The team made it to the conference room fairly quickly. It was always a good chance to gauge the state of the crew. The Chief walked in with a purpose, and as soon as she sat down, she started chatting animatedly with Felawa and Grieco. She was doing most of the talking, some tale about the Eden Prime garrison. The contents weren't important, the attitude was. The marines were following her like pups, not missing a single word.
She had definitely taken her place aboard the ship. Good. That was one thing off her mind.
Shepard looked at the others. Roy had taken a seat without a single word, and had literally frozen. That was less eloquent that she'd have liked, she didn't know whether he had frozen because he recognized the system, or because she had put the beams on him.
Alenko. He moved with ease and had a smile on. Good, he had recovered. Most of the team had collected wounds, one way or another. Only Wrex didn't seem to really mind. And Garrus, he had avoided most of the flak, too.
The turian was a puzzle. He was a hothead, but not an impulsive one. More like obsessive. He knew the rules, and it wasn't that he didn't care about them. It felt like he did abide by them against his will. Mental shackles. There had to be more about him, a reason why he bristled against rules, not merely ignored them.
If he ever calmed down, he'd be a good asset. The way he had worked with the team was excellent. She hadn't put him in the same one as Roy yet, but she would soon. She just had to be careful that Roy wouldn't end up with a rocket to his face, so for now she'd rather have him with the chief. She could trust Garrus not to end up like that, at least.
Wrex. Yeah, moving right along.
Tali. The girl had guts, she had to give her that. She was too nice for her own good, but she could see her going places. Given everything Tali had told her about life aboard the Flotilla, moving out to the Galaxy must have been quite a shock to the system. But she was adapting fast. And reports from Adams showed she was a literal genius with technology. Pressly still didn't look too thrilled about having her in the bowels of the most technologically advanced ship in the fleet, but he'd come around.
She was definitely something special. More so considering the welcome she had had. Geth all over the place, and getting shot and dumped in a cargo crate upon arrival to the Citadel. Good thing Roy had found her.
Roy seemed to have gotten his fingers in a lot of pies with her crew.
And they were still missing Fredricks. He hadn't regained consciousness yet, Chakwas had him in an induced coma.
"All right, we're all here now," Anderson said, getting the attention of the room. "We are one hour away from the Artemis Tau relay, where our next target is. Nihlus."
"The recording Tali recovered from the geth memory banks led us to an asari, Matriarch Benezia T'soni," the Spectre said. "She's a powerful politician, well connected and with abundant resources at her disposal. Bad as that is, it is not the reason we are here. As Roy correctly pointed out," he continued, giving him a nod and dragging some of the looks his way, "she has a daughter. Liara T'soni. Prothean expert."
Now the looks were more intense.
"Better than our wonder boy?" Ash said.
"Who isn't?" Shepard said. "Not the point, chief. The point is that this Liara character was last seen on Therum."
She looked around, watching the reactions. Only the human members of the crew seemed to react.
"If she's working with Saren and her mother, you know what it means," Anderson said, his voice hard. "Saren, Prothean ruins, and a planet inside the Alliance's territory. We've all seen this vid before, and I want a different ending this time."
He pointed at the screen, and the map zoomed into Therum.
"We have over 30,000 people on that planet. We will scout ahead of the fleet, and call it in if necessary to secure the population. But once we locate the asari, she'll be our top priority. Whatever T'soni wants on this planet, I want it first."
"Once we have completed the recon," Shepard said, "ground team will move in. My team will go in with the Mako, and if necessary, we'll secure a landing zone for the second team to go in."
"Our priority is T'soni and whatever she has on the protheans," Anderson insisted. There were murmurs, but he raised a hand to stop them. "Let the fleet handle the geth and securing the civilians, if necessary. That's what we will be scouting for. But we are going after Saren."
She figured most others hadn't picked up on that, but Shepard knew Anderson was having trouble holding back. He and Saren, they had history. She knew him well enough to trust his judgement, but she also knew he wanted the former Spectre bad. He had come clean with her about it when the mission started, but nobody else.
"Questions," Shepard called.
"Commander," Alenko said. "Therum's been combed for Prothean artifacts by every legit and non-legit group out there since it was discovered. What else could there be?"
"The same could have been said for Eden Prime," Shepard said, her voice flat. No, that was too much. She tried to perk up, pushing dark thoughts aside. "Besides, nobody had a Prothean expert before, and now we have two! Or we'll soon have two, once we get our hands on the asari. Well, we'll have at least one then."
She saw Roy start to roll his eyes, but he stopped almost immediately, like he had caught himself. No matter, she'd soon see if he had anything on Therum.
Alenko nodded, not saying anything else. Shepard turned to Williams, who looked like she was chomping at the bit. "Chief?"
"Nothing here, Commander."
"Come on, don't hold back on me now," Shepard insisted. "You're scaring the kids," she added with a grin.
"Are we really going to ignore the civilians?"
That was the obvious question, really. She only wished she hadn't had to drag it out of her like that. She was starting to get tired of having to drag things out of her people.
"We're not," Anderson said. "But this is the finest scout ship in the fleet, and that's what we will use it for. Twenty-third expeditionary flotilla is on standby in case we need reinforcements. We will keep our people safe."
"Yes sir."
"Anything else?" Shepard said. Nobody stirred. Out of habit, more than anything, she turned to Roy. "Roy?"
"Um... How long has Liara been there?"
"How-" Shepard turned to her partner in crime. "Nihlus?"
"A while. She left her seat at the University of Thessia eight years ago in less than stellar circumstances. She's been bouncing around ever since, a dozen different archaeological sites here and there."
"So why are we acting like she suddenly landed there with a fleet?"
"Because Saren is on the move," Anderson said. "He knows we're after him. He'll be collecting all his assets on Alliance space."
"You know this?" Roy said.
Woah there, boy. You're playing with fire.
"Yes," Anderson deadpanned. "Anything else?" he called, looking around.
Nobody moved. Way to kill the mood, captain.
"All right then," Shepard said. "Prothean expert." She pointed at Roy. "Geth expert." She pointed at Tali. "And someone to shoot down anything that gets in their way." She pointed at Williams. "Suit up, team. You're with me. Alenko, you're in charge here."
Yes, ayes, and everyone moved out. Everyone except Nihlus. Shepard waited until the room was empty, and went to talk with the Spectre.
"Hey big guy, you going to actually stand me up this time? Come on, let's go."
"We have time," he replied.
"Ooh, that's forward."
"Shepard," Nihlus chuckled, a light reproach in his voice.
"So, what's wrong? Or are you going to do the big bad Spectre thing and not tell me?"
"Are you going to do the Commander Shepard thing and fix it no matter what?" Nihlus replied.
"It's my trick! Or at least it was until I met Roy. He's starting to make me think I've lost my touch."
Nihlus gave her a look, leaning forward to meet her eyes at the same level, but all Shepard did was blink with feigned innocence. After a few seconds like that, Nihlus was the one to break with a soft laugh.
"No, nothing wrong. Just a little anxious."
"Retrieving a priority target in enemy territory? I thought that was one of the six impossible things for you."
"What?" Nihlus said, the confusion on his face betraying the fact that he had missed the reference completely. "No, not the mission. The protheans. Depending on what we find down there..."
"The beacon is still bothering you?"
"It's getting worse. Turians don't dream, Shepard. We don't. Occasionally we get a spirit dream, but we don't dream like you humans do."
"Spirit dream? As in spirits sending a message from the afterlife or something?"
"It's not like I believe it," Nihlus said, his voice betraying the doubt behind the affirmation. "Maybe it is spirits; maybe it's just our brain doing something under the right circumstances. Whatever it is, it doesn't happen every spirits-cursed night."
Shepard nodded, leaning back on the rail in front of the FTL comms console, and crossed her arms. She could understand that better than Nihlus may think. Ever since Akuze, every single night. She never just fell asleep, she had to be dragged into slumber by sheer exhaustion every single night. Action and coffee kept her going, sleeping less and less as time went by.
It never got any better.
"I'm sorry to hear," she said. "I know what that's like."
Nihlus didn't answer at first, just shaking his head, but Shepard didn't insist. After a few seconds, he finally did speak.
"I didn't think you had found a prothean beacon before," he said.
"Not that," Shepard replied, a smile and arched eyebrows making her words lighter than the subject at hand. "But the other part, the dreams." She turned away from Nihlus, her eyes taking a faraway look. "When you're afraid to close your eyes, because of what you'll see. Your own thoughts become our enemies unless you keep them closely guarded. When you learn to function on adrenalin, stimulants, and the drunken feeling of being half-asleep. Sorry to say big guy, but I don't think it'll get much better."
When she turned again to look at the Spectre, she could see the concern in his eyes. Whether it was for her, for himself, or for both, she couldn't tell.
"That's not a good path for a turian to follow," Nihlus said, his voice low enough that it was barely picked up by the translators.
"It's not a good path for anyone, I'd say." She bumped Nihlus' shoulder with her fist. "Come on, enough with the pity party we're giving ourselves. We've got another colony to save."
"I thought the target was the asari."
"Yeah, that too," Shepard said, and gave Nihlus a wink.
"Buckle up people, we're ready to go!" Shepard called.
The Mako was just as cramped as ever, even though the team was relatively small (as in, no Wrex). I wasn't even securely fastened to my seat, Shepard had insisted on having me in the turret already, in case we jumped right into trouble. We had enough trouble with Shepard at the wheel, if you ask me.
Yeah, nobody asked me.
With a hard rev of the engine – which I found out in the manual was utterly unnecessary – the Mako launched from the Normandy's cargo bay and started a very fast descent towards the planet's surface. Standing up, even though I was properly tied down to my post, didn't help the sickening feeling of vertigo mixed with fear that the fall gave me.
"Mind the lava!" I shouted over the roar of rushing air.
"You mind the geth, let me worry about the lava!" Shepard replied.
Well, excuse-fucking-me!
I was supposed to look for targets as we went down, but after trying for a whole two seconds to look at the ground while we spun down towards the ground, I stopped so as to not risk making a mess somewhere.
Second time in the Mako, and the prospects of me getting used to it were still slim to none.
We landed with a hard jolt – despite the thrusters – and I banged my, thankfully helmeted, head against the screen, yelling an ow and a few curses in between.
"That never gets old," I head Ash laugh.
"You're right Chief Williams!" Tali said. "Shepard, can we do it again?"
"Yeah, if we do it again you're manning the turret!" I shouted as the Mako started to move.
"I can't use those icky five-finger-hands controls," Tali said.
"What controls? There's only two triggers!"
"Exactly."
"Children," Shepard interrupted us. "We're on mission here."
I shook my head and went back to the task at hand. We were on a valley with a whole lot of lava not far from us on the left – which, according to the onboard HUD, meant the temperature outside was a heat hazard level 1 – and as we started rolling, I started scanning the horizon. Nothing so far.
"Hey, commander?"
"Right here Joker, whatcha got for me?"
"I'm getting some really weird readings ahead. Like, off the comms charts. Just a heads up."
"Sure. What's our comms team saying?"
"They don't have a clue, it's saturating their instruments."
"Tali, patch up with the Normandy and see if you can help," Shepard said.
"On it!"
"And Roy, with so much chatter going on, if you miss the first contact with the geth I'll beat you to death with the limbs of the first one we blow up."
"Um..." I mumbled, what the hell? That came out of nowhere.
"Can we do it anyway? Just for fun," Ash said.
"What you do on your own free time is your own business, chief. Just put the toys away when you're done playing."
"Playing?" Tali said. "I believe my translator glitched, does that mean Roy and Chief Williams..."
Ash's laughter cut through Tali's question a bit too sharply for my taste. I mean, it's not like... Yeah. She just didn't have to be so sharp about it.
"Girl, Roy wouldn't last one round with a Williams woman."
"Are human mating rituals that rough?"
"Depends on who's involved," Ash said.
"They can't be that rough," Nihlus interjected. "Humans don't even have plates or talons."
"Is that a challenge, big guy?" Shepard said.
Come on, where are the freaking geth?
"Shepard," Anderson's voice called, cutting the banter in an instant.
"Right here Captain."
"The geth are staying clear of most inhabited areas. They are concentrating on a dig site about four clicks north of your position. There is a staging cargo area on the way there, secure it in case we need it as a landing zone."
"Right at the door," Shepard said.
"Don't get too close. There are geth transports not far from there. If the Normandy goes too close, they may leave before we can cut them off."
"Roger that."
Well, at least they were no longer discussing my inadequacy when it came to mating or whatever. I had eyes on the radar, Ash and Shepard were busy with the driving, Tali was working the Mako's rear console, and Nihlus...
He was just there, eyes closed and breathing evenly. He seemed a little off lately, I wasn't sure why. Probably Saren. He hadn't grilled me much more about what I knew, ever since they cornered me at the medbay and I went off a tangent about Sovereign being possessed (as close to the truth as I could get), but the looks he gave me sometimes... Yeah, gave me the chills.
Geth!
"Contacts," I said, hitting the zoom with the Mako's cannon. A couple of geth units were at the very edge of the cannon's range, and one shot later they were all over the edge of the cannon range. In tiny pieces.
"That's it?" Ash said.
"Well sorry, I'll tell them to bring friends next time," I said.
"Yeah, what about no?" Ash replied, a lot more flat than I had expected. Whoopsie.
"Given that now they know we're here..." Shepard said. "Three, two, on-"
"Dropship!" I shouted, watching the thing rise up from behind a hill and start heading our way.
"Zero," Shepard finished. "It never fails. Well, it's your party Roy! Get that thing down!"
"On it!"
I started shooting as soon as the ship was in range. It was such a huge target that I didn't really need to do much aiming. With the cannon at maximum zoom, it took most of the targeting screen. The cannon wasn't making that much of a dent, given the size of the vehicle, but it was doing some damage to the kinetic barriers. I couldn't prevent it from getting over our path and start dropping troops, but when it dropped one very large armature, a thought flashed my mind, and I acted even before I could think of it.
Instead of the ship, I quickly moved the cannon and dropped a volley on the falling armature.
Bullseye.
It wasn't enough to damage it, or even break through the kinetic barriers, but it was enough to hit it off course, and send it straight into the lava behind, where it landed with a splash. It unfolded and made some pawing attempts at getting itself out of there, but it was mere seconds before it exploded, sending shrapnel and lava flying all over.
"Hah!" I shouted triumphantly.
"Keep firing!" Shepard shouted.
"Fine, but that was a good fucking shot!" I replied, resuming the attack. The dropship was pulling away, damaged but still airworthy, so I let it go and started concentrating on the ground units.
"If it was anyone else I'd agree it wasn't luck!" Shepard said.
Really Shepard? Really? I knock an enemy tank into the lava so that we only have to deal with the small fry, and that's what you give me? What about you fucking do it then? Or that! Or that!
All that litany was going through my head as I took my frustrations out on the poor unsuspecting geth, one shot at a time. We were being rained on by bullets and rockets, although it soon was just bullets as I took the rocket launchers out first, then nothing when I finished up the rest of them. A couple of times my entire HUD flashed red as a geth sniper took a potshot at the turret, which would have been worrisome had they managed to get past the kinetic barriers.
As it was, all they got for their troubles was a cannon shot to the face.
Freaking snipers.
"Are you done wasting ammo?" Shepard called.
"Do you see any more targets?" I replied.
"You tell me! You're in the turret."
"Well that's a no, then!" I said.
I heard some snickering, and we resumed our roll towards the dig site at a more sedate pace. And by that, I mean breakneck speed while hitting every hole, rock, dead geth, and obstacle Shepard could find. Which was an improvement over the freaking crazy antics during the fight. She had dug track marks in the solid rock. In. Solid. Rock.
This woman's insane.
"Commander," Talitha's voice called. "You're approaching a heavy comms area, you should expect resistance."
Wait, is that...
Yeah, there was a walled-off section with a large closed door. And turrets. Lots of turrets.
"Contacts!" I called, and started shooting. The turrets returned the favour, and started shooting rockets at us. "Shepard, we should go aro-"
"Hang on!" she shouted.
Have you ever tried to get the Mako past places it was clearly not meant to go through? Well, Shepard did, too. Only, this wasn't a game, I wasn't looking forward to crashing upside down while being inside the unwieldy beast, and the rockets the turrets were shooting at us were very, very real indeed.
And the cliffside we were trying to climb looked unclimbably steep.
As I rattled inside the little cage, hitting the side walls of the turret post and holding on for dear life, what came to mind was the last thing I expected. With a jolt from the landing jets the Mako shot through the air, and all I could think was...
Fuck you, I'm the Mako!*
We landed with an unsettling crunch of snapping metal and hydraulic fluid being spilled, and Shepard then launched the Mako to get out of the way of the incoming volley. Rockets, shots, and even a plasma ball. We were in what is commonly known as a "target rich environment". I started shooting almost in a blind panic, just taking targets as they came into view. I hadn't even had time to see what we were up against.
"Hang on!" Shepard shouted.
When Shepard shouts hang on, you learn to obey even before your mind has processed the thought. Not because it's Shepard shouting an order, but because it's Shepard shouting that order. It's more of a warning, really. Shit's about to go down, and you better hold onto your pants.
This time was no different. We went to breakneck speed to sub-zero, as in, backwards, as Shepard pulled what can only be described as a handbrake u-turn (not sure if the Mako has a handbrake, never found out), and skidded to a stop.
"Out, out, out!" she shouted.
That was my cue. I got my bearings back, turned the turret, and started shooting. There was an armature, a couple of primes, and lots and lots of small units. Given the circumstances, I went for any and all geth that were close to us, giving my team time to find some cover. Tali, Nihlus, and Ash all bolted out with military precision, the latter closing the Mako's door as she left. I was spraying bullets with the 50mm and spitting hot rounds with the cannon, but it wasn't making a dent. Shields on the Mako were steadily going down, and Shepard wasn't moving.
"Plasma ball!" I shouted. The armature had taken a keen interest on us, but Shepard wasn't budging. "Shepard!"
"We can't move yet!" she snapped.
Right, our team. I gritted my teeth as the ball exploded over the Mako, sending alerts blaring left and right. The shields had taken most of it, but there were structural warnings all over the right side.
Get to cover, get to cover, get to cover!
I mentally spurred Ash, who was closing the march and getting lots of attention from the geth. A red laser line suddenly appeared on her, and I scrambled to trace it back to the sniper aiming at her. The line got brighter and brighter, just as I found the perch at the far back of the battlefield.
A volley of the Mako took care of that.
The line got brighter.
Or not.
I zoomed in harder, desperately trying to get the well covered sniper. I let a second volley, then a third. That third one did the trick, but overheated the cannon.
"What the bloody hell are you doing Roy!" Shepard shouted. "Don't overheat the damn cannon!"
"I had to-"
"I don't wanna hear it! Don't do it!"
With a litany of mental imprecations, I went back to the business at hand, getting the closer geth platforms with the 50mm. Shepard, despite appearances to the contrary given the way she drove, had actually found the team a good spot with plenty of cover, and after some shooting, they had carved themselves a good position.
I didn't have time to wonder why, exactly, she kept dropping people mid-fight instead of clearing things with the Mako. It's not like they had anything better than the Mako's cannon.
Which was still cooling down.
Yeah, that.
"Shepard, the Armature!"
"I see it!"
"Jump, jump!" I shouted.
To my surprise, Shepard did just that, and the Mako bolted up and right above the path of the ball of plasma the Armature had tried to gift us with. The edge clipped one of the tires, which burst open and made the landing that little bit more uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the Mako still responded when we landed, and Shepard pushed it forward.
"That was close!" Ash complained over the radio. "I don't think we can take Armature fire directly, commander!"
"Then I suggest you duck, Chief!" Shepard replied.
"Duly noted sir! What about a little help taking it down?"
"Don't worry," Shepard said. "I'm carrying the bait."
Wait, what?
"Roy, Armature, now!" Shepard called.
"Should I dip myself in oil to be more appetizing?" I said, opening fire with the finally cooled down cannon.
"… that's not a mental image any of us needed, Roy," Ash said over the radio.
"I have to agree with Chief Williams," Tali replied.
"I'm going to be sick," Nihlus added.
"Hey, it could be worse, he could have said honey," Shepard said, "and-" Whatever it was she was going to say next was mercifully interrupted when she swerved hard, and ran over a barrier to get to a geth hiding behind it.
Did I mention I thought this woman was psychotic? At least behind the wheel?
"Can I shoot myself now?" Ash said.
"Permission to die denied, Chief. You have to endure."
Damn.
The armature now had my undivided attention, thanks to Shepard's insistence. So far, Therum had been very different from the games, and this was no exception. I didn't remember any large scale fight like this anywhere on that freaking planet.
*CRASH*
"SHIT!"
I fell off the turret as a blast blew the glass cover away, sending shards flying everywhere. My shields blared angrily, and so did several alerts inside the Mako. Luckily, the second layer had held on. Bloody hell, that was some hit!
"Roy!" Shepard shouted.
"Goddammit!" I snapped, grabbing onto the railing and pulling myself up. "Who the fuck did-"
I was already scanning the battlefield with the cannon, the glass might be broken but the holographic interface didn't care. I turned twice until another, similar blast hit the Mako again – missing most of the turret, but hitting my shields again – and saw the origin of the attack.
A freaking Prime with a huge shotgun.
"Fuck you!" I shouted as the Mako spat a hot round straight to its face. The Prime went flying several meters, hit a wall, then crashed to the ground. I'm not sure if I saw it twitch, or just imagined it, but just to make sure I gave it another round and it exploded into a thousand fucking pieces.
"Done with your tantrum?" Shepard said.
"Yes!" I snapped, going back to the Armature.
I have to say, large and dangerous as it was, Shepard seemed to have her Armature-killing technique down pat. She jumped out of the plasma balls with perfect accuracy, kept circling even though she was also running over every single geth that gave her a chance, and despite the jolts and jumps, kept giving me a clear view of the thing so I could keep shooting.
That's when it dawned on me. Maybe, just maybe, despite her psychotic ways with the Mako, the relentless abuse she gave the poor thing, and the utter disregard for the laws of physics when it came to handling it, maybe, just maybe, Shepard could actually drive.
The thought was too terrifying to entertain, so much so that I missed the next shot on the Armature.
"Roy! What the hell!" Shepard shouted.
"Sorry!" I yelled back, over the grinding sound of geth metal being run over.
The result of all this was that, while the Mako got its fair share of damage from the smaller geth units, the armature didn't land a single large hit on us as we ran all over the place. When it finally keeled over – rather, when I finally got past its shields and blew its head off with a well placed shot, go me – it was over.
It was over because as soon as it was dead, I turned to look for other targets, and found that they were all dead.
"Shepard to Normandy."
"Go ahead, Shepard," Anderson replied.
"LZ is secure."
"Good. You're close to the dig site now, and there's no movement from the geth. They're ignoring the populated areas."
I could almost hear the relief those words brought over the comms.
Shepard parked the Mako at the edge of the walled off area, on the North side, and powered the poor thing off. I could swear it whined as she did, its suspension lowering unevenly – or collapsing, I couldn't tell.
Me? I had been gripping the controls of the turret so hard I could barely feel my trembling hands, and now that the tension was gone, all I wanted to do was go collapse somewhere. I got down from the turret and did just that, collapsing on the chair at the back. At least I'd have a bit of a break while the Normandy arrived.
"Roy, it's no time to sit on your ass," Shepard said, unbuckling herself and heading for the door. "Move it."
Sigh.
"I'm telling you, that was amazing," I heard Ash say as soon as the door opened.
"Yes, she is," Shepard replied, joining the conversation, "but what did she do this time?"
I dragged my ass, as per Shepard's instructions, out of the vehicle, to find the three women chatting, with Nihlus off to the side a stone's throw away.
"It's not that difficult," Tali replied, a little nervous.
"Not that difficult? You hacked six geth at once!" Ash said, and gave the poor quarian a slap on the back that could have sent a krogan tumbling. "And to think they said geth can't be hacked."
"The AI cannot be hacked, my code overwhelms the geth processes and takes over the platform until they adapt."
"So you have to change the code every time you hack them?" Shepard said, and whistled in appreciation at Tali's nod. "Nice."
"I think our girl here is more dangerous with her omni-tool than Roy with the Mako," Ash said, flashing me a grin. "You took your time with the Armature, we were done before you!"
"You were three," I replied, which got me a flat look from all three women.
Ash raised her hand and pointed at the Mako. "You had the Mako," she said.
We all turned to the poor thing. Tilted to one side (the one missing a tyre), enough bullet marks to turn it into a pirate treasure map, and with some thin wisps of smoke escaping from the back, it painted a very sorry picture.
I gave Ash my best bertface.
"Granted, the commander was at the helm-"
"I know! How many more advantages do you want, Roy?" Shepard said.
"Yes, yes," Ash added, trying to move along as quickly as possible, "but you still had a fragmentation cannon and a 50mm machine gun."
"Had..." I said, giving the Mako another glance. "Shepard, have you ever thought of waiting for the thing's shields to recharge?"
"What do you think we're doing now?" she replied.
"We should move on," Nihlus said, coming to break up the little party. "There's no movement from the geth landing zone, but they're dug in pretty hard."
"Assault?" Shepard said, jumping into the serious conversation without even breaking a sweat.
"Even with Wrex it would be hard."
"Hmph, turians," Wrex grunted over the comms, which made Shepard smile.
"As long as they are there, I'm not worried," she said. "Let's move out, people. Talitha, keep an eye on the geth."
"Of course Commander," the ensign replied.
We filed in again, with Ash staying behind to find the release for the side gate. I seemed to remember there were geth hiding in places around these parts in the game, but Ash didn't seem particularly worried. Still wasn't worried as she shot a few geth on her way in, with Shepard not even blinking as she kept checking the Mako's systems.
The next part of our ride was a lot more calm. A few geth took potshots at me, but other than pinging my shields from time to time, they didn't get far.
It's quiet, too quiet.
"Commander, I don't think we can fit through there," Ash said, looking at a narrow gap on the rock.
We had arrived at a camp, which Nihlus presumed was the archeological team's site. The place was blown to hell, but from the Mako I couldn't see particularly well.
"Hang on," Shepard said.
We all did, as the Mako shot forward with renewed energy. It rocked and rolled, the front bounced up, and with a high-pitched whine from the engine, the front tires scraped over the rocky obstacle in front of us. As the Mako tilted higher and higher, my grip on the controls got harder and harder.
"Commander?" Ash said. I think it's the first time I heard her sound genuinely worried.
"Come on, get up!" Shepard said.
"I don't think it's going to!" I yelled.
As if it was a cue, a snap of metal made the Mako lurch, and it was followed by a hard sound of grinding metal. Shepard immediately stopped the engine, letting gravity drag the Mako down.
While grinding its nose against the hard rock wall.
"Did... Did you break the Mako?" Ash said.
"No," Shepard replied, a little too quickly. "Roy jinxed it."
"Right," Ash said, wisely refraining from further comment.
"Looks like we're going on foot," Shepard said. "Chief, take point. Tali, Roy, behind her and give her support. Nihlus, you're at the rear."
"Commander, Roy's going to shoot me again. Can we put him at the front?"
For fuck's sake, that was once, and it was her fault!
"Live a little dangerously," Shepard replied. "Let's move."
We left the Mako, with Ash taking point and scanning for enemies. We had a chance to take a better look at the camp, which in some places was still burning. Quite a few geth remains were scattered about, and so were some dead asari and a couple of turians.
It was a very sobering sight. Nihlus walked us through what had happened as he reconstructed the scene. Geth came the same way we did, and the turians rallied the defense to cover the civilians. They ended up trapped between the incoming geth and the field of lava far at the back. Even at this distance we could feel the heat, the unarmored asari couldn't have gotten much closer to escape the geth.
They had been killed around the two prefabs that were still on fire. Some of them were still burning inside.
It reminded me too much of Eden Prime. I left them behind to get some distance and some air, taking my helmet off despite the heat. It was hot, but not too bad where we were.
"Roy, let's go," Shepard called.
I secured my helmet and moved out, following Ash through the narrow gap in the rock. My suit's VI was linked with the rest, and I soon started to see the proximity alerts from the combat scanners.
"Contact!" Ash called, opening fire and rushing for cover.
Everyone else scrambled immediately, which left me as the only target for the split-second my reaction took to kick in. Bullets bounced off my shield, depleting it quickly and spurring me to haul ass as fast as I could.
"Head down Roy!" Ash shouted. "How many times do I-"
Yeah, yeah. I waited for the capacitors to kick in and start recharging, and once my top layer was at half strength I got out and looked for targets. Not many left, Shepard and Nihlus were having a blast it seemed, and Ash looked like she was loving all the attention she was getting.
…
I could have phrased that better.
With a quick aim, I gave the nearest geth a blast of my shotgun, then two more when it turned to shoot at me. On a fourth, I finally got through the shields and the shell. On the fifth it stopped moving and went down.
What the hell? Did they get stronger or-
"I always thought shotguns were easier to aim," Tali said, coming to crouch to my side and giving the nearest geth a full blast of her own shotgun. It didn't take more than two for it to become spare parts.
We were getting pelted with enemy fire as well, but Tali didn't seem to mind. A couple of bright lines of sniper shots found their way to us, so I ducked down out of the way. Tali didn't move.
"Tali, snipers!" I said.
*POW* *POW*
"Booyah!" That was Shepard. "Come on Roy, you've got two Spectres covering your ass. Show a little spine."
"Potential Spectre," Nihlus corrected, the author of the second sniper shot.
"Damn, I really thought the cookies I got him would do the trick."
"You ate them all," Nihlus said, his voice flat. It was hard to tell with him when he was joking or not.
"They weren't dextro cookies, I didn't want you to get sick."
"Exactly-"
"-my point!"
"Jesus, get a room you two," I muttered, apparently loud enough for the comms to pick it up. Freaking geth were still shooting at me like I woed them money, and was it me or they weren't shooting Tali as much?
*POW*
Another sniper shot, another geth head exploding into little bits.
"Are we hurting your delicate sensibilities?" Shepard said.
"I would recommend you avert your eyes, Roy. Activities between-" *POW* "-consenting adults of different species may be too much for you to bear."
"I wouldn't say so," Ash chimed in, her voice harried as she beat a geth to death with the back of her assault rifle. Have I mentioned that woman was scary? "Have you seen his omni-tool browsing history?"
Wait, what?
"Healthy curiosity?" Tali said, not bothering to even look at me as she kept shooting geth. "It is common for quarians leaving the flotilla to explore those themes, we lack exposure to the rest of the galaxy."
It never ceased to amaze me the kind of conversations these people could have in the middle of a firefight. I was so distracted by it that I was missing a lot of what was going on, and I ended up with a blast from a geth shotgun to the chest. It broke through the last layer of my shields and sent me tumbling down, cursing loudly as I did. Luckily, the shields had already taken the brunt of it, so the shot didn't really make it through the armor.
"Mind off the gutter, Roy, we've got geth to kill," Shepard said.
Me? Really?
"I'm fine, by the way," I grunted as I struggled up.
"I know, I can see your status. Move it."
By the time my shields were up, the fight was mostly over. There were two troopers and a hunter still poking around, but they were in the open and we had some serious sniper power on our side. Thus, soon it was down to the hunter. I aimed the shotgun, and right when I was about to press the trigger, Ash stepped out of cover and right into my line of fire.
In that fateful moment, I chose to turn the shotgun away half an instant before it shot. The result was that the pellets flew ridiculously close to the gunnery chief, and were lost in the distance.
"Fuck's sake!" I shouted.
The rest ignored me as they finished off the last geth. Tali bolted out to get a better angle at the hunter with her gun, but I stayed in place. Now that I realized what had gone down, I was just too shocked by the fact that I had nearly shot Ash on the back.
Again. She freaking bolted out without as much as a by your leave, for fuck's sake.
"Area's secure," Ash said.
"Good, damage report?" Shepard said.
"No damage," Ash replied.
"Chief..."
"Went in and out, commander. I'm all gelled up."
In and... She's hurt?
A closer inspection showed some blood on her right side, a bullet had managed to get through a weaker point through the plates covering the ribcage. In and out, she was lucky it had missed the lung.
"You missed," she said, when she noticed I was looking at her.
You walked in front of me!
"Sorry..."
"Move to the flank next time, it's not like we haven't practiced it."
"Yes, I know. Sorry."
"Less sorry, and more moving along," she said, her voice edging on the Gunnery Chief side.
The layout was a little different from what I remembered from the game, but at that point it was no longer surprising. The dig site was at the end of the area where we had just had the fight, and it looked like the excavation team had turned the place into their workspace. Judging by the computers strewn about, and a few bits of prothean tech that were thrown in the mix, at least.
We didn't find any bodies there. What I did notice was that the entrance to the dig site was quite similar to what I was expecting (the often reused "underground entrance" model from the game, which on this side of the universe was simply similar due to it being a prefab). There was also a big metallic thing...
"Commander, I'm reading- No, nothing," Ash said.
"Chief?"
"Sensor's all over the place," she replied. "Shit, we're being jammed."
"Up there!" I called, raising my shotgun and letting a volley fly.
The geth hopper perched on the platform above us leaped out of the way, making my shot useless. A second one didn't fate much better. By then, the rest of the team had spread out, Shepard and Nihlus swapping their sniper rifles for assault rifles. And by then, the metallic thing at the back had started to unfold.
"Armature!" Ash called. She was still shooting at the hopper. Or, rather, hoppers. It looked like a frog jail breakout, hoppers everywhere. "What the hell are these things?"
"I don't know!" Tali replied. "I have never seen geth platforms like these!"
"Roy!" Shepard called. I turned to see her throwing me a pack, which I caught midair.
"Grenades?"
"Just like we practiced," she replied.
Yeah, we had practiced with them, but these were live grenades in the middle of a firefight. Bloody hell. Unlike me, Ash didn't seem to have a problem using them, and she seemed to be carrying an awful lot of them, given how freely she was tossing them about.
The armature was now unfolded. Its head shone brightly for a moment, and it shot a ball of plasma. I ducked into cover, and it exploded against the crate Shepard was using for cover.
Unlike the games, crates here weren't bulletproof, a fact I learned when it nearly got me killed back on the Citadel. Here, when the ball exploded, it took most of the crate with it, and going by the blue flash of Shepard's kinetic barrier, it took some of her shields too.
I stood up to take aim at the huge beast, raising my shotgun, and running onto a hopper that had perched itself atop my own cover. In my surprise, I pressed the trigger, and the hopper just jumper forward and onto my face. We both rolled on the ground, me trying desperately to get rid of it, the hopper I had no idea what.
*KA-BLAM*
A shotgun blast later, the hopper had suddenly made a very hasty retreat, leaving hydraulic fluid all over my armor. Another blast, and its retreat was cut short.
"I am supposed to be covering Chief Williams, not you," Tali said.
Et tu, Tali?
Then again, she wasn't wrong.
"Yeah," I said. "Can you hack these things or the Armature?"
"If you cover me..."
Ouch. I shook the fluid off as best I could, and got up. "Go for it," I said, and pulled a grenade out.
Wait for it, wait for it, then when the hoppers made a mass jump out of a combined attack from the rest of my team, I pressed the trigger and tossed it, careful to make a fluid motion as I had been taught. Last thing one wants with a grenade is to try some clever flick only for it to slip off one's fingers or flick too much and end up at your feet.
Tell me you haven't had a grenade get stuck in front of your face in the game at some point. Yeah.
Shotgun in hand, took aim and started shooting, not so much aiming at the hoppers as trying to keep them close to the grenade. When it went off, I had the satisfaction of seeing two of them go up in pieces.
"You little Bosh'tet!" I heard Tali shout.
"What's wrong?"
"These platforms have cyberwarfare subroutines! I've never seen anything like this!"
"Can you hack them or not?"
"Of course I can!" she snapped. Woah there, touched a nerve.
"All right then, just- Watch out!"
I ducked down as a ball of plasma flew right where I had been, burning through the top of the metallic frame we used as cover. When it exploded behind us, it was luckily far enough that the blast didn't take much off my shields.
"Freaking Armature!" I yelled, getting up again and discharging the shotgun on the biggest target, without much effect.
"Calm down Roy, leave that thing to us and get the hoppers off our backs," Shepard called over the radio. Where the hell was she?
I could only see Ash. Nihlus and Shepard were gone. Well, it's not like she needed the help, any hopper that got within six feet of her got shredded, and she even had the time to shoot the ones that went too high above looking for a sniper position.
Me? My biggest fear was that the hoppers would surround us and we'd be fucked. There really were an awful lot of them, there was always an awful lot of geth everywhere dammit. And my fear of getting surrounded became reality just a few seconds later. A hopper jumped right behind us, I turned to shoot at it, and as I didn't hit it on the first, it opened the floodgates behind me for a second and third to get through.
"Got it!" Tali shouted.
The hopper I was trying to shoot stopped moving, turned away, and hopped straight into the rest of the geth. I trailed it, trying to shoot it, as it guaranteed I'd hit anything but the hopper I was trying to shoot, and soon the two of us were trying to contain a frog invasion worthy of the Bible itself.
One good thing about having to contain a flood of geth was that it was impossible for the armature to shoot at us without hitting other geth. One bad thing was that there were so many that I missed the one above us aiming at me, until the sniper shot was charged enough that I caught a glimpse of the bright light.
"Shit!" I yelled, as I turned up to shoot it.
The geth was faster, and the shot hit me smack on the left arm. It kicked like a freaking mule, breaking through both layers of shields and throwing me off my feet. In a moment all the pain of the wound, the relief of the medi-gel, and the shock of having been shot mixed together in a dizzying feeling I can hardly describe.
"Roy!" Tali called.
"I'm fine," I muttered. Shit, that hurt, thank the engineers for medical interfaces. I had said that, but I really wasn't up to the task of standing up.
Of course, that thought was quickly pushed aside as I remembered there was a flood of geth coming our way. I took a look from the gound, and saw that we were down to a dozen or so. My brain was trying to convince me that Tali and Ash had it all under control, but I was going to have none of it. There was the Armature-
Taking aim at me. Shit!
Get up, get up!
*BOOM*
As the front of the armature started to power up for a shot, a large explosion rocked the ground, and the large retaining wall on the side of the canyon was torn off its anchoring points, and fell straight over the armature, followed by what looked like a minor landslide. I swear, I almost heard the armature go meep when it saw what was coming for it, and with no room to move, or the agility to do so fast, it was crushed under the combined weight of metal and rock.
The entire geth army of frogs turned as one towards the armature – it was creepy to watch – and hopped off in its direction. Because on top of the entire disaster were Shepard and Nihlus, shooting the armature to make sure it was dead.
Showoffs.
I didn't even need to move. Ash and Tali from the rear, Nihlus and Shepard from the front, the fight turned real ugly, real fast for the surviving geth. They weren't surviving geth for very long.
Well, it gave me time to get to my feet and find my shotgun, at least. All in all, I had taken a hit and shot at least half a dozen hoppers. Not bad for a day's work.
"Bag 'em and tag 'em," Ash announced.
"Any damage?" Shepard called.
"I'll live," I replied, trying my arm. It didn't exactly hurt, the medi-gel made sure of it, but it wasn't very comfy either.
The team was already making their way into the underground, so I had to play catch up to them. The entrance was as I remembered it, and so seemed to be the rest of the dig site. Platform above the chasm, the cells at the end with what, from the distance, appeared to be the prothean lift shaft.
No geth in sight though.
"Should we put him in front?" Ash said. "He seems to be great at attracting bullets."
Didn't you just get shot not ten minutes ago?
"It is probably a good thing his life does not depend on avoiding a suit breach," Tali said.
…
"Be fair, the really bright geth sniper charge-up is easy to miss," Shepard added.
…
"Plus the defective friend and foe recognition, given how many times he's shot the Chief," Nihlus chimed in.
…...
"Maybe wait by the Mako? Might be safer for everyone," Ash said.
*SNAP*
Shepard wasn't sure when it stopped being about getting Roy to actually say something, and became just a game to see when he'd finally reply. In truth, they shouldn't have gone further than the usual banter they gave each other during and after missions – Shepard herself was often the target of jabs by the rest of the team when it came to the Mako – but it seemed like Roy just didn't openly react to that. She always saw a reaction there, he took it in and seemingly bottled it up.
That much pressure wasn't good, she knew it better than anyone. The jabs and the ribbing, that was one of the ways soldiers coped with what happened on the battlefield. True, Roy wasn't a soldier, not yet, but she needed him to integrate better with the crew.
And put the screws on him to get him to bloody talk. Damn but that was hard. Just talk.
"Maybe wait by the Mako? Might be safer for everyone," she heard the Chief say.
Ouch. Then again, he did shoot her.
She saw Roy stop when the Chief said that, and for a moment, it looked like he was going to do his usual, walking it off with barely a word.
Boy, was she wrong.
"Okay, fine! What the hell am I supposed to do?" he snapped, turning around. "I'm trying to fucking help! Trying! Fine, I'll sit with my thumb up my ass! Maybe the whole fucking galaxy can go to hell!"
She couldn't help a smile coming to her face, much in the same way Williams let a chucle escape her.
"What's so goddamn funny now?!" Roy yelled.
"Contacts!" Tali called, raising her gun.
The team scrambled for the few spots of cover that were available, everyone but Roy, who was still standing there with his back to the incoming geth.
"Roy!" Shepard shouted.
"Goddammit... Fine!" he snapped, pulling his shotgun and turning around.
He didn't even bother going for cover, he raised it and started shooting. Several drones were shooting at them, a few troopers had dropped onto the top platform of the scaffold, and judging by the way the combat sensors were going crazy, there were more of those hoppers in there.
"Get to cover!" Shepard yelled again.
It was for naught. She had a flashback to the landing on Eden Prime, and Jenkins falling to the incoming drone fire. Roy was just walking forward, shooting as he did.
"Is he trying to get himself killed?" Williams said.
"Cover him!"
It didn't take long for Roy's shotgun to overheat, but not even then he stopped. He opened it, pulled something out, and kept firing.
The safety sensor for the heatsink.
Is he crazy? How did he even know-
Shepard didn't have time to keep that line of thought going. She had her sniper rifle out, and had taken three drones down already. Her biggest worry were the hoppers, another shot from those and Roy could go down to never get up again; but they were a pain to hit at such close distance with the rifle.
With a curse, she dropped it and unfolded her assault rifle, losing precious seconds in the trade. The main group of geth were down to two units now, maybe-
Roy's shotgun exploded in his hands as he pulled the trigger one time too many. That's why the safety's there. He stumbled, recovered quickly, threw the freaking stock of the gun at the nearest geth, then ran straight for it.
"Roy!" Williams shouted.
"Get the hoppers!" Shepard ordered.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a geth unit tumble over the edge of the scaffold, propelled by Roy's charge, and another one go down as its flashlight head exploded, courtesy of Nihlus' sniper rifle.
That was too fucking close to her team member for someone to use a sniper rifle. Anyone other than her at least.
She cursed mentally as she tracked the last hopper. It landed on the wall, she headed it the right distance, but instead of hopping the way she had expected, it changed direction with a powerful rebound on the wall.
Straight at Roy.
The two of them went down, teetering dangerously close to the edge of the scaffold. It was way too high a fall.
"Tali! Hack that damn thing!" Shepard ordered.
"I'm trying!"
Without further thought, she bolted out of cover and rushed towards the two combatants. Roy and the geth were rolling on the ground, until the geth's face started glowing a bright red.
Shit, it's going to shoot!
Roy must have noticed too, because he managed to get on top, and smacked the flashlight head to the side right as it made its attack. The energy bolt cut through beams and sheets of metal as Roy pushed it aside, but he appeared unscratched.
Then, he started pummeling the geth.
"YOU FUCKING"
*WHAM*
"PIECE"
*WHAM*
"OF SHIT!"
*WHAM*
*CRASH*
With the last punch, the platform gave up on life, and the scaffold Roy and the geth were fighting on collapsed under them.
"Shit! ROY!"
Ow, ow, OW!
A distant beeping managed to bring me back to reality, a reality made of pain and an extremely annoying beeping sound. I opened my eyes to my least favourite greeting in the world.
MEDI-GEL DEPLETED
"Damn," I muttered. I remembered I was shooting at some geth, and...
What the fuck happened?
"Shit! ROY!"
"I'm fine!" I snapped. Wasn't sure if anything was broken or not, but hell if I was going to give them yet another reason to belittle me. I pushed myself up, and fell on my ass half-way through as my hands slipped on something.
Geth hydraulic fluid.
What the hell?
I looked up and saw that I had fallen right through the crappy scaffold the excavation team had put together to access the ruins. Three levels, and I had broken through all three of them. And a good thing, too, as they probably had broken my fall enough not to get killed in the process, much like the geth hopper I had dragged down with me and fallen on.
But I wasn't feeling particularly grateful at the time.
The rest of the team were looking down the hole at me. Bet they thought it was hilarious, too. With a grunt of pain, I managed this time to get to my feet, and made my way to the enormous mining laser pointed at the base of the ruins.
There were exactly two buttons. "On/off" and "engage", helpfully subtitled from Thessian by the suit's VI on my OSD. Without further ado, I turned it on, and hit the engage button.
It didn't take long for it to start making the whole place shake like it was Friday night.
"What the hell's that?" Shepard called over the comms. "Roy, are you there?"
I didn't feel like answering. After a few seconds, the drill had made it through the rock, and it switched off automatically. Just in case, I turned it off.
"Roy, come in," Shepard insisted. "Roy!" she called again when I didn't answer. "Talitha, comms check."
"Everything's green, commander," Talitha replied.
"We're coming down Roy, stop messing around."
I raised my omni-tool to turn the comms off, then gave up when I couldn't find the freaking option. Serves me right, I skipped that part of the instruction manual because it was already set up.
Well, whatever.
Operating the prothean lift turned out to be extremely simple. Touch the interface shaped like a tower, move it up one mark, and I was up to Liara's level.
"Is anyone there?" Liara called.
She was trapped inside the bubble like I had expected. Light blue, great ass, all the good stuff. Not that I was paying any attention, what I wanted to do was get it over with ASAP. I stood in front of the controls, trying to figure out what glowing bit to press.
"How did you get here?" Liara said. When I didn't answer, she tried some more conversation. "I trapped myself here by accident, I believe this used to be a prison. The release is pro-"
She stopped talking when I finally hit the right control and the barriers went down. Without having given her a warning, she all but faceplanted when I let her go.
"What the- hands up!"
What else can go wrong today? Shit, don't think that!
Shepard cursed her uncanny ability to tempt fate as she jumped out of the stuck elevator. The stupid thing had ground to a halt and gotten jammed like a politician attached to his chair. Now they were without a way up, and without the prothean expert.
"- I believe this used to be a prison," she heard a female voice.
Maybe they were in luck after all.
There was a blue barrier separating them from an asari trapped on what looked like a biotic field, and Roy, who was poking at a console by the asari. She was about to call him and give him the bollocking of a lifetime, when the barrier disappeared, together with the field holding the asari.
"What the- hands up!" Shepard ordered, raising her assault rifle.
The entire team did the same, and the asari turned an even paler hue of blue, freezing for a moment before raising her hands very slowly. What the hell was Roy thinking, letting the enemy free without even a question?
"Don't move, and don't even think of using biotics," Shepard said. "Liara T'soni, I presume?"
"Y-Yes! Who are you?"
Was that really one of Saren's people? She looked like a scared kitten, though it could also be an act. Roy might have fallen for it, but she knew better.
"I'm Commander Shepard, this is Spectre Nihlus Kryik. We have been tasked by the Council to stop ex-Spectre Saren Arterius."
She watched the asari closely, but she didn't even twitch. As far as Shepard could tell, Liara was hearing the words, but she may as well have been talking an alien tongue. She didn't seem to know anything about Saren. She didn't even seem to recognize the name, and he was one of the top Spectres. Even Roy had heard of him.
"Yes?" Liara prompted.
"Saren is working with your mother, Benezia," Nihlus said.
Now there was a reaction, either she was an exceedingly good actress, or she was simply an open book. Surprise at first, confusion... anger?
"I haven't even talked to my mother in years. I don't know what she's involved with, but I'm not part of it."
Shepard stole a glance behind Liara, and saw that Roy had made his way to the console way at the back. Dammit, what was he up to now?
"Chief, go check on Roy," she said in a low voice.
"Aye, aye," she replied, lowering her gun.
Before she could take a single step, the entire chamber started to rumble, so much so that a few small pieces of rock got loose from the walls and started falling.
"What the hell is that?" she said.
"This entire area is unstable," Liara said. "We stopped our excavation when we hit the lower chamber because of it."
"I believe Roy used the mining laser to get through, Commander," Tali said.
"Dammit. Joker!" Shepard called.
"Yes boss?" the pilot's voice came through the comms.
"We need a pickup, on the double mister!"
"En route. ETA six minutes."
"Do better!" Shepard said. "How do we get out of here?" she added, looking at Liara.
"That structure at the back, I believe it's a prothean lift. It should take us to the upper levels."
And that's where Roy is, maybe he is a prothean expert after all.
"Move it people!" she snapped.
The entire group rushed towards the back, and as soon as they all set foot on the platform, Roy hit the controls and the thing started moving up. Now he was starting to try her patience, if he knew that was a lift, why wasn't he saying anything.
That seemed to be the eternal question with him.
"Roy, what the hell are-"
"Heads up, Commander. We've got company."
She turned in the direction he gestured, rifle up. She couldn't see anything, only the entrances to the different levels of the prothean structure. Roy, in the meantime, walked off to the edge of the platform, and pulled the pack of grenades out.
Now that was something that could put anyone on alert. Specially what he did next. He looked up, waited a couple of seconds, then pressed the trigger on one and dropped the whole pack to his feet.
"Wha- take cover!" Shepard called.
This time Roy did move his ass and got behind one of the beams to the side. The platform stopped at the top level, and she saw there were indeed enemies waiting for them.
A whole lot of geth, and a krogan, of all things.
"Hmph," the krogan grunted, taking a confident step forward. "Thanks for saving me the-"
*BOOM*
The grenades exploded right next to him. All of them, in a quick chain reaction that rocked the entire lift again, even more than it was already doing. It tilted dangerously, with a groan of fatigued old metal, and crashing of large boulders falling from the wall.
The surviving geth accompanying the krogan didn't seem to have self-preservation routines in them. As soon as the smoke cleared, they started shooting at them.
We don't have time for this!
There were half a dozen of them in that narrow corridor. They didn't have time to fight them off, she wasn't sure they even had time to get off the lift before it collapsed even if they started running right then.
Dammit, she absolutely hated doing it, but she had no choice. She had another biotic in the team, she only hoped Liara actually knew how to use biotic abilities. Even though all asari had biotics, not all of them bothered to train them.
"Liara!" she called, getting the attention of the Asari. "Blow it!"
As she said it, she stood up and concentrated. The pain started immediately, but she had to get her team out of danger, and this was the fastest way. She pulled her right arm back, feeling the burning sensation running down the artificial nodules, then pushed forward, feeling the dark energy swirl around her hand.
She fucking hated it. Every time she used it, she felt like she had been stabbed in her right eye with a red hot poker. The room spun around her, forcing her to crouch to avoid losing balance.
But she had managed to create the damn singularity smack in the middle of the group of geth. As they started to float, she saw Liara start glowing blue, then throw a push at the singularity. The attack made a small arch, hit her singularity smack in the middle, and the resulting interaction between the dark energy attacks created the explosion she had been expecting, sending geth flying left and right.
Williams, on cue, stood up and started shooting.
"Don't bother, run!" Shepard shouted, shooting to her feet and stumbling.
She was still feeling dizzy, in pain, and more than a little annoyed. Two more steps, and she would have gone down if Williams hadn't come to her rescue, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her up.
"Come on Commander, no time for bad dance moves!" she said.
They ran out at full tilt, ignoring the very out of comission geth, as well as the crashing behind as the ancient prothean lift gave its last and died, collapsing under the weight of the falling masonry. More rocks fell, and the ground under her feet was as uneasy as it came. Only Williams was keeping her upright. They reached the collapsed part of the scaffold, and without a single warning, Williams tossed her over the gap.
She landed less gracefully than she'd have liked.
Hanging onto the railing, she pulled herself upright and looked back. Nihlus didn't have a problem with it, and neither did Tali. For someone who had spent all her life aboard a ship, she was surprisingly agile. Liara came next, then Roy.
He cleared the gap, landed heavily, and the floor collapsed under him.
"Oh no you don't!" Williams said, stepping back and grabbing him before he fell. With one mighty pull, she had him up on the platform again. "You don't get out of this so easily! Run!" She kicked him in the ass, then started running, closing at the back of the group to help her, too. The whole thing was a mad dash though falling debris, collapsing structures, trembling ground, and an otherworldly roar she couldn't even describe. They got out of the cave in a cloud of dust, and to her infinite relief, the Normandy was already waiting.
One by one they jumped onto the back of the Normandy. Everything was falling apart around them. Tali nearly fell back from the open door, only to be grabbed by Nihlus, and Roy fell flat on his face, safely inside. Last one was Williams, who jumped in just as they felt a punch of heat from the explosive eruption of the volcano beneath.
They had actually made it.
As soon as she got her bearings back, she sat up on the ground where she had landed, looking around. The crew was looking at them with bated breath, her team was in a state not unlike her own.
"Status," she said.
"Everyone made it, Commander," Williams replied.
"Good," Shepard replied, standing up. Damn but the Normandy felt good and solid under her feet. "Roy? Captain's office. Right. Now."
Author's Notes: Another hella long chapter, and one new member for the Normandy crew! That is, if she can convince Shepard, Nihlus, and Anderson that she's not part of her mother's schemes. And one very annoyed Roy turning everything pear-shaped.
I actually managed to update before the end of the year! Thanks everyone for the reviews and support. Next chapter is going to be one to read, it'll either make you punch the screen or send me a glittergram. I can advance one thing: It's going to confuse the hell out of Roy and the AI.
You hadn't forgotten about the AI, had you? :)
Oh yeah:
* Fuck you, I'm the Mako!
Google it. Just do it. You'll thank me later.
WomanSlayer: Nailed it, the poor, poor Mako.
Leytra Incorporated: Thanks! Still thinking about the shipping on this one, there will be shipping of course!
So, thanks for reading my dear people! I hope you have a fantastic New Year and have a 2016 to remember. Until next time, be good, boys and girls!
Next chapter, we will hopefully get the full compliment of companions for the Normandy! That is, unless I manage to screw that one up. That, and a very good chance you'll want to stab me in the face. Find out next time!