No Need For Goodbyes
Prime Unit Five stood on the perimeter of the bunker Cerberus had fallen back to, signs of battle and death surrounding the squat buildings entrance. A few Hoarders crouched outside, digging through the bodies for choice bits of meat for sustenance.
They seemed to hunt by smell more than sight, though their eyes were still utilized to a lesser degree. His chassis had a scent of their terraforming substance, and though it would likely disgust his organic allies, they appeared not to notice him because of it.
He moved slowly, raising his Spitfire and spooling it up as he approached the group of creatures. Their heads jerked up at the noise of his gun, but reacted far too late to avoid the hail of death he rained down on them. Bullets tore through the Hoarders just as effectively as they would their unmutated counterparts, dropping them all with a single sweep. He found one unused thermal clip among the dead soldiers and slapped it in, registering his new ammo count and moving inside the bunker.
The lights seemed dimmer than they should have been, often flickering or outright failing from the aftermath of the Hoarders forced entry. A set of stairs wound down to the floor from the entrance, where he could see yet another staircase on the opposite side of the room leading still further down. Each flight led him to another grim scene of lost defense for Cerberus, but despite the evidence, his radio came alive with chatter from them the farther down he got. It seemed the bunker interfered with radio signals unless in close proximity.
"We've... -last wave on-... -second from last floor sir, holding here."
"Understood. Keep alert, I doubt they're done yet. The engineers... -nearly completed."
Unit Five listened to the chatter intently, filling in the words that cut out with the most likely replacements seemed straight forward enough, he could simply wait until the bomb got deployed, letting Cerberus and the Hoarders fight it out in the mean time. His only course of action would be to intervene if Cerberus began losing before the bomb was ready. He doubted he could arrive in time to actually assist the Cerberus troopers, but if-
"Here they come again!"
"Suppressive fire! Hold them here!" Sounds of gunfire mixed with static filled the silence, in both his radio and distantly from the stairwell ahead of him. He moved forward yet again, knowing the Cerberus forces were likely on their last leg, and that the bomb had to be protected. His internal processes still argued over his goal, and he found himself somewhat torn despite a majority of runtimes favoring this route.
There were still innocents alive in the city, and they could still feasibly be saved, but the dangers posed by exposure were too large a risk. Logically he knew destroying the city was the best option, as it ensured the virus never left the planet while limiting lives lost from extermination teams.
This does not assuage the feeling of failure, no matter how many lives were saved by the action. The more he thought on these things, the more he realized exactly how much the dying STG members words truly meant. Lives were the goal, but sometimes things had to be done for the greater good of all. The logic in his mind nodded emphatically, but the ever growing sense of morals lingered in the back logs.
Unit Five sped up his slow progress down to the second to last floor, straining his field-repaired leg to the limit in an effort to reach the battle in time. He held his Spitfire up and ready, scanning the room as it entered his field of vision. Hoarders leapt at a desperate line of troopers, all of them looking bloodied and ragged, considering Cerberus' usual polished appearance.
Quickly counting the numbers, he tallied ten Hoarders against two Centurions and four troopers. The Reaper creations easily scrambled over the concrete barricades that had been hastily set up, trying to get within melee range under a wave of bullets. Two of them stayed back, claws sunk into the side of the wall where they'd climbed, spitting acidic globs at the humans.
Even as he moved to stop the ones spitting from range, he watched the acid of one spray across a Centurion's shielding and begin eating away at it. The human spared a glance for the hit, but ignored it in favor of booting a Hoarder away from himself. Unit Five spun up his Spitfire once more, spraying the wall with mass accelerator rounds that tore into the surprised animals to a chorus of squeals and agonized screams.
The ranged units dealt with, he turned the fiery barrel of his weapon to the remaining creatures not actively engaged with Cerberus soldiers, as they were the larger threat. The soldiers were going down quickly, screams echoing along the walls as they were ripped apart despite their heavy armor. The two Centurions began backing away towards the last stairwell, side to side and firing into the mass of howling creatures, leaving their soldiers to die under enraged claws. He kept the trigger down on his weapon, reducing the number of creatures significantly before both the remaining factions combatants fled through the stairway at the far end of the room.
Some of the Hoarders in the room still kicked feebly, riddled with bullets and mewling softly as they died next to the bloodied remains of their victims. All the troopers lay dead before him as he moved past, only their commanders and six more Hoarders moving the fight into the last chamber while he followed.
He had just reached the stairs when he felt something within his knee snap, a copper wire or one of the welded metal pieces holding the actuator in place finally caving in to the massive weight of his chassis. With a robotic noise of surprise that would likely have deafened an organic, he toppled, crashing down the stairs. He felt the metal stairs cave in a few times behind him as he fell, until he flashed a hand out to grab the nearest railing. He slowed his descent only marginally, the banister coming apart in his metallic grip and falling with him until he landed heavily at the bottom.
Rolling around to face the ground and push himself up, Unit Five only realized his right arm failed to comply when hydraulic fluid splashed his optic. He looked down to find it bent at a highly inoperable angle from the fall, the muscles sending error reports that filled his vision until he cleared them in frustration. The only thing that mattered was saving the bomb from the Reapers, and thus the sight before him sent jolts through his system.
I cannot be too late...
A pair of turrets sat surrounding the bottom of the stairs facing him, both with trails of smoke and sparks emanating from them as their barrels stared down to the ground. Blood and bullet marks covered the floor around him, the corpses of Hoarders still hot as they lie dying. Beyond that sat the Bomb itself, machines and computers surrounding it in the center of the room. It looked like a series five planet cracker edition, something used by the krogan during the rebellions to wipe out turian settlements quickly and efficiently.
Two dead Cerberus engineers lay sprawled out beside the culmination of their work, along with a pair of Centurions next to a pile of Hoarders, each having killed the other to a man. Reaching out with his left arm, Unit Five began to drag himself forward inch by inch closer to the bomb. He called up the schematics for it; a wireless link to the extranet courtesy of Cerberus allowing him to find it quickly.
From what he could tell by looking, they had managed to get extremely close to finishing, or maybe even had finished before they died. As he got closer, one of the engineers groaned and moved a little, holding his side from a massive slash across his stomach. His helmet made his gasp sound loud in the enclosed room, and he seemed not to notice the giant geth unit crawling not five feet from him.
The engineer attempted to sit up, coughing hoarsely and putting his back up against one of the computer banks. He finally seemed to realize what Unit Five actually was, as his breathing increased and he fumbled with one hand for a pistol on his hip.
A shot rang out as the man fired, his hand unsteady and barely able to grip the gun as he shot again and again. Unit Five didn't even flinch as the tiny rounds bounced off his shields, choosing instead to continue moving forward to his objective. The man groaned loudly as he tried to speak, his voice turning into another violent cough.
"N- *cough* No! You can't! *Cough*" The man wheezed in desperation, watching helplessly as he reached the main controls for the device meant to destroy the city. "You can't st- *cough* Have to destroy this city!" His words became garbled towards the end, probably from blood beginning to fill his mouth. Unit Five lifted himself up with one arm to rest on his good knee, analyzing the controls before him and bringing up the menu with a few quick taps.
"Please!" The pistol fell from the dying man's hands, his arm dropping to his side as he pleaded. "You don't understand..." his words were a whisper, "We had to save them." The engineer's head abruptly fell to his chin, his dying words using the last of his energy.
Silently, Unit Five bowed his head in a moment of silence, taking the time to observe the humans culture as there were no immediate threats in the vicinity. When he returned to the panel before him, he quickly activated the diagnostics to find the bomb completely functional, and needing only the press of a button. For the first time in his existence, Unit Five hesitated in fulfilling his objective, his processes urging his 'mind' to motion while he heard the same words repeated over and over.
"Do an old salarian a favor, and prove to me you really are alive."
After a moments hesitation, he hit the countdown timer activation, showing thirty seconds until detonation.
I tried, Palok Renten. And perhaps this platform simply did not have enough processing power, or had insufficient time to fully acclimate to decisions of this magnitude.
Unit Five pushed himself back from the controls, watching the timer slowly tick ever downwards as he settled his body beside the engineer with his back to the computer. He attempted to send his recordings, inner files and audio logs to the Alliance through the extranet, but found the bandwidth of the makeshift wireless router too small to send his mind back as well. He would be incapable of being sent back to the collective and revived from this tiny nook of the galaxy, so he settled in to think. Seconds passed like an eternity to him, the countdown only just now hitting fifteen while he pondered his choices.
While I doubt the possibility of there being a heaven, I maintain hope that Palok has made it there. As Legion once said to Commander John Shepard, timestamp 2185 CE: "Hope often sustains organics in times of difficulty. We... Admire the concept."
The timer reached five, and he looked up at the scene of battle all around him, feeling only sadness that it had to be this way. He had tried so hard to complete the mission assigned to him, and hoped others would look on his choice with approval instead of anger or malice.
He wanted to make his comrades proud, and realized that no matter how the war with the Reapers was won, it would be because a select few had inspired others to great deeds.
When the timer reached zero, he thought maybe, just maybe, his story would be one of those capable of inspiring. That he, a geth, had played a part in saving organics from a fate worse than death, and that made him feel more alive than ever before.