendrils giving away as much instantaneously. The more difficult thing to establish was her occupation. One couldn't establish much from an Asari's choice of combat attire. They typically fielded light-weight armor capable of maintain a Biotic Barrier. She could spend time analyzing the situation and establishing the identity of her comrade through observation, but the simpler method was to ask.
She analyzed the weapon sitting on her comrade's lap in an effort to create a starting point. The weapon was sleek, bearing a smooth white stock and a deep purple body. It was shorter than a rifle, though only by a small degree. Only the end, she could see the marks of a modified choke. A shotgun, an Asari shotgun? That was somewhere to start.
"Interesting shotgun, Commando?" Nyreen started, allowing the other woman to answer at her own volition.
"Perhaps, Disciple model, good concussion. And what about you, Navy?" The Asari answered, her voice short, concise, but no less melodious.
"Former-Cabal Infantry, Nyreen Kandros. Who are you?" She replied, electing to give information before receiving it.
The woman gave a short hum before answering. "My name is Aleena, Former-Commando, it is good to know you're a qualified soldier, I'd rather not have a green-as-grass rookie watching my back." She responded, leaning back to rest her head on her folded arms.
As they finished introductions the Batarian pilot signaled them. "Sixty-Seconds get your helmets on and armor sealed. You'll infiltrate the ship, clear it of crew, and contact me from the bridge once you're ready for pickup. Jobs on you now." He announced, pulling up near the port side of the unidentified frigate.
The hatch on the side of the shuttle unclamped, venting the pressure from the cabin and allowing the duo to step out and attack grappling tethers to the unknown ship. The tethers anchored them long enough for the pair to attach an explosive packet to the outside of the escape pod's hatch.
They hung low on the tethers as the explosion pushed inwards on the ship, rending metal out of their way. Quickly the duo climbed over the wrecked portion of the hull and into the enemy ship.
"Cover me." The Asari commanded, patching her words through Nyreen's Omni-tool frequency as she knelt next to the door panel, hacking its systems to initiate a door override.
Nyreen complied with the command, hoisting her rifle and covering the doorway for when it inevitably opened a few moments later.
The door opened with a hiss as the atmosphere inside vented for a moment before the pair could slip in and reseal the door behind them.
The room was empty, giving Nyreen an unsettling feeling. Anyone alive on board the ship would have heard them coming from the explosion that announced their entry, or at the very least sensors should have picked up the shuttle coming.
"Clear." She answered through the quiet, signaling her comrade to move up in into the room. There was a tangible aura of something being amiss. Emergency lighting was on, illuminating the corridor with only a small degree of the possible luminescence. Overhead lighting was down, she could see the individual lighting units dark in their pods. Along the floor, she could see the small golden lights signaling the pathways along the inside of the ship.
"We'll sweep the engineering deck and move our way forward to the bridge." Aleena said, turning to head towards the rear of the ship. Nyreen followed behind her, back to her comrade and weapon trained on the far end of the hallway.
The discomforting feeling became more prominent as they moved. The ship itself was silent, completely so, whereas a normal frigate should have been filled with the hum of the ship's Element Zero reactor and the sound of the crew performing their assigned duties. What they found was that the ship made no noise at all.
Their journey was short, being the smallest size of combat ship; frigates could operate with a small crew in comparison to cruisers, dreadnoughts or carriers. That meant there was little need for excessive room in the ships for crew or redundant control systems. They reached the Engineering sub-deck after only five-minutes from their entry. In that time they found nothing. No sign of the crew at all.
They posted near the door to the reactor control station, both of them placing themselves along the wall near the doorway. They stepped through in tandem, weapons at the ready. Inside, they found no sign of the crew. No engineers managing the power flow, or anything of the nature.
"I'll check the chief engineer's logs. Keep your eyes peeled for anything, this place has tragedy written all over it." Aleena commanded, stepping up to the console at the head of the drive core.
A minute passed as Nyreen covered the room. She couldn't hear anything save for the dull hum given off by the drive. Finally, when the oppressive silence seemed maddening, Aleena let out an annoyed sigh.
"The damn logs were wiped. There's no records left on here, the only thing I've got is that the drive was manually locked down two hours after the ship jumped into the system. There're no records on the engineering staff. No names, ranks, or anything." She said, stepping away from the console.
They duo gripped their weapons with alarm as the sound of metal tinkling together alerted them. They scanned the room, weapons raised and in position to riddle any targets that presented themselves with the aeration only multiple shards of metal launched at mass effect altered speed.
"What the hell was that?"Aleena asked, standing still and trigger at the ready.
Nyreen took a knee, and peered through the cracks between the gratings, showing the piping leading towards the reactor. The darkness below the floor was deeply shadowed, bearing only the minimal lighting necessary.
She could only barely make out the shape of a human male wearing black, gold, and white naval fatigues, the skin tight suit sported a small golden insignia along the black chest-piece, some form of hexagonal shape. The more prominent detail was the large pool of blood leaking from the corpse.
"Spirits, I think I found an engineer, dead in the emergency passageways." Nyreen said as soon as she comprehended the image.
"Cause of death?" Aleena asked, moving towards the doorway back to the majority of the ship.
"Can't tell from here, we'll check it out before we continue. Cover me." Nyreen said, before summoning her control of biotics from Cabal training to phase her body through the thin grating, arriving rifle ready on the platform below.
"I can't cover you if you're just going to go through the fucking floors!" Aleena shouted to her, as she jumped over the railing to land next to the Turian woman.
"Hmm." Nyreen answered, though it could easily have been her pondering the body in front of her. She rummaged over the corpse, dragging the body up slightly so she could see the exit wounds.
"Projectile wounds, went straight through the soft tissue. " She explained as she examined the body.
"Fine, just one less loose end to tie up, we should continue on through the duct until the next outlet, and then we can secure the rest of the ship." Aleena said, taking the lead.
Nyreen followed, though the unease still remained heavy in her.
They were greeted once more by the eerie silence.
When they exited the emergency passage, they were in the medical bay. No sign of crew again, however more disconcerting was the lack of bodies to match the blood splattered all across the room.
"What the hell happened in here…?" Nyreen said in a hushed tone, coming to look over the room.
"Looks like a slaughter at that." Aleena commented, coming to examine the drying bodily fluid that coated the majority of the room. Along the floor, they could see the distinctive signs of feet being drug along the ground, leaving no distinct footprints.
"Well whoever did this definitely got out with the bodies, we'll keep moving, eyes peeled, seems like somebody got the best of these poor bastards." Nyreen answered, taking the lead.
As they exited the med bay, they were greeted by the sound of sliding going along the metal floor plating. They both stopped and raised their weapons again, neither of them making a sound as the scraping noise approached.
They finally saw the source of the noise as a strange creature, looking like a blue tinged biped with large bulbous sacs protruding from its upper body and a pair of electrically glowing eyes. Its mouth featured a tube protruding from the front and extending towards the center of its chest. The creature examined them for a short moment before raising its right arm and firing a bolt of energy towards them.
"What the fuck is that thing!?" Aleena shouted, opening fire with her shotgun.
"I have no idea, but it looks like the culprit for the missing crew!" Nyreen answered, as she triggered an orb of biotic energy to protect them, blocking the blast from the creature's arm. "Kill it, I've got us covered!"
Aleena didn't acknowledge the words verbally, instead letting the blue aura that surrounded her answer, after the biotic shield came up, she launched a ball of warping biotic energy that collided with the strange creature, and began breaking down its armored metallic flesh at the molecular level. The creature didn't acknowledge pain, and the warp field dissipated before the armor fully decayed.
The follow-up "push" ball of biotic energy punched into the creature's thick metallic skin and detonated the residual biotic field left from the warp ball ripping the creature apart in a tempest of fluctuating gravity fields.
The beast's limbs fell apart from its torso, leaving a greasy blue substance akin to blood it its wake, the horrifying thing was that the creature maintained movement even after its limbs were torn from the body, only halting completely after receiving a blast from Aleena's shotgun, rendering it an inert pile of gore on the ground.
Even after the strange organism was clearly dead, Aleena continued pumping shots into the corpse.
"What. The. Fuck. Is. This. Thing!"
"I don't know. See if we can find records on the bridge." Nyreen answered, taking the lead.
The ship itself returned to the eerie silence it maintained before the firefight. The only sounds emanated from the step of their boots on the metal floor plates.
"That can't be the only thing on this ship. The crew should have been able to handle something like that." Aleena said, letting the unease be verbalized.
"That's what I'm afraid of."
Silence continued to plague the ship, even when they ascended to the command deck of the ship, silence followed them.
Their Omni-tools marked their passage, documenting the path they'd taken through the ship, pulling up a blueprint of the ship gathered from the data they'd accessed so far in moving.
They could see the navigations station and the galaxy map both glowing with secondary power. Clearly the ship had been designed to maintain some level of movement even on emergency power; though the idea of sending it through a Mass Relay seemed unlikely on the minimal powers the systems were receiving.
"Check the navigations data, see if there's anything that hasn't been wiped on it." Nyreen said, "I'm going to see if I can find anything in the ship's armory."
"Keep me posted; I don't want one of those things getting the jump on us." Aleena answered as she got to work on the navigation's console.
Nyreen took a step around the corner, entering the armory, as labeled on the haptic display to the door. The door opened with a slight metallic whine, revealing the ship's armory to be as much of a bloodbath as the med bay.
The only difference was the presence of corpses.
"Spirits…" Nyreen exclaimed, seeing the bodies torn to pieces. A few remained intact but it was evident that there were numerous that had been left in some form of evisceration.
"Aleena, I think I found the security team. " She responded over her shoulder through the open door. She took a tentative step, not thrilled at the prospect of entering a room filled with corpses.
The first marines were wearing a modified suit of combat armor. As opposed to traditional ballistic plates coupled with a shield emitter, she could see that the armor instead was made of a number of ballistic plates, primarily in a white, black, and gold color scheme that matched the ship. It appeared he'd been holding a submachine gun in his hands on death. Its body consisted of a heavy duty plastic frame with a fore grip attached to the end of the lower receiver.
Weapons of the same model were scattered across the room, some with visible thermal clips. "Must have been killed before getting fully prepared. Quick deaths." The next body was intact, though the armor sported several holes with dried blood trailing from them. The helmet from the armor had been caved in, likely from a high velocity impact.
The man inside, if that could be called it, was looking more machine than man. His eyes were glowing circuits, and a blue glowing tint flowed from them, highlighting the sensory neurons.
"Whole ship's a walking disaster it seems." Nyreen said to herself, scanning the room for anything useful. The weaponry scattered throughout the room appeared to be ineffective in combating the creature that slaughtered the ship, if the bodies were any indication.
She left the armory, instead heading towards the Science bay in the room nearest the armory, "Checking the science bay, armory is a graveyard." Nyreen reported through her Omni-tools communication system.
"The navigation logs don't seem to report an origin either, the only thing mentioned is a ship called the Elbrus, Cerberus Cruiser it seems."
"Download anything you can get on that ship...Aleena, You're going to need to see this…" Nyreen reported as she entered the lab.
The room was dominated by a number of stasis pods, most of which showed signs of breach, while the last along the line was occupied by one of the creatures from earlier. It showed no signs of consciousness, and the console nearest it assigned the subject as being "deceased."
"Those things were being hauled here?" Aleena asked, taking the chance to access the lab records.
"It appears so, let's get the data, check the bridge, and get out of here." Nyreen answered, waiting just long enough for Aleena to access the records.
"Looks like the subject is something called an Adjutant. The data here is about an experiment titled "Pariah." Looks like the scientists here were looking to establish a control system on these creatures. Didn't work out well for them." Aleena summed up, reading through the data as she accessed it. A moment passed as Aleena accessed more of the specific data on the creatures before issuing a gasp.
"These things. They're all by-products of an infection. The Adjutants spread the infection and mutate others genetic code into more of them. The logs state "Subjects exposed to Adjutant infection show no signs of recovery through standard methods. The infection spreads rapidly and is only stopped by removal of the subject's Central Nervous System. Once infected, there is no saving the new host." This thing is an abomination! The crew must have gotten infected!"
"What about the security team?"
"There's an addendum here, subjects that have been indoctrinated and outfitted with Reaper tech control systems show no signs of infection. Reaper tech shows incompatibility with other Reaper tech."
A harsh metal clang emanated from outside the room, and the two mercenaries could hear the sound of thudding onto the floor immediately afterwards.
"Damn it, take whatever data you can, we need to hurry up and get out of here. I think they're done hiding." Nyreen announced, raising her rifle to cover the door leading back to the command deck.
"Got it. Let's move." Aleena answered a second later, her Omni-tool fading out on her arm.
The duo backtracked through the armory in an attempt to circumvent the most likely choke point. They couldn't afford to get trapped in a narrow area, not with the likelihood of being surrounded by greater numbers.
As they entered the command deck, shots fired immediately. The Adjutants engaged on sight, attempting to subdue the mercenaries. The duo opened fire on them in return, but were met with trouble when more of them just crawled through the hole they'd ripped in the floor plating.
"Damn it, the flight recorder's a no-go; we'll just get trapped on that end. Fall back to the Shuttle bay; we'll signal a pickup there." Aleena instructed, blasting away with her shotgun at the mass of mutated organisms.
"Copy that. Signaling the pickup." Nyreen answered, steeling her nerves as she hit a button on her Omni-tool, opening a communication with their shuttle.
"We need immediate extraction, we're retreating to the small ship bay at the base of the ship, meet us there. We'll drop the signal beacon as soon as we get in." Nyreen said, speaking rapidly through the comms channel.
"On the way." The Batarian pilot responded, before closing the channel.
Nyreen maintained fire as the pair backed away from the growing horde, making the way to the stairwell and the base of the ship.
A quick "lift" grenade bought the duo a moment of time to make a run for it. The biotic field of altered gravity slowing down the creatures for a short time, though not nearly long enough for the duo's tastes.
As they reached the bay, they could see the majority of it had been cleared. On the sides they could see crates of supplies and scientific tools, and at the rear they could see that the Cerberus forces had come prepared for an engagement. An A-61 Mantis gunship, etched in the same color scheme as the rest of the ship's pattern, sat parked near the end of the room, near the bay's large hangar door. No mounted weapons attachments hooked onto the underbelly of the assault vehicle.
"We're opening the door, Get us out of here. " Nyreen reported through the comms channel, hoping that their pilot could pick up the signal emitting from the duo's Omni-tools.
They had to turn their backs on the bay door as it slowly wound open, sucking the atmosphere through the room. All the equipment in the room remained stationary, no doubt thanks to mag-locks on the ground to keep them attached. Similar to the type aligned on the mercenary's boots, keeping them both upright as the room vented.
The Adjutants came out in a pack, upwards of a dozen of the creatures striding through the gunfire aimed at them, rounds punching into their metallic flesh.
One would fall, and quickly be sucked clear through the room to the bay door, venting its corpse into the cold recesses of space.
"Coming in for pick-up, move your ass!" The Batarian pilot signaled through their communications channel, triggering the duo to both fall back further towards the open hangar. "Shit!" They both heard come from the comms channel before looking to see what caused the expletive.
"Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, He's going down!" Aleena shouted, though the words came through the channel in Nyreen's helmet. Ducking behind a supply crate, she could see the situation grow dire. The shuttle was buckling; an Adjutant had been vacuumed out of the hangar only to manage to grab ahold of the shuttle, where it was forcing its way into the cockpit.
The shuttle buckled for a few seconds before the thrusters engaged to full, smashing the vehicle into the side of the frigate's hull in what would have been a fiery explosion, had they not been in the vacuum of space.
"Damnit! Get in that Gunship, we're on our own!" Aleena commanded, rushing across the room to get into the vehicle. Nyreen followed close behind, taking a position on the boarding ramp, laying down suppressive fire on the advance mass of Adjutants.
"Go, Go, Go!" Nyreen responded, signaling her comrade to lift off the ship.
"Mag-locks disengaged, hang on!" Aleena answered, engaging the ship's engines and lifting off with a pronounced jerk before turning the ship and firing the thrusters away, catapulting them as far from the ghost-ship as they could get.
Nyreen closed the boarding ramp as soon as they were clear of the ship, sealing the duo in the vessel with a hiss as the artificial atmosphere kicked into action. After a moment for the air to distribute, Nyreen unsealed her helmet with a similar hissing noise before letting it fall into position on the crew seat at the back of the vessel.
"You alive back there?" Aleena shouted from the pilot's seat.
"Yeah…Yeah, I'm good." Nyreen answered, taking a seat in the rear of the ship. "Get us to Afterlife, Aria needs to hear about this." She answered, leaning her back against the hard metal of the metal wall separating the cockpit from the cramped compartment at the rear of the gunship.
The duo didn't say anything else for the majority of the ride to Omega station, only when they arrived to see a small battle going on overhead of Omega did they speak again.
"Omega…Is under attack?"