Author's note: blue zombies = husks.
Chapter 21
"Who are you?" asked Kaiden, still not turning around to face whoever was behind him. He felt a buzzing in his temples - a side effect of reaching out with his mind and preparing his biotic abilities. He could see (both mentally and visually) several good-sized rocks on the mossy ground around him, and he prepared to clench his fist and send them flying. An aura of blue-purple energies surrounded his left hand, which had dropped down from supporting the body of his Avenger.
"Not Cerberus."
Right. "Then who are you?"
"Who are you?"
"I'm an Alliance Marine."
There was no reply, and Kaidan gritted his teeth in anticipation of the sharp pains that would undoubtedly accompany usage of his biotics. The blip on his radar started to fade out - he'd have to let one of the mechanics take a look at it when (and if) he got back to the colony.
"Who are you?" asked Kaidan for the last time.
"Follow me. Your colony is under attack."
Kaidan turned around slowly, his eyebrows raised. Behind him stood a muscular humanoid, slightly taller than Kaidan himself, clutching an extremely long sniper rifle of unknown manufacturing. It wore a black bodysuit with interlocking plates of armor strapped on to the surface of it. It could've been wearing a helmet, but it looked to Alenko like it was more of a mask. A dark black visor stretching across its eyes with a grey mouthpiece linked to the visor.
"That's not possible. I just spoke to one of the soldiers stationed there." Kaidan clicked open his helmet comm, and hailed Durand. "Lieutenant, respond." He kept his biotics charged - this 'revelation' could be a ruse to catch him off-guard. For added effect, he kept the Avenger pointed in the being's direction.
No answer was forthcoming on the radio. "Lieutenant, this is N-seven-one, please respond." Kaidan raised his left hand and slapped the side of the helmet several times. "Durand, if you can hear me, use your omni-tool and get back to me, damn it."
The humanoid just turned around and started walking towards the direction of the colony. The Staff Commander followed it, a bit shell-shocked at the turn of these events.
"If you're not Cerberus, then who are you? And how did you know that something's wrong at the colony?"
"Ship's sensors," it replied curtly. Either it was incapable of speaking in sentences, Kaidan surmised, or was just extremely anti-social.
"That ship back there is yours? The ship with the sensors?" he asked.
"No."
"Then what ship's sensors were you talking about?"
"That ship back there."
"Right ..."
It didn't offer an explanation.
The pair continued their trek through the woods in relative silence. Kaidan knew he wouldn't get anything else out of it, and it felt no further need to communicate anything else to the Staff Commander, such as who it was or why it was here. Kaidan continued to attempt and reach Lieutenant Durand, but to no avail. It was as if something was jamming their signals. He still wasn't counting Cerberus out, but he had to know if there was something else out there that could be responsible for the mass disappearances.
The being stopped abruptly, and looked up at the sky through the trees. It looked at Kaidan and jerked a finger upwards. As soon as Kaidan looked up, he involuntarily brought his weapon up. Hanging suspended in the sky was a massive ship, rocky in composition. His helmet auto-zoomed into various features on the hull, and he shook his head slightly as he noticed the features. Even through leaves and branches obscuring his view, it was obvious what the vessel was, and who it belonged to.
"A Collector ship? They can't be behind this ..."
"Down!" The humanoid grabbed Kaidan and threw him down before dropping itself. Kaidan heard a dull whine noise grow louder and louder, and he lifted his head off the ground, searching for the source of the noise. After several seconds, a large spherical ship zoomed by overhead, paying them no attention. Sunlight glinted off its hull as it passed them, intent on pursuing some hidden agenda of its own elsewhere. The two of them climbed back to their feet and started walking with increased pace back to the colony.
"Something's coming over the radio," said Kaidan. Both of them continued heading towards the colony, but the humanoid turned its head slightly towards Kaidan in response.
"Sen- ... reinforce ... barricades, forget the re - ..." Kaidan slowed for a moment and smacked his helmet again, but nothing was forthcoming. He looked up briefly at the humanoid through his clear visor. "We need to pick up the pace."
Both of them started sprinting towards the colony.
Lieutenant Durand fired her Avenger blindly around the edge of the doorway, spraying the immediate area with a hail of rounds. Under the cover of the barrage, several Marines sprinted across the street, taking glancing hits on their barriers before they leapt through the doorway and into the habitat section Durand was holed up in. She did a headcount as they came in, and totaled them up - five Marines. All of them huddled down close to the floor against shelves and counters, avoiding the fire that blasted through the habitat section's windows, throwing up burned sheets of paper and scarring the walls black.
"Who's got the Mattock?" she barked out, quickly reloading her weapon. One of the Marines sidled forward on his knees, panting and holding up the weapon she asked for.
"Here, ma'am."
"Alright, listen up. I count fifteen hostiles closing in on our position down the street, about sixty meters up. On my mark, we'll split up. Three of us will stay here and serve as a rear guard. The other two will head up to the Proper control hub - it's raised three levels high, perfect for a designated marksman. Might be some other Marines still back there, too. Make sure to stay within the confines of the modified kinetic barrier, or those bug swarms will get you. When you're set, signal the rest of us. We'll pull back to the barricades in the main town square in front of the hub, and hope to hell we can hold them off. Now, sync up your omni-tools with mine." As they complied, her HUD lit up with their names and weapons.
"Corporal Laws, you're the marksman. Martinez, you make sure Laws gets to the hub, understood? Matthews, Steinrun, you're here with me."
The Marines all nodded, bobbing their heads up and down in recognition of her orders. She raised her head and peeked over counter she was pressed up against. The hostiles - Collectors, she'd figured out from the vague descriptions she had heard while still in Basic Training school - were moving up the street in one main group, holding their weapons aloft ominously. She ducked back down before they saw her.
"Alright, let's move! Marines, give them hell!" she yelled. At the shout, Laws and Martinez bolted out the rear door and started sprinting down the back alley towards the town square. The rest of the Marines vaulted the counter and opened fire on the Collectors through a front-facing window that offered a panoramic view of the street, forcing their enemies to duck back behind the roadblocks and barricades already set up by the colonists and Marines in the early stages of the attack. Those aliens that didn't manage to get back into cover were torn apart as M-8 Avenger rounds ripped into them, tearing chunks of their flesh off violently and spraying their comrades with yellowish green blood. All three of the Marines kept up the barrage as they stood at the windows of the habitat section, unloading their clips at the enemy.
"I'm out, reloading!" shouted Steinrun, before she ducked down below the windowsill. Durand and Matthews continued to fire even as their counters dipped down to zero. Before Steinrun popped back up, though, the Collectors began to open fire. Blue shots whizzed past Durand and Matthews, some hitting their barriers as they flew by. Both of them fell down to reload while Steinrun opened fire, selectively taking down any Collectors that kept their heads up for too long.
"Laws, are you at the hub yet?" radioed Durand.
"Almost ... yes! Yes, we're here," replied an out-of-breath voice. "You might want to get out of there, Lieutenant, I count ... six ... no, seven of the blue zombies closing in on your position, via a secondary alley to your left."
"Shit," swore the Lieutenant. There were no windows on the left side of the habitat section they were in. And from what she'd learned in the ten minutes that they'd been fighting for their lives, the blue zombies were excellent climbers able to scale even the smoothest of surfaces. "Alright, let's get out of here! Steinrun, go!"
Durand watched the female corporal run out the back entrance, her kinetic barrier flashing visibly every time a shot glanced her. The Lieutenant and Matthews loosed off shots at the Collectors slowly advancing down the street parallel to the habitat section, their Avengers whining loudly as they discharged shots towards the aliens. As soon as Steinrun radioed that she was clear, Durand jerked her head at Matthews. "Go, I'll cover you!"
He nodded and ran out the back door as Steinrun had done, ducking behind the counters to avoid any stray shots hitting him. Durand depressed the trigger on her Avenger angrily, forcing a Collector out from the barricade it had been hiding behind. As soon as it rolled out, a shot from Laws slammed into its head, dropping it instantly.
"Nice shooting!" radioed Durand. In response, several more Mattock heavy rifle shots thudded into the five or so remaining Collectors. Having gotten the rest of the soldiers with her back towards relative safety, she vaulted over the counter to head through the back door. She stopped dead in her tracks when she realized what was waiting for her.
A blue zombie stood with its half-mechanical jaw hanging open, a disgusting ooze dribbling down its chin.
The Lieutenant gritted her teeth inside her helmet fiercely and snarled wordlessly. She clenched her right hand, letting the Avenger drop down in her left, and activated her omni-blade. It traced a brilliant orange arc through the air as she rushed the zombie. Durand hit it square in the chest with her omniblade, lifting it up and carrying it backwards while it wailed at being put into such a disadvantageous position. The Lieutenant's momentum carried her and the zombie straight into a large dumpster in the alley. The impact crumpled the side of the dumpster and snapped the zombie's head back, leaving it at an awkward angle. Behind her, emerging from an adjacent alley, were the rest of the zombies.
"Lieutenant! On your six!" reported Laws.
Durand chanced a quick look behind her and saw the zombies pivoting to face her as they came into view of her. She started to run down the alley and saw Mattock shots come flying down and keep the zombies at bay. It took her a few seconds to clear the alley and make it into the square, and by that time, Laws had neutralized all the slow-moving zombies behind her with precision shots with his Mattock.
She blew into the main square, scattering ejected thermal clips with her feet as she ran towards the hub. As soon as she reached a barricade, she slid down behind it, scrambling to push her back up against the reassuring concrete. To her right, Martinez manned a barricade of his own while he stared down the barrel of his Avenger at one of the several streets that flowed into the square. Durand reloaded her weapon quickly and looked over at Martinez.
"What's our status?"
Martinez jerked his head back towards the central hub, which rose up nearly thirty feet into the air. "You chose the right location to fall back to, ma'am. Remnants of first, second, and third squads were holed up in here defending the north face of the hub, where the Mako barrier generators are. You might want to head in and talk to them before the baddies regroup."
Durand nodded and struggled up, her limbs still trembling from the adrenaline surge of the close encounter with the zombie in the alley. She trotted into the ground level of the hub, and a Marine hustled up to her from a hallway to her left.
"Ma'am! Sergeant Hobbs is on the second level at the communications consoles. If you'll follow me." The Marine beckoned and led her up a short flight of stairs into another habitat section. The lights in the entire structure were sputtering on and off as the local backup generators struggled to cope with the widespread loss of power to the colony.
The second level of the hub was not the same as Durand had remembered it. The last time she had been here, two days ago, leafy green plants had been every corner and sections of power-regulation machinery had been neatly arranged in the area. Now, it was filled with Marines, bustling to and fro - some kept watch at the windows, while others tended to wounded soldiers. Like the stairway, the lights here were sputtering on and off as well, with most of the ambient lighting coming from the sunlight through the windows and the glow of what machinery still worked. Durand navigated around the clusters of machinery, walking past a small group of wounded Marines, to the center of the room. An unarmored marine sat in a reclining chair, rapidly manipulating the holographic interface of a communications console.
"Sergeant?" asked the Lieutenant, walking over and looking down at the dark-skinned man. He tapped for a few moments longer at the console, his omnitool rotating in response, before acknowledging Durand.
"Lieutenant. I've been monitoring comms throughout the colony - looks like we were hit hard and fast."
"Any news from the living areas or the barracks?" she asked.
Hobbs shook his head, some dirt falling off his blue beret as he did so. "Ever since we started getting jammed, comms went to hell. The colony's got a pretty big signal booster, so that helped in getting some signals through. But anything outside the Proper just sends back dead airwaves. The only thing we know about what happened anywhere else is from Sergeant Davidson-" Hobbs pointed at one of the wounded Marines "-is that everywhere but the Proper got slammed. Before he went into shock, he said something about 'heavy casualties' and 'giant, armored bugs'."
Davidson had been in charge of the outlying patrols, as ordered by Durand several hours ago when Commander Alenko had gone. He'd had first and second squads under his command when he'd left. "How many made it out of there before the little bug swarms got them?"
"Three."
Durand shook her head in frustration. "Anything else to report?"
"Communication with all civilian parties was lost about five minutes ago. Davidson also said something about stasis pods and civvies as he was getting hauled in, but we don't know what that's all about. I've been monitoring all frequencies in case Commander Alenko tried contacting us, but nothing so far," Hobbs said adjusting dials and knobs on the console's holographic display.
"And the status of the generators?"
"They're working fine so far. The entire Proper is covered by a huge bug-swatter. A few civilians are bunkered down in a garage west of here - doorway's fused shut. I told them we'd bust them out if we got out of here alive."
Lieutenant Durand nodded and left Hobbs to his work. She had a defense to organize.
Durand snorted to herself. A defense? A last stand.