Shepard held a baited breath as they rounded another corner, her ears alert for any sound of geth activity. There was a noise in the background, like the thumping of a massive heart, beating away ominously somewhere in the ruins. "Do you guys here that?"
"That thumping?" asked Garrus.
"Yeah…"
"Probably just the geth… Benezia?"
The Matriarch shrugged, "I don't know. Maybe it's the conduit?"
"Hm, maybe. Keep sharp, there's bound to be geth around the next corner."
Seconds after the sentence left her mouth geth plasma fire ripped was her head, searing a hole into the wall behind her. She ducked into cover, just as Garrus and Liara opened fire with their rifles and Benezia threw the most powerfull warp Shepard had ever seen. It struck one of the geth and detonated with enough for that it melted the synthetic and sent the two closest geth flying. Shepard had worked with a few biotics in her career, Liara included, and she had never seen a warp detonate like that.
A rocket exploded somewhere above her head, raining her down with bits of rock and a loud zap rang out as Garrus shot a geth down with his sniper. The characteristic thwack of a biotic throw was accompanied by panicked beeping and the sound of one metal body slamming into another.
Shepard leaned out of cover, a few shots hitting her shield and cast an overload field, which target each geth soldier who had shields around a certain radius. They all exploded as they were hit by the electro-static blast.
Garrus picked the rest of with his rifle and they continued forward, coming to room with a long corridor antechamber, definitely an ambush. She had no way of detecting where the geth were, thanks to their thrice-damned jamming, but if she were to hazard a guess based off of prior experience, they would have troopers along the side walls, possibly some stalkers, destroyers would not be involved in an ambush, but like way at the back along with several rocket troopers, and judging room the severity of their need to stop them, a prime would by meeting them as soon as they came forward.
"Garrus, take cover behind that low wall and snipe down anything ahead of us. Liara, Benezia, reinforce your shields, this is gonna be tough one."
The asari complied, Liara shimmering blue as she covered herself in a barrier. Benezia just nodded; her anti-tank gun of a rifle at the ready.
Shepard started forward. Just as she came into the threshold of the antechamber, the most dreaded sound met her; the sound of a Colossus unpacking itself.
"Fucking duck!" she held and divided behind a pillar just as a blast from that thing struck the ground where she had been standing, leaving behind a decent sized crater.
She could hear Garrus firing, and the sound of geth troops dieing. Christ there geth foot soldiers pouring into the room!
"Shepard, if you can disable its shields I can take it out!" said Benezia through the comm link.
"Alright everybody, hit it with an overload!"
At once three arms extended, and three bursts of electro-static hit the Colossus' shields, destroying it. A second later it was hit with a warp, and their was flash of biotics from where Benezia had been crouching.
Shepard looked back at the giant geth and could only stare in horrified astonishment. Benezia was standing on top of it!
It detected something on top of and could on step to one side and lean. Benezia, limned in bright biotic power and resplendent in her black armour, tore a section of armour plating off just below the thing's neck. She placed the barrel of her rifle into the hole and fired a full magazine into it. The Colossus screamed and fired into the roof before exploding.
Shepard had to duck down to avoid a piece of shrapnel from hitting taking her head off.
Shepard looked around frantically, "I'm fine commander." Said Benezia's voice over the comm. There was another biotic detonation, and three geth troopers- rocket ones it looked like- landed somewhere near the Colossus' grave, warpfire burning away at their armour plating.
Shepard looked up from behind her cover and gazed in astonishment as Benezia flickered inbetween the geth, blasting them to pieces with either her rife or biotics. She was… amazing. Shepard found herself in a trance, unable to take her eyes of off the Matriarch- that was saying something as Benezia was biotically charging between each target.
It finally ended, and Shepard realized she had just been staring, slack jawed. Liara shook her head with a sigh, Garrus snorted and Benezia kicked the corpse of a very dead geth soldier.
Shepard swallowed and stood. "Commander, over here, there's a terminal, looks broken but…"
She followed the sound of Liara's voice. She was standing in front of a sparking Prohean computer terminal on the upper level. Aside from sparking, it was also spitting out disturbing pieces of some message with delightful phrases such as "They can't be stopped!" and "There is no hope!"
Yeah, that was definitely a boost towards Shepard's optimism.
The terminal also did not have the controls to the tunnel Saren had disappeared into.
Just as Shepard was about to walk away, the despairing computer sudden switched its tone, and a quiet voice told her tone wait.
Shepard turned around and came face to face with must have been a prothean VI.
It was shaped like prothean, too. It had three fingers on each hand, four eyes and triangular head and a pointy face. "Hello, I am Vigil, Prothean AI. I sense no traces of indoctrination in any of you, but… I can see it's mark in you." It said, looking at Benezia.
"Yeah… We fixed that."
The hologram nodded, "I see. The one you call Saren is in the containment tunnels. I have blocked his access to the Conduit, we must hurry to reach the Citadel before him."
Shepard's jaw tightened, "Yeah, gotta a way to do that?"
Vigil nodded, a beckoned them to follow, "Yes, follow me. I will accompany you to the Citadel, and accompany you to the Citadel. I sense that your cycle has had trouble understanding our beacons, I will aide you in explaining the Reapers to your government."
"How did you-?"
"I read your correspondence."
Shepard paused, "Yeah, don't do that again."
"Do not worry, Commander. I only read messages with the keywords of 'Reaper' and 'Prothean"."
Shepard nodded in relief.
"Goddess, an actual, working AI!" said Liara, in the most giddy tone Shepard had ever heard from the Archaeologist.
Vigil nodded to her, but kept walking. Benezia chuckled, "Now don't get too excited Liara, we still have to kill Saren."
They followed the AI to a massive room, with what looked like a miniature mass relay that had been shoved into the ground, and it was humming loudly. "Beautiful view." said Garrus.
"The conduit…its magnificient" breathed Liara in astonishment.
Vigil continued on toward the relay, which was a distance away.
"Yes. We built the Relay to gain access to the Citadel, after we had long lost it to the Reapers. The Citadel itself is a giant mass relay. The Reapers got to it first in our cycle. Scientists boarded the station, to deactivate it. Sovereign is likely on his way to the station now."
''Shit… They aren't ready for him!" exclaimed Shepard. A massive fleet had been amassing at the Citadel, but there was no way now way to know if they could withstand Sovereign.
"What they are not ready for is Saren." Said Benezia, "And if we don't hurry, it may just be too late."
Shepard nodded, ''Yeah , let's hope we're not too late already…"
