CHAPTER 21
Joker announced over the intercom that the Normandy will be arriving at the colony of Feros in the estimated time of fifty minutes. There have been reports of geth activity on this colony, which have been settled by a corporation called ExoGeni.
Neo was sitting in the mess hall, with a fresh cup of coffee in his hand and tapping his fingertips on the table's surface. Under normal circumstances he would be happy to be arriving soon to test out another old weapon on the geth, but there are two reasons not making him happy.
The first reason was using the Arc Rifle, which has had a dark past and using such a weapon that would question the character of any person, even one that views that the ends justify the means just like Neo himself.
The second was a certain Chief Williams down in the cargo hold. He would recap in his mind over and over. Why did I tell her so much about myself? Why did I try to get close to her? Remember the last time you allowed yourself to get involved with someone in high risk operations? How could I be so stupid? Why couldn't Shepard have chosen her instead of the naïve blue girl? Neo takes a deep breath. You almost kissed her. Think of Trinity, think of Trinity.
Walking towards the table was Kaiden Alenko. He was carrying a breakfast tray while wearing his armored suit as he saw the agent. Kaiden sat across the table from Neo and he decides to find out what could be upsetting him.
"How's it going, Agent Neo?" Kaiden asked. "You look like a soldier about to go on his first mission, which is kind of strange since the commander only picked me and Wrex to go with him and you'll be staying on board."
"Lieutenant." Neo greeted Kaiden. "Sorry, just recapping on some current events. Can't talk too much about it."
"Well, word around the scuttlebutt says that you gave the Chief a gift." Kaiden said. "Wouldn't have to be anything about that or is it also that you shared a moment with the Chief about an hour ago, reciting some poem?"
Neo's eyes narrowed and his mouth began to twist into a scowl. "Who told you that?" Neo already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear the answer.
"Garrus." Kaiden shifted his eyes to his left arm.
"That gossiping old lady, I'll…" Neo was cut short when Kaiden said his name again.
"Garrus, what's happening?" Kaiden's Omni-tool lit up.
"Lieutenant." Garrus said to Kaiden through the communicative chatter. "Tell Neo, the calibrations are done and it's in solid working order. Tell him to come down here when he has gathered enough courage to come down here."
Neo could've sworn Garrus was laughing before he was cut off. Kaiden just looked at the agent for a minute, until he had the knew what to ask him. "So what's bothering you?"
"Nothing that you should be concerned about, Lieutenant." Neo said. "Just trying not to make the same mistake I made a couple of years back. It's obvious you heard from Vakarian and because of him the whole ship will think me and Chief Williams are an item. I'm just going to have to ride it out until my next assignment."
"Wait a minute?" Kaiden raised his hand up. "You're an intelligence agent for the Alliance. You risk your life every day. When I first met you on Eden Prime, you took out three geth soldiers attacking you. You did all those tasks without fear, but when you have the chance of landing a girl you freeze up. Why?"
"Because my life is not the typical life." Neo answered. "I don't have the desire or the luxury for that kind of life. I can't be with a girl like Ashley, because it's just too risky. She's the type of girl that pushes herself to a breaking point…to the point where she would get herself killed. I know, because I went down that road before." Then Neo thought to himself. Except mine was more self-destructive.
"Someone you were close to?" Kaiden asked.
"Just that, it's been a while and I can't shake it off my mind." Neo said. "I won't go into details."
"Wait right here, I'll be right back." Kaiden stood up and walked over to his station. He digs through a drawer and puts something in his pocket. He walks back over to the table and he glances around to make sure nobody is watching while pulling out what looks like a silver whiskey flask. He takes his flask and pours a little bit of brown liquid into his coffee. He hides the flask underneath the table and looks at Neo. "This stuff is not just some rot gut whiskey. This is true Canadian Whiskey, distilled from home. I don't drink it much, because of regulations and I'm trying to stretch it out." Then he lifts the flask in a silent gesture if the agent wanted any.
"Why not." Neo lifts his mug of coffee and Kaiden pours a little into the hot beverage.
Before the two men could drink, Kaiden lifted his finger. "I'll play devil's advocate. Garrus did send me a message earlier. He told me, because he figured you would be up here and he told me that he heard everything."
"Everything?" Neo eyes began to widen.
"Everything." Kaiden smirked. "Turians have higher than usual hearing abilities and Garrus told me the story through my Omni-tool."
Neo was showing a look on his face suggesting that he's going down to the cargo hold, grab a knife, and scalp a certain turian's head fringe off his head.
Kaiden calmed the agent down. "Hold on a second, Neo. He only told me and I told him not to tell anyone else about what he knows about you. I just wanted to just say this piece and it might make you feel better."
"Alright, tell me." Neo just crossed his arms.
Kaiden looked at Neo. "I'm just saying that we all have a past. Unlike you, I wasn't spending my early teenage years in some virtual reality world created by the Matrix. Instead I was drafted by some corporation, because of my biotic abilities. I was taken away from my family at an early age, only to be crammed in with other biotic hopefuls. We were put in the care of a sociopath turian expert at a space station in the middle of nowhere called Jump Zero up until I was seventeen. In the end I end up killing that same turian for beating up a girl. I risked my own life trying to defend her and in the end I killed that turian. Then I had to endure the agonizing pain of chronic headaches for the first two years after my L2 implants were inserted into my brain."
"So why are you telling me this, Lieutenant?" Neo asked.
Kaiden responded. "I just wanted to let you know that my past has been squared away and I make it point not to hide it or be ashamed of it. Knowing that you have a past just tells me that you're human just like the rest of us."
Neo sat silently for a second and tilted his head to the side. "I guess it's also that I haven't worked with others in a long time, let alone a team." He takes his mug and lifts it to Kaiden. "To letting the past be the past."
"It is what it is." Kaiden said and the two men toasted using their mugs and took a small sip of their spiced up coffee.
Then Commander Shepard came walking by, wearing his armor and holding a mug of coffee of his own. He saw Neo and Kaiden sitting across one another and wanted to now what they were up to.
"Kaiden. Neo." Shepard greeted the two men.
Both Neo and Kaiden responded. "Commander."
Shepard caught the sight of the silver flask next to Kaiden. "That's not what I think it is?"
Kaiden realized that he left his flask out and realized that he had been caught. "Oh, this…"
Neo stepped in. "Actually, Commander. The Lieutenant confiscated this flask off a serviceman and was just figuring out a way to properly dispose of its contents." Neo raised his eyebrows.
"Well, it would be a shame to waste it." Shepard just smirked and placed his mug of coffee on the table and Kaiden just poured some of the whiskey into Shepard's coffee.
"To stopping Saren." Kaiden lifted his mug.
Neo looked at Shepard with a coy smile. "To you and Dr. T'Soni."
Shepard looked back at the agent and replied with his own coy smile. "To you and Chief Williams." Neo's smile faded and Shepard headed for the medical bay, no doubt going to visit Liara.
Neo just froze and looked at Kaiden. Kaiden just raised his hands. "I didn't say anything about you and the Chief."
Neo just looked away from the biotic and quickly gulped down the rest of his liquor induced coffee, bearing through the heat of the coffee. He took a deep breath and activated his Omni-tool, sending a message to Shepard for a request to come along the next mission. After he finished typing his message, he headed towards the elevator and swallowed his breath for courage.
Feros was a colony located in the Attican Beta nebula, inside the Theseus system. A colony founded by the ExoGeni Corporation. Feros was founded as a pilot colony to explore the Prothean ruins that blanket two thirds of the planet's land mass. Much the visible Prothean ruins were skyscrapers that were tall enough to rise above the clouds, because the clouds below trapped the dust and debris that littered the planet's lower atmosphere which made traveling to explore the planet's surface was impossible.
Some of the structures built by the Protheans looked as if the work had been incomplete, showing signs of exposed scaffolding on the top of certain buildings. It kind of gave the impression that the Protheans disappeared while in the middle of a construction project.
It also struck Shepard that it seemed dangerous or just plain reckless to create a colony literally on the foundation of ancient alien ruins. Shepard thought to himself. There is no telling what could happen. What if the building's foundation weakens? What if they unleash some ancient security drone? What if they discover some disease that unleash an epidemic? Something did happen and that's why they are here. The geth have attacked this colony for some reason and it was up to Shepard to get to the bottom of this.
However, bottom wasn't going to be the word. The colony was founded on the top of a completed building. There was docking bay on the side of the structure that was large enough for the Normandy to enter, but no one on board could tell if it was built by the Protheans or carved by the ExoGeni founders.
Shepard, Neo, Wrex, and Kaiden enter the port with their weapons drawn. They didn't know what was going to greet the four men. Their suspicions have put to rest when a man was waiting for them at the end of a long walkway.
They approached the man and when they got a closer look at him, his clothes have been worn thin, his face was covered in smudge, and his eyes have the look of someone who have seen too many people close to him die.
The man held up his hand. "We saw your ship. Fai Dan wants to talk to you immediately."
"Who's Fai Dan?" Shepard asked.
"He's our leader." The man said. "He needs your help to prepare for the geth. They're making another push. Please. Up the stairs and past the freighter."
Before the man could escort the four to their main base, a stream of red energy flew from the other side of the walkway. The beam hit the man and his body became nothing but charred flesh. Shepard looked to the side and realized that it was the geth.
Their weapons drawn, Shepard and his company fired through the walkway, taking out whatever geth soldiers were in their way. It wasn't easy since some of the geth were using a shielding that would project a wall of energy that would give cover to the geth.
After the geth on the walkway was disposed of, they approached the doorway and Neo pulled out his Arc Rifle.
"Neo." Shepard quietly said to Neo. "Are you going to use that new rifle of yours?"
"Yeah." Neo whispered while charging up the rifle. "I can't just fire it yet. I have to configure the room size. I also have to make sure there is nothing but geth in the area to prevent collateral damage. I just need two minutes."
"Hold here." Shepard told Kaiden and Wrex. Neo slowly peeked his head around the corner and found a lizard-like geth clinging on the ceilings of a stairwell.
He pulls his head back and talks to Shepard. "How are your sniping skills?"
"I'd say above average." Shepard humbly replied.
"Okay." Neo looked at the rifle in his hand. "This stairwell requires surgical procedure when firing this rifle. There is one of those lizard-like geth clinging on the ceiling around the corner. Now, I'm going to let you take the shot."
"Alright." Shepard agreed. "What do I do?"
Neo handed the rifle over to Shepard. "We wait till this rifle is fully charged and then I need for you to sneak in and take out that one geth. Now when you pull the trigger, a steady electrical flow will fire from this rifle and it will take out that geth. However, I have changed the setting. On this precise setting, the electrical stream will continue and hit the next geth in the area. The stream will keep going until there is nothing within twenty feet to connect the bolt with." He looks at the scanner on his Omni-tool and says. "Okay, colonists are out of range."
Shepard got on his belly and crawled into the stairwell. He gazed up and saw one of the geth clinging on the ceiling. He raised the Arc Rifle up and squeezed the trigger. The kickback was strong when a blue electrical bolt erupted out of the barrel's rifle.
The stream of lightning flowed so quickly through the air and connected to its target. The geth short circuited and exploded. Then the stream continued on towards another geth standing guard on the stairs, only to short circuited and explode. Like the toppling of dominoes the geth around the stairwell were falling as the stream of lightning finally connected to two last geth units. After they explode, the stream of lightning dissolves into the air.
Neo looked at his scanner and nods. "They're no longer on the stairwell. We're in the clear."
Wrex looked at the rifle Shepard was holding. "That's one hell of a rifle, Neo. Could use something like that."
"You have no idea how that's scares me, Wrex." Neo responds while Shepard hands the rifle back to Neo. "I would have to say that your sniping skills was way above average, Shepard."
"Come on." Shepard said. "The rest of the colony is waiting for us."
As the group follows Shepard, Neo looked at the damage that was done and more importantly he was checking the structure of the stairwell. He wanted to make sure there was no damage to the structural integrity of this building, because he was now thinking. Bringing a deadly weapon known to also weaken and damage infrastructure on a building that is more that 50,000 years old? Now I must be crazy and being on board with Shepard's crew just adding to my problem. Then he laughs to himself.