The geth seemed to be endless, at least to Kira. The ground team was climbing up the hill and fighting the machines for almost half an hour. Herself and Wrex were both flinging the geth across the battlefield, while the Commander and Garrus covered their more reckless squadmates with sniper rifles.
After a just few minutes of fighting Kira realized that she fell into some sort of a combat rhythm. She hummed some of her favorite songs while she shot as many geth as she could with her shotgun. She swished across the battlefield with her charge, pulled and threw the geth around, even set up a few singularities.
Even if they haven't planned it, Garrus seemed to get the ones she didn't see, while Jane mostly covered Wrex's back. The unsaid strategy worked well and Kira wondered if the others were aware of it happening.
They have to be, right? Things are going too well for it to be all accidental.
She knew her mother was a great strategist. She probably had this all planned out before it happened.
They started getting over the second mountain, when a bullet from behind her grazed Kira's shields. She briefly turned around and saw a geth she hasn't noticed go down to the ground. She looked up and saw Garrus' rifle trained on it. Nice shot.
"Keep your bullets away from my armor, Vakarian." She joked as she turned back to the fight and shot another two flashlight-heads in their… heads. No need to let his ego get too big, right? Earlier he did appreciate this kind of humor, so it should be good now too.
"If you paid more attention to your surroundings, I wouldn't have to watch your six." Garrus' voice came through her headset. So he is consciously keeping an eye on me.
"Guys, more killing geth, less talking about it." Jane reprimanded, as she hacked a geth trooper to help them for a few seconds.
"Yes, ma'am!" Kira laughed over the comm and continued fighting the machines. She decided she hated the climby-snipery ones. She couldn't charge up to them and they jumped out of range of her shotgun too quickly for her to react. It was up to her mother and Garrus to take them down, while herself and Wrex took care of the normal ground units.
A few dozen meters before the mountain's top the geth stopped coming towards them. Suspicious. Did they run out of scrap metal to create themselves?
Her unasked question got answered as they finished climbing up the big hill. From the sky came a geth dropship and from it fell a lot of new enemies, including a big, tank-like creature. "Oh… shit! What is that thing?"
"An Armature." The Commander responded. "Stay in cover, it's slow, but one hit from that blue ball of energy and you're gone."
"I wasn't planning on just walking into it." Kira rolled her eyes, behind the visor of her helmet. "This is just great." She sighed as she run up to a metal wall. The rest also took cover behind various sturdy pieces of metal and rock.
"Giving up, kid?" Wrex asked, as he switched from his shotgun to the assault rifle. "Maybe you should have brought something bigger than the peashooter on your hip."
"Very funny, Wrex." But he was right. Kira's shotgun didn't have enough range to get the big geth tank from the front. "We can't get it from here, can we?"
"The Commander and I could with the sniper rifles, but not while under fire. It takes too long to line up the shot, our shields won't take it." Garrus was hiding behind a bloody red rock formation.
"Shit." The Spectre stated. Really eloquent, mum. "We need some kind of a distraction."
"How long does this thing take to turn around? If me and Wrex can charge behind it, we could get it from there." Kira knew it was dangerous, but what else could they do? They were pinned down.
The smaller geth were constantly shooting at them, even if they couldn't hit anyone, they still prevented the team from even peaking from their covers.
"You won't take it down in time." Garrus quickly commented. 'It's shields are too strong. Shotguns only won't do enough damage this quickly." Kira wondered how much info his visor was feeding him and how much he just knew from experience. He seemed to have a very analytic approach to all the fighting.
"Then we overload them." You could hear the cogs working in the Commander's head. Just one impulse and Jane started speaking a mile a minute. Not quite the salarian speed, but still freaking fast. "We take down as many of the small ones as we can. Garrus, when you see an opening, overload the Armature's shield. Then, Kira, Wrex, you charge up behind it and at the same time I overload it again. That should take off the shield. You two can finish him off."
"Yes ma'am!" They all said in unison.
Taking care of the smaller geth was easier said than done. They had to take pot shots from behind cover for a couple of minutes, before enough geth were dead or damaged for them to be able to stick their head out of cover. Each of them then took down a few more.
With just 3 or 4 left, this was their opening. They all saw it and Garrus reacted. His overload didn't shut the shield down completely, but it started to flicker. Kira and Wrex got their biotics ready for a charge and when the Commander yelled "Now!" they got out of cover and stormed through the air.
When they stopped, the Armature's shield was already taken down by Jane and the krogan started unloading his shotgun at its back. Kira followed soon after. Sparks flew from the cables getting torn to pieces as the giant pile of metal tried to turn around. It didn't even make it half way before it laid on the ground, smoke coming from its surface.
The whole team breathed a sigh of relief and quickly dealt with the remaining normal-sized geth.
"Good job guys." The older Shepard said and tuned toward what looked like a mine entrance. "Let's get inside and find the doctor, I've had enough of red rock and lava for today."
"Great idea." Kira was breathing heavily, so after she said it, she closed off her comm. There was no point in worrying her mother with a little tiredness. The young woman used more biotics today than any other day before. That, coupled with adrenaline and excitement with her first mission, and running up a mountain had her panting.
As the group moved into the ruined mine, the younger Shepard tried to even out her breathing. She was mostly successful, but the amount of sweat piling on her forehead was… troubling. But she needed to get past it.
I need to be a goddamned adult and deal with it. I'm a bit spent, but we have a mission to finish and geth to kill.
There was no way she was going to be a burden on the team, just because she was tired.