9 - Eden Prime: Seriously?
The main road leading to Terminal 36 ended sharply where a narrow trench full of smoldering rubble had been carved across its path. It looked like some gigantic farmer and run an equally gigantic plow right across the roadway and in the process created enough friction to melt the topsoil into glass.
Lieutenant Alenko didn't slow down before the gap. He gunned the engine, built up speed, and just before the edge of the trench hit a covered switch on his control panel to fire the Mako's landing thrusters. The four bright blue jets roared beneath the vehicle and it jumped ten meters off its wheels without even slowing down. All three of them pressed their backs into their seats and braced themselves; the Mako slammed back to the ground, bounced, but kept on moving undisturbed, as if the twenty meter chasm it had just vaulted had been little more than a speed bump.
"Hey Commander," Williams said, "I've got an IFF tag up ahead. It's pinging 'SR1B.'"
"That's the other Mako," Alenko said, "Nihlus was driving it."
Shepard felt a chill run down her spine. She signaled again on the ground channel, "Shepard to Nihlus. If you can hear me, please respond!"
The silence that answered them was deafening.
Alenko pulled to a stop next to Nihlus' Mako and the three of them climbed out. The hatches were closed, but a glance inside the compartment showed no sign of its Turian driver or anyone else. There was no damage to the vehicle either; it had been parked here and powered down with only its kinetic barriers and automated defense systems active. Shepard saw that Nihlus had parked it just short of a high ridge that the main road had been cut through, so probably he had ditched it to scout ahead on foot rather than drive blind into what might have been a fortified enemy position. Valid tactic for a lone scout with a vehicle and no gunner. But not for a three-man squad with two vehicles and a telepresence linkup...
"Move out on foot," Shepard said, drawing her rifle from the magnetic holster on her back.
Williams and Alenko followed suit, with Alenko taking point. Shepard activated her omnitool as they started to move, linked her neural interface into her Mako's onboard VI and set the system to run on semi-autonomous mode. She did the same with Nihlus' Mako at the same time and had both of them feed video from their turret optics into her personal view. She could see well enough from the turrets... at least, well enough to drive and aim and maybe hit a target if she concentrated hard enough.
Alenko grunted and Williams yelped as the two infantry fighting vehicles began to move without drivers. Shepard offered a reassuring "I got these," and fell into position between them. With a Mako on either side of her squad, she now had the armor, the protection and the firepower to face whatever might be on the other side of the ridge...
Anything, that is, except what she actually saw.
Alenko's voice was as loud and as urgent as a battle-stations klaxon, "What is that?! Jesus Christ!"
Shepard froze in place, transfixed by a rush of anxiety she had never known before. "It's a ship!" she gasped, "Look at the size of that!"
The ship - if that's really what it was - stood taller than the tallest sky scraper she had ever seen, even taller than Eden Prime's biggest arcologies. It had a curved, diamond-shaped hull that tapered at the top and five insect-like landing legs on the bottom that appeared to be standing in a like of fire. Smaller legs, flattened against the back of the hull twitched and unfolded as she watched, and the ship, this massive, monstrous vessel, began to move.
"That's the ship that attacked us," Williams said, "It's the Geth flagship! It must have la-" her words were cut off by a blast of something that million times too powerful to be described as noise. A blast like a foghorn replayed through a billion-watt amplifier, in a tone so deep it might have been inaudible if it wasn't also the loudest thing in the galaxy. Shepard felt her stomach drop to her ankles and the tingling sensation in her chest like her ribcage was trying to claw its way out of her belly button and run away for safety. She felt sick, disoriented, and then she looked up again and saw that the monstrous ship had begun to ascend, trailing thick red smoke beneath it as molten material began to fall away from its landing legs.
It rose effortlessly, more like a child's toy than a million-ton spacecraft, and as it rose up through the cloud layer and punched through, Shepard got an eye for scale as the clouds slowly swallowed its entire bulk. Assuming the clouds hadn't gotten lower since they'd landed, the thing that had just taken off had to have been at least two kilometers long.
She was still watching the ascent by the giant ship when the burst of plasma bolts jittered across her shields. She felt the impact like a punch in the chest, and looked for the source of the shooting more offended than alarmed. The bridge that normally lead to the south parking area had been demolished and was now a deeply canted ramp leading down to a grassy field and a maintenance area. A dozen Geth troopers were firing up at them from the field, and a dozen more were emerging from the spaceport terminal. Shepard noticed the troopers were moving together in a manner almost too synchronous to be natural; it looked like their battle formations were precisely and gracefully choreographed, like a troop of ballroom dancers performing combat maneuvers. She would have admired their coordination if it wasn't so creepy to watch.
Also, if they weren't shooting at her.
A low metallic sound drew their attention to the maintenance area where a dozen tall spikes had begun to retract, the mutilated bodies impaled on their tips twitching as they became active again. The Geth troopers on the upper terrace spread out into firing positions as the red beams of their sniper rifles danced across their chests.
Alenko was already putting up a biotic barrier to screen them and following rounds pelted off the glowing blue boundary before they could hit home. Shepard, meanwhile, linked back to the Makos' VIs, slewed their main guns forward to aim at the center of the upper terrace where the Geth reinforcements were massing. She checked to make sure she had high explosive rounds ready, then fired from each cannon, one after another, alternating. Four times the 155mm shells detonated against the terrace and four times entire clumps of Geth troopers were thrown into the air or blown to pieces by detonations. Williams, meanwhile, fired from behind the cover of Alenko's barrier, calmly picking off Geth troopers a few at a time.
Shepard ordered the Mako's forward, firing off the coaxial guns in long bursts. The transformed corpses were cut down and swept away three or four at a time; they dropped when the 20mm shells tore pieces out of their legs and torsos and stopped them from moving, but they showed no other sign of even knowing they were under fire until the last of them were cut down. The Makos were just cover now, a distraction; even keeping her attention divided, she managed to raise her rifle and sight on her first target. Lined up a headshot. Squeezed the trigger. The flashlight-head exploded and the body crumbled at the knees.
She reloaded. Second target. Aimed, fired. The Geth flipped end over end before it came to rest with a gaping hope in its upper torso and sparks pouring out of its innards. "Hope that hurt," Shepard said, and lined up her next target.
"They're falling back!" Williams shouted. And she was right. The last trooper in Shepard's sighs had been backpedaling while firing; the next one was in a dead run, sprinting towards the trees on the far side of the field, away from the spaceport itself. A low, mechanical howling sound announced the arrival of another ship, and Commander Shepard looked up just in time to see something large, grey and insect-like pass directly overhead in the same direction. It wasn't nearly as large as the ship that had just left, in fact it seemed similar to the Normandy in size and - as it descended - function as well. A Geth frigate, then, or whatever their equivalent is.
And they're running towards it, regrouping. Which means...
"I think they're pulling out," Shepard said, sighting one last trooper as it raced into the treeline. She fired at its back before it could get out of sight; the explosive round tore it in half in a spray of debris and a milky white substance that for any other target she might have assumed was blood. What is that? Coolant? Hydraulic fluid?
It had only landed for a few moments, and then the Geth ship lifted off again. Shepard checked her threat detector and noticed for the first time that the sensor was picking up normal signal traffic in the absence of any interference. She also noticed - seemingly coincidentally - a dozen other insect-like forms rising into the sky from elsewhere. One even seemed to be detaching itself from the side of a distant skyscraper, the arcology that had been its host still burning from the inside.
More signals hit her detection system, and she linked to the Mako's sensors to sort them out. There were civilian locators nearby, probably workers hiding from the Geth troopers, or bodies whose locators hadn't shut off. There were connection requests from some civilian services and requests for orders from what must have been an entire platoon of security mechs on standby somewhere. The Geth must have shut the mechs down when the attack started, Shepard realized, No wonder they got overwhelmed so easily.
They moved forward cautiously, keeping the Makos at pace with them as they went down the slope. The Makos' mass effect generators kept them firmly fixed to the ground beneath them even as the slope passed seventy and then eighty degrees. Field tests on Luna and on Earth had confirmed that an M35 could maintain traction on a solid surface up to an eighty two degree incline; a lighter civilian version of the same vehicle was being called the Gecko, for its ridiculously effective climbing ability.
The IFVs stopped just shot of the maintenance area. A partially frozen Geth trooper lay on its side at the foot of the stairs, crackling noises from within as its frozen components began to thaw, expanding and popping against each other. Shepard climbed the stairs carefully, keeping her rifle in front of her, watching for any survivors or stragglers that might have stayed behind just to be annoying.
Immediately, a proximal IFF code signaled her computer. 'Special Tactics and Recon - Medical Emergency.'
"Commander!" Alenko saw it at the same time Shepard's computer did, "It's Nihlus!"
The Turian Specter was lying on his back, a small pool of blood next to his head, his eyes open and staring lifelessly at the sky. Apart from the blood on the back of his head he didn't seem to be badly injured, and Shepard knew Turian anatomy well enough to know that a head wound to a Turian had to be pretty dan serious before it got fatal...
"Movement!" Williams said, bringing up her rifle, "Over behind those crates!"
Shepard raised her rifle and Alenko put a barrier around all three of them. They all sighted on a figure that had just emerged from cover and then just as quickly frozen in shock at the sight of weapons aimed his way. "Wait! Don't shoot! I'm one of you! I'm human!" A man in beige workman's overalls and a beanie hat was shouting as if he was struggling to maintain bladder control. His arms were up, outstretched, as if he was holding up a sight at a sporting event.
Shepard glowered at him over the sight of her rifle. "Sneaking up on us like that nearly got you killed!"
"I'm... I'm sorry," said the man, keeping his hands up but relaxing a bit, "I was hiding! From those... creatures!"
Shepard lowered her rifle. Williams did the same. Alenko let the barrier down,but kept the power field in his arm charged anyway, just in case.
"My name's Powell," the man went on, "That turian right there... did you say his name is Nihlus?"
Shepard nodded, "Did you see what happened to him?"
"Yeah, I saw. The other Turian, the creepy looking one. He shot him."
"Other Turian?"
"Yeah, that one got here first. He was waiting around for something when this Nihlus guy showed up. He called him Saren. I think they knew each other. So Nihlus relaxed, they got to talken. And soon as your friend let his guard down, Saren killed him. Shot him right in the back of the neck. I'm just lucky he didn't see me behind the crates."
Shepard opened her omni-tool and dumped the last sixty seconds of her hardsuit's audio record to memory, just in case. Then she set her tool to scan Saren's body and its surroundings, documenting the scene for later. Almost immediately, the omni-tool threw up an error message and the the red tripple-triangle of a radiation warning. It only took a moment for her hardsuit's computer to identify the unmistakeable telltales of a polonium round, shattered into dust just above Nihlus' brainstem. If the trauma from the wound hadn't killed him, the radiation from the bullet would have killed the nerves in his brainstem in just a handful of minutes and finished him off for good.
Which was not even the biggest reason polonium rounds were illegal.
Shepard turned back to the man behind the crates, who in the mean time had slowly dropped his arms but was being careful to stand still and keep his hands visible. "We were told the Prothean beacon was brought to the spaceport. What happened to it?"
"It's over at the Aguilar Center. Probably where that Saren guy was headed. He hopped on the cargo tram right after he killed your friend."
"How far is it to Aguilar?".
"Not far, Commander," Williams answered, "About a kilometer or so that way."
Shepard couldn't help but notice that Williams had pointed in the exact same direction where that the giant Geth dreadnought had just departed.
"I knew that beacon was trouble," Powell grumbled, "Everything's gone to hell since we first found it. First that damn mother ship landed on us, and then the Geth..." he took a deep breath and shuddered, "They killed everyone... everyone! If I hadn't been behind the crates, I'd be dead too!"
Shepard eyed him, "How come you're the only one who survived here? Why didn't anyone else try to hide behind the crates?"
"Because they... um... they never had the chance to," Powell hung his head, "I was already behind the crates when the shooting started."
Kaiden squinted at him, "Wait, you were hiding behind the crates before the attack?"
"Well, yeah. It's a sixty four hour day, and I do back-to-backs, so I take a nap or something between shifts. I usually sneak off behind the crates where my supervisor can't find me."
Williams gave him a look that was simultaneous amusement and contempt, "You survived because you're lazy?"
"Just lucky," Shepard said, "If you hadn't been sleeping on the job, you'd be dead just like the others."
Powell shook his head slowly, "Jesus... I don't really want to think about it."
"Commander," Williams moved closer to her, stepping around Nihlus' body, "The Geth are already pulling out... They probably took the beacon with them."
"It's worth having a look either way..." Shepard took one more scan of the scene around Nihlus' body, then started back down the terrace and the flash-frozen Geth, back towards one of the two waiting Makos.
"Cargo train's probably faster," Alenko said.
"If it still works and nobody's cut the maglev rail."
"True..." Alenko opened the hatch and climbed inside, followed by Shepard and finally Williams.