Interlude: Ghosts
A black sky stretched overhead, shapes twisting and roiling and clawing among clouds of ash and vapor. Heat washed over her as she stumbled across the field, pain arching up her feet in jagged spikes. Something heavy and solid rested in her fingers, and she glanced down. A Werewolf rifle in her hands, battered and rusted, the computer readouts fuzzy and flickering. Below the rifle she could see herself: her armor bloody and shattered in places, her feet bare and blackened from heat. Blood ran down her legs and spilled upon the dark soil.
Spikes of smooth, glassy green crystal jabbed out of the ground all around her. Shards of it were slicing into the soles of her feet. Black veins of rot and infection cut though her feet and lower legs.
Thunder rolled overhead, and she looked up at the black sky. Lightning arced above, pulsing from the shapes that wheeled through the clouds. She spotted flickers of solid forms, covered in chitin plates or dark spines.
Her gaze shifted back down to the rolling plains around her. The glassy crystals spread in every direction, a sickly green glow rising over the ground, and dark shapes shambled among the growths, all lean and humanoid.
She stumbled forward, moving to the nearest one with unsteady steps. Every movement of her feet hurt, but the sharp biting agony flowed together into a steady beat of pain. She pushed on, her teeth grit together, jaw locked into a tight grimace. Ragged breaths escaped her as she drew closer to one of the moving figures. She tried to call out to them, but a dry, exhausted rasp was all she could manage.
It must have heard her anyway, for it twisted around to face her, and a face that long ago might have been human stared at her. Green spikes jutted from its eye sockets, and its skin was a corpse-pallor of blue-white. Tubes and circuits of bright, pulsing green ran through the nearly-naked body's skin and muscles, concentrated at more green crystalline spikes bursting from its skin. Claws half a meter in length stretched from the thing's fingers and forearms, gleaming in the dim light.
She slid to a halt, feet cutting against the field of crystal spikes, and brought the battered Werewolf up. The creature peered toward her with those spike-eyes for agonizing seconds, before its mouth opened and a rattling wail escaped its lips. She heard pain and confusion in the mechanical cry, and the Werewolf wavered in her fingers. The creature stared for a moment at her as the cry died away, and then both blade-covered arms rose toward the sky.
She heard a shuddering scream overhead, a deep, bone-shaking sound that sent her down to her knees. Crystal blades jabbed into her legs as she fell, drawing fresh blood. She looked up, in time to see a massive shape, an aquatic form of black metal wreathed in red lightning, descending from the ashen clouds. Beams of blue-white energy slashed down into the shape as it descended, from the spiked shapes lurking in the clouds, but they boiled off its hull to little effect.
The long appendages on its bow stretched out, energy gathering along the vast limbs, and searing red fire began to rain down on the field of crystal.
The husk lunged toward her as the columns of destruction struck the ground, and it grabbed her shoulders. The blades slashed into her skin, but there was no pain - just a frigid chill that locked her in place. Her flesh began to part and twist, solid shapes biting into her skin and pushing deep, digging through muscle and blood vessels and bone. The spike eyes of the once-human met hers, and it tried to say something. All she heard over the pounding, searing fire cutting through the field of crystal was a dry rattle.
Scarlet heat swept toward them, and the husk burst into flames and instant before the fire burned her to ash.
Large, dark eyes flicked back and forth across the interior of the orbital docking station, taking in a thousand details and cataloguing them with speed that would have been impossible for an unaugmented human mind. The salarian walking down the dark hallway possessed a sharp mind, but not a scientific one. He sought and analyzed details for two reasons only: to forward them to policy-makers, and to give him a proper means to track and/or inflict violence as needed.
Being a Citadel Spectre, Jondum Bau was an expert regarding nearly every form of the latter. More importantly, he was going to be the first Citadel intelligence asset to set foot on a Brotherhood warship. Or at least, a true Brotherhood warship.
The hallway they walked through was emblematic of the Brotherhood's design philosophy: long, made of dark metals, with the dominant lighting being shades or warm colors, predominantly red. Holographic interfaces were scattered at regular intervals on one side of the corridor, and the other consisted of armorglass viewports showing the blue and brown patches of the planet the station orbited below, and the jet-black, curving blade of the dagger-shaped Nod warship above. It was a far more elegant and sinister design compared with the blocky, blunt, and looming GDI designs he was familiar with. That also made for more delicate hull designs. Possible exploitation point; would require more detailed analysis of hull composition and layout of internal systems.
The Spectre kept one flicking eye on his minders, a pair of black-armored warrior priests of the Black Hand sect, but the Brotherhood soldiers' pace and body language told him that they were mostly there to guide him to the cruiser. Mostly, though. He had no illusions.
They passed through an airlock and into a decontamination chamber, and Bau waited patiently as the decon fields scanned them and sterilized the air around the group. It was a good opportunity to observe Nod's processes for wiping both biological and technological infectors; after all, the decon chamber was the logical first step in removing any listening devices or other unwelcome objects on guests. He noted that the decon field wiped most of his own test-bugs, save for three with a particular composition of ceramic/plastic coating. Definite exploitation point.
They passed through a few moments later, Bau carrying a great deal of interesting observations with him, and started through the corridors of the Nod ship. The red light was harsher here, and there was an inexplicable mist hovering at just over ankle level that made seeing the floor difficult. Bau had no idea of its purpose, beyond making him step more carefully. Despite the distracting mist, he continued taking notes: Bridge and CIC in one room. The captain's chair on a raised platform overlooking multiple command holograms. Two sets of six crewmember workstations, surrounding the command chair and CIC in a long, narrow double semicircle. Similar to turian design. Fewer than comparative Citadel or GDI designs, indicative of more reliance on networked EVA units. Possible exploitation point.
The bridge was fully manned with about fifteen people, most human, but a couple of asari and one batarian, all wearing close-fitting black uniforms. The captain was a tall, lean human clad in the matte black uniform of Nod's naval officers, devoid of rank insignia or medals save for patches on the upper arms indicating his rank and a beret. A short black goatee and mustache, neatly trimmed, adorned his face. He descended from the command platform and approached with a smile and an extended hand, which Bau shook.
"Spectre Jondum Bau, I presume," he said as they shook. "Captain Aldis Rawne. Welcome aboard the BNS Venice."
"Honored," Bau replied. He limited eye movements while speaking to be polite. "How long until we launch."
"Seconds, Spectre," Rawne replied, and he glanced up. A moment later a quiet shudder ran through the ship. "And we're detached. EVA, plot us a course to the incident site."
"Course prepared, Captain," a deep male voice responded. "Transition in six minutes."
"Excellent," Rawne replied, and looked back to Bau. "I assume you've been fully briefed on the situation?"
"The Spectre office has forwarded STG reports on the incidents, yes," Bau replied. "I had to cut through some of the bureaucracy, but that was not too difficult for one with my clearance."
Bau was understating the situation. Two weeks had passed between the attack on the Citadel and now, and within hours of the first shots he had received direct orders from Councilor Valern himself. Bau and several other Spectres - including Spectres Kyrik, Octavian, Krios, and Vasir - had been reassigned to investigate the Scrin threat. Information-sharing between GDI's InOps and the Citadel's intelligence agencies had grown several times over, and general communication between the two factions had greatly increased. No more Scrin attacks had occurred, but reports of geth incursions and minor raids had increased. Two small GDI bases - one a research outpost studying stellar phenomena and the other a supply outpost for long-range patrols - had stopped reporting in, and reports of geth ships deeper in GDI space were also being responded to.
And as Bau had started his investigation, his sources within the Brotherhood and the Terminus relayed worrying rumors about the previous attacks on Nod colonies. A few deeper inquiries led to some hastily-exchanged messages, followed by direct contact between a Brotherhood agent and Bau himself. Nod wanted a trustworthy Citadel agent to assist with their investigation, which was a major concession that had quite a few people talking back on the Citadel.
A week later, Jondum Bau was responding to the Brotherhood's request, and not a moment too soon. He'd gotten word of another incursion mere hours before the scheduled meeting, and their plans had changed rather abruptly..
"Then we have no need to waste any further time," Rawne said, starting back toward his command chair. "I'll have my second show you to you quarters and forward you any intel we get from the site before the jump."
One of the officers approached Bau to lead him to his quarters, and he hid his frown. The Nod officer was forceful, dismissive. Maybe even arrogant. Possible exploitation point.
Lightning slashed down across the remnants of the colony. Modules lay broken and half-molten. The charred remains of bodies, some in armor and some in settler fatigues, were scattered everywhere. Nothing moved save the spined forms of hulking, crystalline quasi-insects, their hides gleaming and reflecting the orange light of fires and flickering silver of electricity lancing through the black skies overhead. Alien warbles and low, electronic howls sounded as they stalked through the colony.
She crouched low, breathing hard from exhaustion and pain, blood seeping through the bandages wrapping the remains of her face. She was out of medigel to seal the wounds properly, and the painkillers had run out long ago. Her Werewolf trembled in her hands, and she pressed against a low wall that remained from one of the destroyed habitats, listening with terrified attention.
Dull detonations sounded, a few kilometers away. She could see the distant shapes of tumbling, flaming wreckage from the orbitals as they fell, far away.
She waited, checking the radar indicator on the visor over her left eye. The faint radiation and movement markers of the Scrin beyond maneuvered around her hideout. One drifted closer, and she shrank down, pressing herself against the wall. A Disintegrator loped along the opposite side of the low wall, scratching along on the pavement, cannon-head sweeping back and forth.
It paused close to her position, going still, and her heart leapt into her chest. She raised the Werewolf, knowing that if she fired, she would be dead in moments when the rest of the aliens responded. How she'd survived this long was a mystery to her.
She waited, muscles tense and trembling, as the Scrin peered through the rubble. The cannon-head twitched once. Twice. Then it turned away, and the alien scampered away like a curious dog, leaving her alone.
She lowered the weapon, relaxing.
A hand fell on her shoulder, and she jerked, nearly screaming in pure reflex. She spun, bringing up the Werewolf while lurching away.
She found her sights on a figure swathed in a cloak of dark metal plates, the edges gleaming in the dim light. A hood shrouded the figure's face, but hands with flesh the color of a pallid, green corpse extended from wide, flaring sleeves. Green and black circuitry ran along the back of those hands, one of which was clasped firmly on her shoulder, and the other gripping something that gleamed with a sudden, fierce golden light.
She almost pulled the trigger, but the light caught her eye. She looked down at the figure's hand, and it opened, to reveal a shining ball of shimmering light, thousands upon millions upon billions of specks of data and symbols swirling among its surface like an entire desert's worth of sand trapped in a man's hand.
Hands that, she abruptly realized, had fewer fingers than a human's.
Before she could figure out what that meant, the glowing sphere of data expanded and stretched, spreading over the cloaked figure's fingers like tremendous claws made of golden data. The arm shot forward toward her forehead in an eyeblink, plunging into her skull.
The hood shifted, and before the glowing light consumed her, she caught a glimpse of two sets of golden eyes, irises shaped like horizontal hourglasses.
It took a full day at cruising speed for the BNS Venice to reach the Nod colony of Eskirk. They transitioned from faster-than-light to slower-than-light only a light-second out from the colony. Sensors picked up nothing moving - or at least, nothing moving that wasn't supposed to be in constant motion. They did, however, pick up a lot of debris. No signals came from the surface of the planet save residual heat patterns from the colony's urbanized area.
"Colony had three frigates and a cruiser on-station when the distress call came in," Captain Rawne reported as he and Bau stared at the command holograms in the CIC depicting the orbital debris fields. Bau ran the numbers in his head.
"Debris is consistent with those tonnage classes," the salarian said. "Residual heat indicates a thermal weapons system of some kind. Energy, or maybe ferrokinetic like the one used at Eden Prime."
Rawne nodded, a grim set to his face, and issued orders for a ground team deployment. Bau joined the Nod soldiers, and Rawne reluctantly agreed. A Spectre's expertise was no help if he stayed where his only source of data was long-range sensor readings.
The dropships descending toward the surface carried two squads each. They were small, lightly armored, fast, and dependent on shields and cloaking systems to protect them. Possible exploitation point.
Bau sat with the Nod soldiers, who were all clad in tight-fitting matte black ballistic weave hardsuits and helmets with dark red visors, and armed with assault weapons very similar to
GDI Werewolves. Suspiciously similar, save for the different types of modules. Though he couldn't see their faces, Bau noted the tension in their postures as they descended through the atmosphere.
The pilot's voice filtered in over the craft's internal comm channels, reporting their heading and the local weather conditions. They would be landing in the middle of the day, local time, in good weather. Both of those facts bothered Bau more than a little; bad local weather was always the best time for insertion into hostile territory. The Nod soldiers seemed more confident about their drop conditions, though not arrogant or dismissive like Rawne had been. Bau suspected that these men and women had seen a lot more action than they let on.
Bau identified the channel for the platoon leader, a Captain Hue, and opened it.
"Were any survivors found at the previous sites?" he asked. The officer shook his head.
"None," he replied. "The attackers were thorough."
"Do you suspect we will find anything different this time?"
"I hope that we will," grunted the human. "They're not infallible, whoever they are. They'll make a mistake."
"Indeed," Bau said with a nod, but was not certain himself. If the geth were responsible - evidence hinted as much - then there was a chance that they wouldn't make the same errors an organic would.
"According to the reports," Bau added, "Every one of these incident sites suffered attacks from geth ships within three weeks of the second attack."
"Not all of them," Hue replied. "Two were hit without any warning."
Interesting. So the attackers were able to bypass Nod security without a preliminary attack to weaken the defenses. That dashed his theory that the geth were using the initial attacks to disguise troop drops.
"Landing in two minutes," reported the pilot, which cut into his thoughts. Everyone on the dropship began double-checking their weapons. The hiss and click of shapeshifter modules cycling through their weapons filled the cabin. Tension grew as the moments passed, and the soldiers rose from their seats at the one-minute mark. Bau joined them, submachinegun in hand.
There was a roar of thrusters, the brief, nausea-inducing surge of a mass effect field firing up quickly to slow their descent, and a few seconds later the dropship touched down and dull thunk of metal on concrete.
The doors opened, bright midday light spilling into the cabin, and they poured out to retake the silent, dead colony.
The pitch-black sky roiled and twisted, silver lightning and red lines cutting back and forth. The land shook, the battered, tiberium-covered ruins of Akuze's colony rumbling and shivering as debris rained down from the sky. Monsters of machine and crystal did battle in the skies beyond sight, not caring for the world they fought above.
None of that mattered to her as she held down the trigger on her Werewolf, firing on full auto, her back pressed against a cracked colony module's wall. She screamed in terror and desperation, the sound lost in the rapid-fire thunder of her rifle as it loosed a stretched-out, mechanical howl of hyperveloctiy rounds.
The swarm of Buzzers sweeping toward her cared nothing for the sound and fury either.
They swept through her bullets, not caring for those the hail of fire cut down - too few to make a difference. Razor-edged threads slashed toward her down the street with deadly intent. She frantically triggered the grenade launcher module. The launcher emerged, locked into place, and she pulled the trigger.
An empty click answered her.
She blinked, and a single thought flicked through her - that wasn't what had happened - and then the Buzzers fell upon her.
Gossamer blades etched across plates, cutting with mindless ferocity against the armor. She thrashed and screamed, swinging her rifle back and forth, batting away some of the razor-threads and smashing others to fragments. But the swarm cared little, and within an instant they had begun cutting into the softer ballistic fabric under and between the plates, slicing through synthetic muscle and superconducting circuitry to reach the human underneath.
Then pain.
They plunged into her skin, spinning and slashing blades, first cutting into the meat of her left bicep with cold, wriggling burst of agony. She could feel the bones of her arm cracking and breaking, the tendons snapping apart, the slithering bursts of white-cold pain as they worked their way up her arm. Sparks of that frigid fire erupted in her legs, arcing across her stomach, and in the back of her head as the Buzzers tore through her armor.
She fell, blood running through a hundred rents in her armor, and tried to scream. Only splatters of crimson emerged from her mouth, grotesquely bright in the dim light of the destroyed colony. She could see coils of crystalline thread bursting from the ballistic fabric over her throat, before diving back in, and one sliced its way out of her nose, slithering across her face.
She fell to the pavement, rolling onto her back, hundreds of the bladed threads slicing her boy to ribbons around her. Yet despite the pain, her mind kept working, and it asked a desperate question: Why wasn't she dead yet?
The black clouds still thundered and flashed with the battle between alien forces far overhead, but somewhere in the clouds, a shimmering, gold-white light began to form. It wasn't a star, because stars weren't made of sandstorms of symbols and images whirling about in a sphere.
A voice murmured, audible over her own muffled, choking gasps of pain. It spoke in an alien language, maddeningly familiar, but somehow beyond her ability to comprehend.
A figure in armor, nearly black in the dim light, stepped up beside her. Gleaming golden eyes peered at her from beneath a helmet covering a broad, almost aquatic skull. It pointed toward the glowing sphere overhead.
It was a Tacitus, she realized. No, it was the Tacitus. The swirling lights and symbols and script were the ones she'd seen on Eden Prime.
Eden Prime? But she was on Akuze, and-
The golden-eyes alien bent down, piercing her with those four sharp, glittering hourglass orbs, and pointed more insistently at the Tacitus in the skies above. The pain from the Buzzers was a distant echo, even as they savaged what was left of her body.
The clouds parted, and she could see a tremendous shape of jagged crystal descending: a Scrin colony ship. White lightning erupted from it in sheets, slashing back and forth with the red beams from a ship of the same design as the one on Eden Prime.
And above them, barely visible in the twisting clouds, a humanoid shape in a dark cloak. She saw black eyes within the cloak, and one arm was a jagged, crystalline Scrin limb, and the other one of the dark metal appendages of the great warship.
The armored alien reached down, grabbing the bloody remains of her head, and the hissing, incomprehensible language intensified. The Buzzers rose from her body and began attacking it, but the alien cared little, instead leaning close until all she could see were the four glowing eyes. She tried to speak though ruined vocal cords, to tell it that she didn't understand, but then an echo sounded over the language, and a concept - not a word, but the idea itself, transcending language - cut through her brain, superimposing itself over the black-eyed figure.
ENEMY
Then merciful nothing.
Jondum Bau peered across the empty habitat module, a frown on his face as his eyes flicked around the home and taking in details. Midday sunlight streamed in from a couple of large open windows to the right, illuminating a mid-sized room that was partitioned off into a dining and sleeping area. Metal trays with cold food sat on the table, one tipped over. Two of the chairs had fallen over, positioning consistent with someone leaping up in a panic. There was a single bullet hole near one of the windows. He scanned the habitat for the weapon that had created the hole, but there was no sign of it.
He nodded, biting back his frustration. Whoever had attacked Eskirk had taken pains to wipe or remove any recording devices they could find. And they had left no corpses or easily-identifiable genetic material, and that bullet hole in the wall was one of the only signs of conflict in the colony as a whole. The Venice's troop complement had swept most of the city and found no survivors either.
Bau stood and exited the habitat, stepping back into the open air. Eskirk's main colony had been set up on a hilltop overlooking a wide forested valley. It wasn't as warm as Sur'kesh, but the environment was welcoming regardless. It would have been pleasant, if not for the dead colony they were searching for clues. A pair of Venom gunships circled the perimeter of the colony, and black-armored drones flitted back and forth over the colony. He could also see the black-armored Brotherhood soldiers moving through the gray and white, cylindrical prefab housing modules that made up most of the colony. Their postures had shifted from initial wariness to bored watchfulness as crisis response had turned into crisis cleanup, especially with very little to clean up anyway.
"Captain Hue, this is Bau," he called over the radio. "Nothing on this end."
"Copy that," Hue responded. "My techs have finished going over the colony's mainframes. Someone wiped them pretty thoroughly."
"We can probably reconstruct the data, given enough time," Bau replied as he crossed the street outside the habitat complex.
"They wiped it with a flamethrower," Hue grunted.
"Thorough," Bau replied. "Respectable, if they weren't so clearly threatening." Bau glanced around the colony as he walked. "I've gone over the sites of interest you marked, and I've concluded that this was neither geth nor Scrin."
"Agreed," Hue said. "Geth would have left some trace behind, and the damage isn't severe enough for Scrin. They've never launched an attack with this little collateral damage."
"No traces of Scrin radiation markers or tiberium fragments, even microscopic," Bau added. The Citadel had snatched up every bit of tiberium they could from the Scrin bodies in the Citadel, and had forwarded the data to him at his request. Too bad it was all of the "inert" variant that was singularly useless for manufacturing. He could only imagine GDI's amusement at that.
"We're going to continue sweeping and start sending drones out into the wilderness around the colony," Hue said. "I'll keep you posted."
Bau closed the line and made his way across the colony, passing through an industrial base and what had once been the colony's garrison, a medium-sized complex built like a bunker with a stylized metal hand emerging from the rooftop that held a wireframe replica of Earth. Brotherhood troops were still crawling over the latter. There was an anxiousness to their search patterns, which he understood. They were ready for signs of violence and ruin, and to retake the colony from an enemy force. The bare, empty colony, which looked like everyone had simply stood up and left without a word was far more disconcerting. Bau didn't find it off-putting now, but it had been quite troubling in the first couple of hours he'd been there. By now he had dealt with it and was focused on finding what he needed to identify the attackers and bring them down.
A few questions to the Brotherhood soldiers at the garrison showed they had found nothing beyond confirmation as to the thoroughness of the attackers. He departed the facility, and as he emerged into the sunlight his radio chirped.
"Bau," he grunted.
"This is Hue," the captain reported. "We've got something."
The western end of the colony had been given over to expanded construction on habitats, with the buildings being heavier and more permanent than the modules on the other end of the colony. Hue led Bau through several half-finished buildings to a lot on the edge of the colony.
There, surrounded by several Brotherhood soldiers, lay a corpse.
It was nothing but metal plates and bits of cybernetic components, but it was more than they had seen so far. Bau activated his omnitool and scanned the remains as they approached, and kept his face a careful mask as the response came back from this onboard database.
These were the non-integrated remnants of one of the Marked of Kane. Ninety-two-percent probability that they were fifth-generation, implemented in 2177.
"Interesting," Bau said. "Cybernetic components, but I don't recognize the model."
Hue nodded, taking the lie at face value. Bau didn't see any reason to advertise the Citadel's knowledge of Kane's personal cyborg enforcers.
"Looks like a trooper's modules," he lied in turn. "Probably repurposed prosthetics. My men picked up a short-range reply burst while they were sending active comms pulses. Hoped we'd find some automatic response system. Got lucky."
"Luck would be if the remains contain any useful data beyond automated emergency response protocols," Bau said. Hue shrugged.
"Take what you can get, you know?" he said, and looked to the engineers. One of them gingerly turned over a wide, curving plate - Bau's scanners identified it as part of the plates that would cover the spine - and opened a small compartment inside of it. He removed a thin spike of crystal: an optical storage device.
Hue took it and inserted it into his omnitool's reader. A couple of taps of the omnitool's keys created a holographic projection hovering over his hand. Bau stepped closer as Hue worked.
"It's a recording," the Brotherhood officer said. "With attached video and audio files. Starting initial record now."
The projection shifted to show a blank black image. A male human voice with low, clipped tones spoke.
"This is Alpha-One-One-Three-Three-Kilo-Six, and this is my final testament. Prior to my ascension, I was Major Barry Unger, Brotherhood Marines. I have been assigned to the Brotherhood colony of Eskirk, in the Minotaur system within the Hourglass Nebula. Within the last month, a number of Brotherhood and independent human colonies have gone silent. Rescuers have discovered empty colonies, and patrols and search detachments have been unable to find any sign of the missing colonists. My orders are to stand watch at a Brotherhood colony fitting the profile of the attack and provide intelligence to followup investigations units - posthumously if necessary."
"You will be remembered," Hue murmured, which was echoed by the other soldiers listening to the message.
"The attack on the colony occurred at 1435 hours on July 9, 2183," Unger's voice continued. "All colonists have been killed or captured. If you are listening to this recording, then you have recovered my remains after I have self-terminated and explosively scattered my remains to prevent enemy capture or denial. I have attached all sensory recordings from my observation of the attack, including to the moment before self-termination while under enemy attack. May this information serve to protect our people. Peace through power, through the will of Kane."
"How could he have recorded this?" Bau asked as the message ended. "The message was far too calm to be left while under attack."
"Mind-impulse," Hue said. "We're not listening to audio recordings. This is a direct mental data feed. We're literally listening to his last thoughts."
"Impressive discipline," Bau mused.
"Beyond human," Hue replied. "He ascended beyond mere human limitations." The Brotherhood soldier sighed. "A true son of Kane has been lost."
"What of his data?" Bau asked, and Hue nodded. His fingers flicked over his haptic interface, and he began navigating through file directories. He opened the first video file he found.
It wasn't long, but it was a clear video of a pair of creatures moving down one of the colony's streets.
"I've never seen anything like this," Hue murmured.
"I have, though only at a distance," Bau replied, staring hard at the images.
The creatures were tall, slender, insectile creatures, but completely unlike the Scrin. Where the Scrin had bodies of crystal and black flesh, these creatures had bodies of dull brown chitin, with four large, glowing yellow eyes set into a wide, flattened head. They wore no clothing, instead clad in that brown chitin, and wielded long, organic-looking weapons. The air around them had a reddish-gold blurring effect that swirled faintly; some kind of mass effect field red-shifting the light passing them, Bau guessed.
And all of that, especially the latter detail, added up to a clear, and terrifying picture.
"Those are Collectors," Bau murmured.
The faintest echo of sound, muffled and distant, rang in her ear. She twitched at sensation, at familiar voices. Human voices - male and female. A flanged male voice - turian. A modulated, filtered female voice - quarian.
She twitched again, and felt something click. She thought she heard a whirring sound, close by. The volume of the voices grew louder, clearer, through the thick gauze around her consciousness. She struggled through it, and a dry, rattling snarl escaped her throat.
Someone touched her hand - the right one, gentle and warm, and that pushed her even harder. She fought up to the surface, pushing through the gauzy numbness and muffled noise.
White light spilled over her, sharp and sudden, and for the first time in three weeks, Commander Shepard opened her eyes.
Author's Notes:I was arguing with myself over how trippy I wanted Shepard's dream sequences to be in this interlude. I eventually hit on a medium between incomprehensible and structured, as I figured that a combination of unconsciousness and Tacticus/Prothean mindfuckery would lend the dreams a mostly horrifying sense of familiarity.
Beyond that, I wanted to show what else is going on in the galaxy Bau's little adventure with the Brotherhood was a good device to show what's happening elsewhere, and what, precisely, the Brotherhood of Nod is doing out on the fringes of their own territory in the Terminus.
This chapter does bring an end to this particular act of the story, and we'll be moving further along later, with Shepard and Co getting the Normandy and taking the fight to the many, many enemies running amok in the galaxy.
Until next chapter . . . .