The metal walkways rang dully with every step Kaidan took. The cavernous reactor room was still and cold, and only the illumination strips of sullen red emergency lighting showed the path forward. He saw in strange shades of green thanks to his helmet's night vision filter - ahead of him Ki-tae and Williams were flickering ghosts. Either side of them was a drop down the multilevel facility, to an unfortunate splat at the end.
"Fuel lines should be just ahead," he said, twisting to look at Tali and Dubyansky bringing up the rear.
"You got this?" Ash called back to the quarian.
"Of course!"
"That's what I like to hear."
Kaidan shuddered despite himself as he heard a distant shriek - or what he hoped was distant. The rachni were in the vents like an infestation, and the reactor room echoed so sound wasn't an accurate indicator of distance. He and Tali had rigged everyone's combat scanners to hopefully pick up rachni biosigns - after all, the models they'd had hadn't been designed in the Rachni Wars - but untested tech was untrustworthy tech.
Especially when Shepard had decided that time was vital here and split them into two teams - Alenko taking Williams, Tali, Dubyansky, and Ki-tae to fix the fuel lines and get the power on, while Shepard took Liara, Vakarian, and Wrex to repair the landlines. He couldn't fault her reasoning, but the darkness made him wish for a few more guns.
"I'm starting to be glad we missed out on the Rachni Wars," Williams grumbled. "Spit? Really?"
"Least it's not vomit again, Sarn't?" Nick questioned.
"Ugh. Both gross. I'd rather they just be civilised about it and try to shoot me."
"Can rachni even hold guns with those tentacle-thingies?"
"You know what? There've been far too many tentacles involved in this tour."
"I think I'd prefer to be shot than impaled with a tentacle," Ki-tae said thoughtfully, sweeping his LMG across a black space where the emergency lights ended.
"Even with a Kishock?" Kaidan asked.
"Oh yeah. Say what you will about the batarians, at least the harpoons don't wriggle."
"Thank you Lance Corporal," Dubyansky said pleasantly. "That's going to give me nightmares."
"You know, not everyone would agree with you," Kaidan observed.
Ashley's helmeted head swivelled to look at him. "Sir, if you're into tentacle hentai, I might have to reevaluate our friendship."
I thought you already were.
"That's kink shaming."
"Shut up Dubyansky."
"This looks like it, sir." Ki-tae stepped aside to let him and Tali move up. He and the other two Marines formed a quick perimeter, watching the darkness carefully.
Kaidan knelt, examining the thick fuel lines and the deep, jagged cuts through them. Rachni or Benezia's troops? He supposed it didn't really matter, in the end. The safety systems had shut down the flow of Helium 3 to the reactor while the lines were out. "I'll take the left, you take the right?"
Tali nodded and he reached for the canister of omnigel stored in his webbing.
"Contact! We got bugs!" That was Nick. Kaidan looked over his shoulder in time to see one of the rachni go for Dubyansky with lightning speed. The Marine jammed his finger on the trigger at point-blank range, the roar of the machine gun ripping the rachni's thorax apart, splattering his armour.
"Don't worry about us, LT!" Ashley called to him, kicking a rachni corpse - courtesy of her shotgun - off the side of the walkway. "You do your thing, we'll keep 'em off you!"
She was right, he was forced to admit to himself. His Marines were sharp, battle-tested. They could look after themselves - but only he and Tali could fix the fuel lines. He pulled the omnigel canister free and opened his omnitool interface, blinking at the sudden flare of light across his filtered vision.
He beat down his instinct to help fight off the attack and got to work.
Normally, he avoided tunnel vision as much as he could. That was how you got yourself killed in battle - or in his case, as an officer, got your people killed. But for this, he made himself focus completely on his task.
At least until he heard Tali shriek: "SpidersspidersSPIDERS!"
His head snapped towards her. Three of the tiny, green rachni - babies? - scuttled over the side of the walkway towards her as the quarian fumbled for her shotgun. He pulled out his pistol and fired three careful, precise rounds, leaving only smears behind.
Kaidan looked at her.
"I don't like spiders?"
"Keep it together. There's going to be more where we're going."
She shuddered. "Spiders."
When their field repairs were done, it was back to the control room. The rachni had retreated - for now. Kaidan began the restart protocol on the main control computer and there was a rumbling hum.
"Night vision filters off," he ordered, shortly before the reactor finished restarting and the power came back on, white light flooding from the ceiling. He winced, ducking his head.
"Lance 2 to Lance 1," Alenko spoke into his comm. "Reactor is back online, over."
"We're nearly done here too. Meet us at the tram, over."
"Roger that. On our way. Lance 2 out."
Garrus really had to wonder at Shepard's choice of team this time. He was starting to think he would've preferred to go with Tali and the Marines. Liara was silent and withdrawn, and Wrex was half into a blood rage, every movement sharp with aggression.
Shepard seemed the calm eye of the storm, unmoving as the elevator crept upwards.
"Wrex, you'll take point. Garrus, you'll fix the landlines while we keep the rachni off you. Liara, you and I will try to keep the rachni off their feet with biotics, so they can't get their bearings."
Wrex bared his teeth in what might have been a smile.
"Wrex, rachni are just a history lesson in our training- not something we train for. Any tips?"
One red eye settled on her. Garrus flicked his mandibles despite himself. Wrex was trouble enough even when he wasn't this on edge. "To defeat an infestation of rachni, you have to end it at the source. Exterminate them. Kill the queen."
Shepard hummed thoughtfully to herself. "To breed this many rachni, Binary Helix must have a queen or a large cloning facility, likely at Rift Station."
"Likely the latter," Garrus butted in. "The krogan killed all the queens. Right, Wrex?"
The krogan grasped his shotgun tightly. "My forebears followed the rachni to Suen and killed everything living on that wasteland."
"So they found some preserved rachni and decided to bring the demon to life."
"And so Saren would get more troops for his war." Shepard shook her head. "Whatever Binary Helix did to start creating rachni, it can't be allowed to go on. We're not leaving without making sure of that."
Wrex's lip curled in what might have been approval.
"Let's just hope none of them have made it towards Port Hanshan."
"Shouldn't we inform the Council?" asked Liara quietly, almost drowned out by the grind of machinery. "The return of the rachni is a threat to galactic security."
"You're not wrong. But the blizzard is interfering with our direct comms to the Normandy and while I have a line to Noveria's satellite comm system, I don't trust putting something so sensitive over corporate channels. We'll inform them as soon as possible."
"You have a line to the NDC?" asked Garrus. The elevator door rotated and opened, a gust of icy cold slurry blasting in immediately, dusting their armour with white flakes.
Shepard tilted her head over to look at him. "You think I'd come out here without a way to call off the orbital strike?"
Garrus caught a flurry of movement in the corner of his eye and whirled, raising his assault rifle. "Contact!"
Rachni emerged from the thick white of the blizzard, tentacles whipping forward in savage movement - seeking flesh to rend and tear. Shepard took a step forward, thrusting out a fist and one went flying back, tumbling end over end, before Garrus aimed and fired. A tentacle grazed Wrex's arm, barbs drawing orange blood through ceramic plate and ballistic weave, and he roared, grabbing it with thick fingers and pulling until it tore off. The rachni screeched in the moment before the butt of his Graal came down again and again.
"Keep moving," Shepard ordered, flinging a rachni off the side of the roof with a slash of blue.
Garrus kept up steady barrage of fire with his assault rifle as they forced their way forward, punctuated by the boom of Wrex and Shepard's shotguns and the pop of Liara's pistol.
He crouched at the maintenance panel for the landlines as the roof echoed with gunfire and the maddened shrieks of the rachni. The panel popped open, revealing the terminal beneath and his talons raced across the soft orange glow of the interface. The rachni attacked like animals - right into the field of gunfire and were cut down. How had such creatures built cities, warships? Brought known space to its knees?
"I'm adding an objective to this mission," Commander Shepard explained when the squad had reunited. "We can't allow rachni troops to fall into Saren's hands. In addition to finding Benezia and determining her purpose for coming here, we will locate the source of the rachni and destroy it."
"Understood, ma'am," Alenko said crisply, eyebrows furrowed under his visor. He would've preferred a whole company for either of those tasks. He reminded himself that Shepard knew what she was doing.
"The rachni are sentient people, not an infestation," Liara said slowly.
"They're both," growled Wrex. "They won't hesitate to rip you limb from limb, T'Soni."
"I understand where you're coming from." Shepard's voice was gentle, yet steely. "But they're dangerous. We have no way of communicating with them and no guarantee that even if we could, they'd negotiate. The Alliance is on the defensive already, Liara. I won't add rachni problems to that out of sentiment."
"But-"
Shepard shook her head sharply, cutting her off. She turned to the window into the contamination chamber, unmoving as the rachni inside threw themselves against the plexiglass. "It's not up for discussion. Alenko?"
He stepped forward. "Yes, ma'am?"
"You and Garrus see if you can bring up the controls for the plasma purge."
"Roger that." The other alternative, he knew, was fighting through them. The result would be the same, but someone from the Normandy might be wounded, or even killed. This was the most efficient solution.
Ten minutes passed as they wrestled with the corporate programming. Then: "Done, ma'am."
Shepard stepped past him and hit the button herself. Together, they watched as the rachni burnt.
When it was over and they were wisps of dust, Shepard nodded once. "Let's get moving."
It was impossible to know what his commanding officer was thinking under the sleek black of her helmet, but Alenko wondered anyway. He wondered if she was thinking about the mines and the incendiaries and the IEDs she'd used on Elysium to take apart the pirate platoon sent to take her position. He'd read the reports - the unvarnished truth. The Defence of Ground Battery 45A was taught to Alliance officer cadets these days.
The efficient solution.
Kaidan followed Shepard into the decontamination chamber and towards the tram.
To the credit of Captain Ventralis and his staff, hopped up on too many stims or not, they lowered their guns quick smart when they realised the new intruders had two legs, not six. Shepard knew what it was like when you spent a few days, a week, with no sleep on stims. Reality became something less than fixed. If the sleep deprivation didn't give you hallucinations, the drugs would eventually.
Ventralis' eyes were red and the corner of one twitched as he took them in, settling on the stencil of the Alliance symbol on Williams' armour as the Marine stood beside her. "What are Alliance space jockeys doing here?"
The terminology caught her interest. "Army?"
"UNAS. In another life. You didn't answer my question."
"Commander Shepard, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. Matriarch Benezia T'Soni is here. I need to speak to her. It's urgent. For both of us - back in Hanshan, NDC has their finger on the button for one of the planetary battle stations. If the situation isn't contained soon, we'll all be vapor."
Ventralis rubbed a hand along his bare scalp. "I haven't seen the Matriarch in a few days. The outbreak started in the Hot Labs and only Han Olar got out of there and he's - well." he shook his head and continued. "She went into the labs to try and deal with the problem, I think, but it's just been constant attacks since then. I'm down ten men and I've got scared civilians in the barracks. If we try and move them, we'll get swarmed and picked off one by one."
"I'd like to have a look around the barracks, talk to the survivors. See if I can learn anything more about these creatures." She tucked her thumbs into her webbing.
He waved his hand. His fingers were trembling. "Go ahead."
The scientists clustered together or huddled in corners - some barely reacted to the sudden presence of armed strangers, while others looked at them with painful hope. An asari leant against the wall, her face clear of emotion as she studied them. Han Olar however, was still and alone, but for the rasp of his ventilator. Shepard couldn't see his face, but she could imagine what she'd see in his eyes - nothing.
"You're here to find about them, aren't you?" His voice was a flat monotone. Whoever Doctor Han Olar was, he'd gone away. Practically put up a vacancy sign.
She lowered her voice. "You mean the rachni."
"Yes." His head rotated towards Wrex. "A krogan would understand."
"How?" the krogan in question rumbled.
"We brought the rachni back from the dead. In retrospect, a bad decision."
"You don't say," bit off Williams. "How many have died because of that?"
"Everyone in the Hot Labs," Olar said simply. "Except for me."
"How?" Wrex repeated, a growl in his voice.
"We found an egg, in a derelict ship. Waiting in cryo since the last battles. The last gasp of a dead race - a queen. We brought her here."
"You undid my ancestors work," Wrex snarled. Shepard shot him a look but he didn't seem to notice.
"Yes. We put her in the Secure Labs and took her children from her. And now, they reap their revenge."
"Idiots!" Ashley burst out.
"Yes," he agreed. "But perhaps you can undo what we have done. There is a failsafe, in the Hot Labs where the children nest. Activate it, and the rachni will be destroyed."
"Atonement for your mistake?" asked Shepard caustically.
"No," he said, "there is none."
She was reminded vividly, unpleasantly, of Shay in that bare barracks room, his hands too clean and knotted together. There's no forgiveness for what I've done.
"What about Benezia? Could she survive the Hot Labs?" Liara's voice was taut, caught between the razor edges of anxiety and hope.
Olar wheezed. "She did not go into the Hot Labs. She came for the Queen."
"So Ventralis lied to us," Kaidan surmised.
"He is company. Benezia is company. It is likely he has orders."
"So we try to get into the Secure Labs, ma'am?" Alenko looked to her.
"You would need a pass to get past the security systems. Even I didn't have the permissions."
"Would Ventralis?"
"Perhaps."
She looked at the volus steadily. "Thank you for your help."
Han Olar didn't reply. She motioned for her people to follow her. "We'll activate the failsafe first. I don't want to be caught between that many rachni and Benezia's troops - and then we can evacuate the civilians."
"Ma'am," it was Ashley, "the asari scientist that was here - the calm one - she's gone."
Shepard grimaced. "Damnit. Alright, I think we can assume Benezia is still alive and kicking then. Let's move. Ready to kill some rachni, Wrex?"
His head swung towards her, one red eye glaring into hers. "Always."
The elevator rattled around them. Ashley ran an uneasy hand along her rifle. It felt like the sharp jaws of a trap were closing around them.
"Ma'am, I don't like that we're doing exactly what Ventralis wants us to do."
Shepard seemed serene, unconcerned. "I understand your misgivings, Sergeant, but he doesn't know that we know, yes? We kill the rachni, then kill him if we have to. We knew there would be many enemies here."
"I guess," she said dubiously. The door slid open and she took point, Ki-tae beside her, rifle raised and sweeping. The room stunk of blood, rot, and acid. Here and there laid the corpses of the Hot Labs scientists, eaten away by acid and sliced by barbs to the point they were barely recognisable as people.
Like at the digsite camp. Bodies burnt and smoldering, all identity turned to ash.
Keep it together. Her head snapped up. "Skipper, I've got a life sign. Human."
The human man had propped himself up against the wall, his breathing shallow. He'd taken a splash of acid to his side and arm - the skin had bubbled and melted away. His mouth formed a rictus of a smile when his eyes settled on them.
Kaidan moved to go to his side but Shepard caught his arm and shook her head sharply.
"Don't touch him. Acid could still be on his skin."
"Listen," the man croaked, "what has happened here, it is our fault. You understand?"
"The rachni queen," Ash said with a curl of the lip.
"Da."
"Tartakovsky, right?" Shepard asked. "Dubyansky, over here in case his translator fails." The arm Tartakovsky's omnitool was on was half eaten away.
"You must be listening. Binary Helix wanted to clone them, create an army. We thought that without the queen, we could raise the babies to be obedient."
"Obviously that didn't work." Shepard swept her arm across the room, the piles of corpses.
Greed. It turned Ashley's stomach. So much death for greed. Though she was starting to think that as horrible as the situation was, it was the better of two evils. Better they fail at their attempts to play God and reap the consequences than have Saren unleash a rachni army on Citadel Space. The geth were bad enough.
"This was exactly the wrong thing to do. I am thinking that without the queen, rachni do not develop properly. Her mind shapes theirs."
"Of course they don't," Ash said flatly. "Like locking a kid in a dark room away from their parents."
"No child would be sane after that." Liara's voice was soft. It was the first time Ashley had heard her speak since their conversation with Olar.
"Exactly. They are mad, uncontrollable."
"So what?" An undercurrent of anger ran through Shepard's voice like electricity. "I shouldn't kill them?"
Tartakovsky labourishly shook his head. "There is nothing to be done for them. We must activate the neutron purge. It will kill everything in the Hot Labs. I have codes, need Mira."
Above Ashley, she heard a distant thudding. She tightened her grip on her rifle.
"We fixed her-"
There was a tear of metal and then Tartakovsky's chest exploded outwards as a barbed tentacle went in his back and out the other side.
"Spirits!" yelped Garrus. Ashley jammed her finger on the trigger and Dubyansky's machine gun roared beside her. The rachni tumbled, motionless, to the ground.
"They're around us," Shepard surmised grimly. "Williams, see if you can find that code and key on him."
She knelt beside the corpse, avoiding the puddles of hissing acid and patted him down, trying to avoid his wounds. Her fingers wrapped around something rigid and plastic, just as her gauntlets began to sizzle.
"I have it!" Kaidan pulled the lid off his canteen and grabbed her arm.
"You need to get those gauntlets off."
"I have some spare mesh gloves." Not as good as the whole deal, but better than ripped the still smoking gauntlets off and threw them beside Tartakovsky's corpse. Alenko poured icy cold water over her hands and forearms for several seconds before nodding.
"Let's move," Shepard ordered and made for the nearest terminal room. Ashley followed with Kaidan pushing her ahead of him, rifle bumping against her hip, as she tried to hastily pull on the mesh gloves - and nearly dropped one. That'd be embarrassing.
Behind her, she heard the boom of Wrex's shotgun and when she tossed a look over her shoulder, a rachni was twitching still after being pinned to the wall by four spikes from his Graal.
Vakarian opened the Mira terminal.
"I have full access to all systems and am at your disposal."
"Activate neutron purge," Ash said hastily, sliding in beside Garrus and shoving the key home.
"Proper code verification required."
"Code input 875-020-079. Code Omega, local execution."
"Verified. Code Omega execution in 120 seconds. Hot Labs unshielded. Evacuation to safe distance recommended."
"Of course," Garrus said, "couldn't let it be too easy, right?"
"Another item for the long list of Binary Helix's work health and safety violations," Ash shot back.
"Time to move," Shepard ordered.
The door slid open. The space in between them and the elevator was a shifting, roiling mass of tentacles throwing itself at the door. They were sentient. They did know they were going to die.
"Shit." Ashley reached for her belt.
"Push forward no matter what!" Shepard yelled as the first rachni warriors turned to them. "Frag them!"
Ashley pulled free the frag grenade and tossed it into their midst, followed shortly by ones from Shepard, Dubyansky and Ki-tae. The explosions rang loud as thunder in the enclosed space, stabbing jagged shrapnel through chitin. She wasn't sure how many rachni were killed in the blasts, only that she had to step over a tendril as they advanced.
They kept up a steady hail of bullets, driving the rachni back, carving their way to the elevator as the countdown kept ticking. A neutron purge would be a fucking awful way to go. When her rifle's heatsink was full she let it fall and bump her chest as she moved, pulling free her shotgun instead. No time to reload.
A shriek of (human) pain snapped her head to the side. A tentacle coiled around Ki-tae's machinegun and pulled, the weapon wrenched from the Marine's hands and clattering to the ground somewhere in the midst of the rachni. Before Nick could finish pulling out his sidearm, acid splattered his side.
He screamed.
No! She moved for him, raising her shotgun, but it felt as if she were running in water.
Then Wrex was there. His shotgun boomed and the rachni skittered backward, before dying from a hail of bullets from a vengeful Williams and Dubyansky. The krogan paused, then grabbed the Marine's webbing with one large hand, depositing him over one shoulder with ease.
"Keep moving!" Shepard's voice was as hard and featureless as concrete.
CODEX ENTRY
The Battle of Suen: One hundred and forty-six years after the first conflicts with the rachni and forty years after the uplift of the krogan, the tide of the Rachni Wars had turned. Following the decisive Battle of Ninmah, in which the last remnants of rachni space forces were defeated by the Coalition of Nations - the alliance of all space-faring nations at the time - an offer of surrender was broadcasted to the rachni homeworld on the insistence of the asari Grand Admiral Tavere T'Kuen.
The High Queen of the rachni refused. Declaring 'the time for half measures is over,' Overlord Hailat Kraig put into motion the krogan plans to invade Suen itself - a plan that the asari and salarians had expressed some trepidation about but ultimately allowed to go ahead with no formal objections.
The Coalition Fleet bombarded Suen from orbit for several days, devastating cities and destroying defences, an act that would stay with T'Kuen for the rest of her life. Hailat Kraig was less disturbed. Knowing the bombardment had only wounded the rachni, not beaten them into submission, and that the queens kept their nests below the surface of Suen where even the asari and krogan dreadnoughts could not reach, he ordered the krogan army to land.
Tens of millions of krogan soldiers landed on the poisonous surface of Suen, where salarians and asari could not go, and fighting raged for several months. The galaxy had been locked in total war for a century - whatever mercy remained had been used up with that last surrender request. Krogan troops shattered the last remaining rachni armies, then attacked the nests themselves. Hundreds gave their lives to carry nuclear bombs into the egg chambers and detonate them, killing the Queens, the brood warriors and the rachni young.
For decades after, the krogan would keep a presence on Suen, hunting the last of the rachni to extinction.