Chapter 24
Kevin, having been startled from a brief nap by a call for him to go to the briefing room, was tapping the drowsiness out of his head by rapping his knuckles against his visor. As he did this, he sluggishly made his way over to his desk to get his knife and pistol strapped on. He knew what he was being called into the briefing room for, and at the very least, he had to look like he was ready for this.
After all, he was about to become involved in a war with the geth.
After ensuring that his effects were snug, he drew in a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out. The call to the briefing room was the big debrief about the attack on the massive geth vessel, which was only a matter of hours away. He hadn't been a part of organized combat for a long time, excluding helping the quarians off that planet. He was anxious, but not because he didn't think he could follow orders or perform to the best of his ability on the mission. It was that he knew how quickly things can change hands in organized combat. All the more reason he had to go with them. Each team member that goes increases the others' survival rates, and he was not about to let them throw their lives away after he went to all the trouble of saving them from the geth once before. Using that as his source of determination, he marched out of his room.
In the briefing room, everyone was assembling around the briefing table with Tyr and Siri standing by themselves near the charred side. Kar, Tosh and Bela took seats while everyone else opted to stand. For the most part, everyone was silent until Siri started hitting buttons on her omni-tool. The lights in the room dimmed and the holographic projector at the center of the table lit up. It projected what Kevin assumed was that in-depth scan of the midsection of the geth vessel in fairly detailed wireframe. With that up for all to see, the captain got under way.
"As you might have guessed, we're here to discuss the upcoming strike on the geth Valesh'saat. We have a plan in place, as you'll see. We've drawn a lot from what we do know about the geth to formulate this, so let's hope they haven't had some form of synthetic renaissance in the past few days. Garloh, go ahead."
Tyr picked up where Siri left off. "The first phase of the strike is the approach. Under normal circumstances this would be absolute suicide, but thanks to Tosh'Rolush's recent discovery and work on the IES3, the plan is possible. We will decelerate to just under FTL speeds for the majority of our approach and shut off the engines when the designated velocity has been reached. This will allow us to activate the stealth system and drift at high speeds towards the fleet without using up most of the stealth system's capacity.
"Once we come within reasonable range of the fleet, we will fire on the reverse-thrusters to slow our approach. At this point, Kar'Welkas will take full control of the helm and bring the Kellius to the underbelly of the Valesh'saat. Using the docking magnets in the hull around the external door of the airlock, Welkas will carefully bring the airlock up against the hull of the geth ship to allow the Kellius to remain there without any additional thruster output."
Siri piped in again. "The second phase is infiltration. Three people will work on cutting the hull. Tosh'Rolush as rigged the airlock pressure to normalize to whatever the interior pressure of the geth ship is to avoid setting off hull breach alarms. Now, the hull to hull seal will obviously not be airtight, since we can't fit the exterior of the airlock flush against the geth ship due to the Kellius' shape so the airlock will be constantly cycling to keep the pressure level. This spot is the only one that provided us with enough space for us to get this amount of airlock-to-hull contact. Once the hull has been cut enough for use to get in, the next phase can begin."
"The third phase is the most complex one," Tyr resumed. "It's where most of the work will reside. The primary objective is to deliver a disablement device to the servers, here." As he spoke, the wireframe model zoomed in to a particular octagonal room in the middle of the ship towards the supposed aft of the scan. "Bela'Merni has been working on such a device. Bela, please inform your squadmates of the nature of the device and delivery."
Bela stood up. "The device is non-explosive. We don't have enough of the proper materials to make a device that can cause an explosion big enough to destroy it, and since we do not know the location of their element zero drive core, we can't use that either. However, we do have the geth's built in hardline network all over the ship. My disablement device will generate an electromagnetic shock powerful enough to overload the servers and coarse through the network to burn out as many crucial systems as it can reach. The problem is, I expect that the end result will be fatal to us if we're still inside the ship, and it can just as easily hit the hull and disable the Kellius, too. What I designed for it, then, was a timed release structure. Once set and armed, it will begin the disablement process immediately, but with limited power, then increase as time goes on. This will both give us a chance to exfiltrate off of the Valesh'saat, as well as prevent the geth from trying to shut it off while we're away.
"Delivery is simple. We have to place the device in the middle of the server and database room and connect leads to each mainframe. It's kind of big, but I was able to modularize it into six parts small enough to be carried. They can be quickly reassembled in the server room." Bela sat back down.
"Thank you," Siri said. "Now, the tricky part is getting to the server room." Siri tapped on her omni-tool and the view on the ship zoomed back out. A dot outside the model blinked on and off. "This is where we will be boarding. As you can see, there's considerable walking distance between where we board and our objective. We don't know how many active geth there will be in the ship. It's been theorized that the geth only maintain small groups of units at any time, not including maintenance. With any luck, we should be able to walk straight to the server room."
Tyr stepped forward. "But professionals don't plan for luck. A large group will be easy to track, and more likely to bring unwanted attention, so we originally planned to split the strike into two teams of four."
"Two groups of four?" Ralik wondered aloud. "There are nine of us here. Who's getting left behind?"
"Kar'Welkas will remain on the ship," Tyr explained. "His job in this mission is to keep the Kellius ready for dust-off and to be our eyes on the outside. He will monitor the geth for any major changes in flight patterns or behavior that might indicate that they've started looking for the Kellius." Tyr pressed a button on his omni-tool again and a bunch of lines within the wireframe highlighted. "Unfortunately, the device could not be split into any less than six pieces. We need all of the parts to arrive at once, which means we have reorganized the two teams to a six to two split."
"What in Omega's toilets would a two-man team do in a geth homeship?" Kevin asked.
"I'm glad you asked, Folner," Siri said with a nod. "We know little about how the geth handle situations, but we do have an idea of how they handle threats with a very limited supply of counter-measure. They prioritize. The original plan was to have the two teams switch back and forth with making the most destructive noise. This was to cause the geth to reassess who was the bigger threat, and as such, redirect the focus of their units continuously between the two teams. Since we've had to skew the split more to one team, the second team no longer has the capacity to fight large numbers of geth for any extended amount of time. The flipside to this is that a smaller team can move quicker and evade the geth for longer periods of time while still being considered the bigger threat. This 'distraction team' will instead focus on retaining all of the geth's attention whilst continuously moving around, freeing up the payload team to swiftly move to the objective."
"Sounds like suicide to me," Kevin noted.
Siri continued. "These highlighted areas are various interconnected hallways and what look like smaller service tunnels. They each have many crossing paths, so the second team will have this map uploaded to them for reference when evading flanking geth and looking for new evasion paths. There are also a couple of ways to reach the server room through these, so the second team should try to meet up with the first team once the disablement device is in the process of being set up. It's our guess that the geth will not take kindly to us walking into their community home with a bomb. Things will probably get heavy at that point."
"Once the device is set," Tyr said, "the fourth and final phase begins. The simple objective there is to exfil to the Kellius and head straight for the relay. We don't know how the geth units will be affected as the disablement device continues to do its job, so we should be prepared for plenty of resistance. We also think the geth fleet will be crippled enough by the destruction of their source of neural links that we should just be able to fly on through, but we'll hold the stealth system as long as we can. Any questions?"
Ralik was the first to voice concern. "So we'll just be walking around the inside of their ship? What about alarms? Sensors?"
"Our suits have limited aftermarket signal scramblers built into them," Siri said. "It takes an incoming signal, be it communications or scans and redirects them elsewhere to hide the fact that there was anything actually there to be scanned. It only works on the small scale level of individuals, but you saw the effects yourself when we came aboard. Terra didn't know what we were despite the obvious nature of our environmental suits. You and Dolannus do not have any, but Tosh has been working with Arla on creating something for you two. As for the alarms, we should be able to avoid setting anything off as long as we don't come into contact with a geth patrol or physically interact with any electronic components."
"I've never been inside a geth structure before, but what if there are doors? Controlled by those very electronic components." Kevin asked.
"Tosh, hard at work as he has been over the past couple days, has that covered too," Siri responded. "There's a program he has built which forces a door into a power cycling mode. During that time, which is only a matter of seconds, you can open it and it will only appear to the geth that it lost power for a moment. We don't know how long before the geth figure that out, but it'll give us some time."
"Convenient," Ralik pointed out.
"You can thank admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh," Tosh said. "Any technology that plays with a geth subsystem has been provided by her research crew for purposes of field testing and experimentation. Or so she claims."
"Alright, you guys win. I'm done with the questions," Kevin said, hands up.
"The only matter left to address the teams," Tyr said to Siri.
"Indeed," Siri responded and turned to look at her team. "Second Lieutenant Arla'Tavval, since you and Kevin seem to be enjoying each other's company of late, you two will be the distraction team."
"You're serious, aren't you," Arla half-stated. Siri nodded and Arla let her head fall back some before looking to Kevin and then back to her captain. "Yes ma'am," she said in a dreary tone.
Tyr stepped forward. "It's not quite as simple as the captain makes it seem. You two were both recognized as the individuals most able to adapt to the dangerous and straining situations that team two demands."
While that flattered Kevin, it didn't appear to make any difference to Arla.
"Everyone else except for Welkas is on my team," Siri continued. "Gear up, people. This will be a very sensitive and direct mission. No deviance will be allowed. Tosh, that means no going off to collect data on the geth's internal hardware, understand?"
"Yes ma'am," Tosh responded neutrally.
"Dismissed," Siri said with a wave of the hand.
Everyone picked up to leave. Even Kevin, who had a habit of hanging around for a few extra words with someone stood and left the room as well. Not that it would have mattered. Siri and Tyr were leaving with them as they all headed for the cargo bay where their equipment was stored. The Kellius didn't have any place to designate as the armory, so everyone simply stored their gear in one of two crates off to the side of the bay.
The crew was silent as they gathered up all of their weapons, equipment, thermal clips and bomb segments. It was almost as if nobody wanted to add to the unspoken tension that was building. No one wanted to admit it, but it was difficult not to get anxious before a mission like this. They were walking into the heart of a massive geth ship. It was impossible not to think that something could go horribly wrong.
Kevin started taking mental stock of all his things so that he'd have a good idea of where he stood while on the field. One Kassa Fabrication pistol, modded. One Rokensov assault rifle. One knife. Three EMP grenades. Ten thermal clips, eight ejectable heat sinks a piece.
As Kevin was finishing up his mental list, Tosh approached him. "Here you go, Folner. An extrasuit scrambler. I'll get you and Dolannus a more permanent version later. Just stick it somewhere on your suit, preferably on the back."
Kevin took the flat, circular device from Tosh. It was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. "Thanks, Tosh. The captain had you working overtime the past few days, eh?"
He nodded and drew in a long breath. "Just following orders." Tosh then stepped away to give Ralik his as well.
"And one scrambler," Kevin said to himself, adding to his mental list. He reached behind his back and let the device stick to the suit above the weapon holster clip.
He moved over to stand next to Arla, who had also just finished gearing up. Her most notable pieces of equipment were the same as when he first saw her after leaving the whitewashed planet. A sniper rifle collapsed over her shoulder, a Rosenkov pistol at her hip and a bandolier full of thermal clips running shoulder to opposite waist down her torso.
"So I guess we get to be the bait," he said to her, his voice partially withheld.
"Are you with me, then, Folner?" She asked in similar volume.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Kevin responded, attempting to not be offended by such a question.
"I know you haven't exactly been excited for this mission. I just want to make sure you'll have my back out there."
"I'm not about to simply let a squadmate die just because I don't completely agree with the idea of being there. Don't take my word for it, though. You'll see when things get tough. I hope you can keep up when that happens."
Arla stared at Kevin for a bit longer before responding. "Good."
Just then, Bela approached Kevin and Arla with four brick-like objects in her hands. She was also decked out in all her gear, covered in dangling objects and explosives with her oversized launcher peering ominously over her head and her Rosenkov shotgun collapsed on the small of her back.
"Here. These will help you draw the geth's attention at a moment's notice."
"Explosives?" Arla asked.
"Remote controlled. These are my babies, so play nice with them. And make sure not to cut off an escape route with clumsy placement, okay?"
"Thanks, Bela. These will definitely help," Kevin said.
"Just don't die in there," Bela replied. "I don't envy you two right now. You've got a messy job ahead of you."
"Attention strike teams," Kar announced over the comms. "We are beginning our approach run now. Dropping speed to just below FTL."
"If you're geared up and ready to go, get to the briefing room and standby for deployment," the captain ordered.
"Yes ma'am," everyone replied.
Since everyone was just about ready anyways, everyone left the cargo bay at once and headed upstairs. As they headed up to the top deck, they could almost feel the inertial change from the engines shutting off. As they stepped up to the first deck and headed into the briefing room, the heard Kar announce once more.
"Emissions are now all within spectrum range. Engaging the stealth system."
"It'll be around an hour of drifting before we anywhere near close enough to make our next move," the captain stated. "If you need to eat something, do it now."
A lot of his squadmates took the opportunity to go grab some grub, but Kevin remained. His stomach wasn't feeling right anyways. He took a seat at the briefing table and waited patiently, anxiously, for the time to deploy to arrive. Ralik had also remained, and looked more uneasy than Kevin felt. He found that odd considering Ralik's past seemingly neutral stance towards all this.
"Hey, Ralik, you doing alright?" Kevin asked. It was too out of place for him not to ask.
"Yes. Just... I know we're about take part in this important mission and all. I can't bring myself to be ready to step through that airlock, Kevin."
"Well, why not? It's not like it's a moral conflict for you."
"It's just going to sound like I'm making an excuse, but you know why. It's like I need to prepare more. I need more things figured out in my head." Ralik started drumming his fingers together.
"Oh, I see what's going on. You're going to blame it on your 'condition'. It's a little late to be using that excuse now, man."
"Now you see why I am no longer part of the Special Tasks Group."
Kevin frowned. Talking Ralik into being ready wasn't going to work. He needed a way of getting him right in there when it came time to roll. The more he thought about how Siri operated during the quarian extraction, however, the more he decided that she probably wouldn't allow Ralik enough room to wiggle himself into a delay.
Even with the brief conversation with Ralik, it hardly seemed like he waited at all for the others to get back. Soon all his comrades were returning and Siri was heading up to the bridge to get a look at the geth fleet through the viewports. Tyr joined her as well, and Kevin found a reason to move from his chair.
When he stepped into the bridge, he went to stand behind Kar'Welkas as the young quarian prepared himself to handle one of the most precise piloting sessions he had ever performed. After no more than two minutes of staring at the distant sparkle of mass relay light reflecting off of the geth fleet, one of the terminals beeped. That particular terminal was quickly dominated by a screen depicting the current geth fleet layout.
"Initial scans are coming in. We should be getting an idea of what the fleet looks like soon," Kar noted. "As you can see, I spun the Kellius around to face forward so we can take active visual note."
As the Kellius silently sped towards the slowly enlarging sparkle of concentrated geth, the terminals continued to pour information over anyone stubborn enough to stare at their screen for more than a few seconds.
"Shut the scans down, Welkas," Siri ordered. "We're getting close now. We don't want them deducing that the scans are coming from an approaching source."
"Great timing, captain," Kar said. "We just got enough data to build a clearer render of the fleet."
Siri quickly sat herself in the chair to Kevin's left and started going through the terminal data. Eventually she switched to the render of the geth fleet and started a search for their target. As she searched, she briefly paused on geth ships whose configuration Kevin did not recognize. He reasoned that she was taking mental note of those ships for a later debrief with the Admiralty Board. Even with the frequent pauses in her search, it took her less than two minutes to lock down the location of the geth homeship in relation to the Kellius. This visual representation was far clearer than that of the old quarian data, but Kevin would wait to see the actual ship with his eyes before committing it to memory.
Soon the geth fleet was quickly enlarging in the viewports. Kar had his fingers poised to call down the reverse thrusters, but he waited. And waited. Before long, it looked as though they were about to fly full speed into a dense field of massive metal pieces, and probably die within seconds. Even the captain was expressing unease about his methods, slowly calling his name as they approached. Just after she finished, though, Kar hit the thrusters to full and the Kellius rocked a bit under the immense strain of suddenly having a powerful opposite force pull on it. The fast moving geth ships in the viewports slowed to a crawl just as the Kellius breached through the outside perimeter. Kar was a bold kid.
Kar then took full control of the Kellius' most minute movements. He was constantly working on something to smooth out the slow drift of the vessel. Siri relayed the data of the homeship's whereabouts to one of Kar's terminal screens and he promptly altered their course by means of short landing and docking thruster boosts with the occasional power to the thrusters to make a major and punctual change in direction. Despite his being younger than Kevin, he was handling the ship like a professional, each move seeming to be precalculated based on their immediate surroundings.
Once Kar cleared around a few geth transports to make the final stretch, the immense ship came into full sight of the viewports. It was, for all intents and purposes, massive. It's design was not unlike some of the cruiser-class ships that attacked the Citadel a while back, but its size, as Kevin correctly guessed, rivaled that of the great military dreadnoughts.
"Wow," Kevin said aloud. "And we're going to disable that? I was right, you guys really are insane."
Nobody said a word of retort to Kevin's remark. He wasn't sure if it was because they didn't want to admit it or if they were simply ignoring him in favor of focusing on the mission. As they drifted their way under the beast of a ship, it mattered less and less.
"There," Tyr said as he pointed to a small nub of an outcropping on the homeship's hull. "That's where we make our entrance."
Kar nodded and methodically maneuvered the ship around so that the external airlock door was lightly pressed against the hull of the homeship. The Kellius moved slowly, but smoothly. It was easy to see, even through his visor, that he was concentrating entirely on making the contact with the homeship firm, but as silent as possible. The distinctive sound of metal slowly grinding on metal could be heard throughout the bridge until Kar forced the docking magnets – the ones that usually held the boarding corridor to the ship – to turn on. All engines and thrusters shut off and the ship began to settle in place firmly against the geth ship's underbelly. When silence returned in full to the bridge, the sound of multiple held breaths being let free took over the room's ambiance.
"Well done, Welkas," the captain praised with a firm grip on Kar's shoulder. "The rest is up to us. Remember to keep an eye on the fleet's movements and watch for incoming directed scans. Keep us informed of any major changes."
"Yes ma'am," Kar confidently replied.
"Alright, teams," she continued. "Team one will use comms cycling algorithm five. Team two will use algorithm fifteen. Nine will be for cross-communication, but we should only use it if we need to. That should keep the geth from identifying or locating our transmissions for a quite a while."
The once friendly, personable captain was different now, much like she was back on L5288 in the wreck. She was giving orders quickly and cleanly like she had been doing it all her life. Efficiency and adaptability were becoming her only traits again. This mission was important to her – probably more than Kevin could ever know – and she showed it in the way she commanded her marines.
"Both teams, into the airlock. Rolush, Garloh, Merni, get that hull open. Be quick, but don't cut any hardlines. If your omni-tool tells you to stop, then stop. Dolannus, get over here. Don't let me see you hesitate like that again."
All at once, the three called stepped forward into the airlock while tapping on their omni-tools. There was a brilliant shower of sparks from three different sources as everyone crowded in with the door shutting behind them. The airlock began to cycle to compensate for the slow leak of atmosphere around the imperfect seal that was a hull pressed against a hull. With each of the three marines cutting a little over thirty percent their way clockwise, they eventually cut free a rounded square section of the hull big enough for one person to crouch through at a time.
"Tavval, Folner. On point," Siri said over the comms.
"Yes, ma'am," they replied in tandem while stepping forward.
The three cutters strained and pulled the not-so-near-weightless chunk of hull inside the airlock and moved aside for Kevin and Arla. This resulted in the higher-pressure airlock effectively venting into the geth ship, which apparently had a much lower atmospheric pressure. The quarian sniper crouched into the threshold first, scoping out the area just inside to make sure there was no welcoming party. Fortunately, there wasn't. Arla, who was expecting to be climbing up into the ship ended up jumping out and falling ever so slowly towards the aft of the vessel, which should have been a wall. Her feet hit the ground with a light tap, and a faintly visible layer of particles resembling dust kicked up and swirled at her base.
In next was Kevin. He peeked his head inside to get a feel for the type of environment he'd be working in as he pulled out his assault rifle and held it at the ready. His first observation was that it was hardly lit. It all had some level of blue-hued ambient lighting thanks to small bar-like lights around the corners of the room, but that light was suppressed to say the least. The second thing he noticed was the near lack of artificial gravity. As he hopped out of the hole in the hull, he too fell towards what he originally perceived as the wall of the room, but he fell so lightly and so slowly that it was obvious that the gravity here was well below what he was used to.
After a quick look about the room, he found that the ship seemed to be designed with this direction of gravity in mind. It was then that he remembered something about dreadnought class ships done by his own species: The mass effect gravity well in huge ships has always been at the far aft of the ship where the engines rest because large ship deck design is perpendicular to the axis of thrust. Normally this was because the inertial effects of thrust could be used in tandem with artificial gravity to pull the crew to the floor and reduce spaceborn atrophy. But why would a geth, a synthetic being with no worry of atrophy, do this as well?
The answer, to Kevin, was easier to come by than others. All the geth he knew of used a bipedal or quadpedal design. Such designs would be horribly inefficient in zero gravity, so having a small amount to make use of the design was a much simpler solution than modifying all geth units to operate efficiently in both gravity and lack thereof. When the ship is moving, the thrust takes care of all the gravity-like effects since the amount the geth need to walk was minimal at best. Since they weren't moving, though, they used mass effect generated gravity like most ships. With those questions answered, he focused on the mission.
Kevin switched the algorithm to nine, the one for team cross-communication. "Entry is clear. No alarms, no hostiles. Gravity is about point two to that of the ship, centered at the aft. Atmospheric pressure is..." He glanced to his omni-tool for the readings. "Barely there. About point one to that of the ship."
"Received," radioed Tyr.
"Just barely enough to radiate heat away from machinery," Arla noted.
Kevin and Arla moved to the center of the large, empty room and pulled up the map on their omni-tools. There were five ways out of the room – two to the left, two to the right and one dead ahead. They opted for a door on the left furthest from their entryway, which, according to their map, should eventually lead to a maintenance tunnel network. That should give them the opportunity to get far enough away from the other team for the distraction to be effective. Assuming it even came to that.
Siri radioed to both teams."Team one is entering. Remember people, keep an eye on your heat. This thin atmosphere won't do well in venting your heatsinks during heavy combat. Keep cross-communication at a minimum. Let's get this done, marines." The captain didn't pull any punches. She wanted this done right.
The door that Kevin and Siri selected was sealed shut, likely as an automatic reaction to the small, but sudden change in pressure from the airlock venting into the room. Arla activated her omni-tool's cutter and started cutting her way down the center split of the door. Meanwhile, Kevin made ready to be sure the hallway beyond was clear once it was open. Seconds later, her cutting was done and she pulled the door apart. Kevin quickly spun off the wall to aim down through the opening door. Fortunately, that area was also empty.
Arla pulled out her sniper rifle and they both started on their trek into the barely known. They looked back for a moment to see Bela and the captain hopping out of the hole in the hull before turning to face each other. Kevin flicked his head to indicate that they should get moving. He didn't know if they would end up actually encountering geth troops after such a seemingly silent entry, but he wanted to be prepared. In his mind, there was precious little time to set up their little distraction.
Down at the end of the dimly lit passageway, they came to a dead end. Their maps indicated that this was a maintenance tunnel drop off and enter point, but they saw nothing but irregular walls and an occasional blue light. Arla elbowed Kevin in the side to get his attention and pointed up. She was pointing to a hole in the ceiling that looked like it was a hatch without a door. Kevin nodded to her direction and executed a jump. The very low gravity in the ship allowed him to almost float right to the aperture. He grasped the edge with one hand and pulled himself up enough to get a look inside.
It was a tunnel, alright, but not quite as he would have come to expect. It wasn't perfectly circular at all like the entrance suggested. Instead, it looked less like a designed quick access tunnel and more like empty space between rooms and machinery that someone could pass through. The synthetic equivalent to natural cave paths linking underground structures in the form of hardly used alternate routes. More importantly, it was a tight space to move through. Kevin estimated that he wouldn't be able to do more than crouch-walk his way through. With his initial inspection done, he hoisted himself into the tunnel with relatively little effort.
His estimates were right. Crouch-walking would be the extent of his mobility here, and even that was hard to pull off. He had to wonder how geth bodies, as bulky around the shoulders as they were, might have been able to navigate these tunnels quickly enough for it to be considered a 'maintenance tunnel'. This made him wonder if that's what it actually was in the first place. There wasn't a lot of room for wondering, though. There was hardly enough for squatting. Once he crawled his way in a tad further, Arla hopped up and climbed in as well, forcing him to move in further to avoid being knocked over.
Both of them holstered their main guns and pulled out their pistols. They hoped they wouldn't encounter trouble while in such tight space since their main guns were too bulky to use, but simply going unarmed through enemy territory was definitely out of the question. Step by step, they each inched their way along the small, irregular ever-changing corridor. As they got well beyond the entrance, Kevin began to notice how quiet everything had been since they had arrived. The only sounds to be heard were the ones they generated, and those seemed to echo endlessly in the tunnel. Whenever they stopped moving, though, Kevin could hear a faint, perpetual hum. It sounded like the source was on a far end of the ship, but no matter where they moved, the hum never changed intensity, pitch or direction. An omni-present, mechanical hum that followed them like a shadow watching just over their shoulder.
As they progressed, they noticed that the space they followed was even less like a tunnel than they thought. Not only did it fail to follow any sense of the traditional enclosed nature of tunnels, but its walls, floor or ceiling were missing on several occasions. Kevin and Arla could look down into various rooms through what seemed to be intentionally unfinished portions of a ceiling or wall. Not in the sense that wires were exposed or pieces were hanging, but the 'holes' seemed to be as irregular in shape as the corridor. Arla and Kevin silently exchanged agreement that those would make easy entrance points for any smaller geth at any point in time. With that in mind, they picked up the pace.
They soon came to a six-way junction in the tunnel. Their maps only indicated that there were four ways, but the direction they intended on following down a couple of decks was there. The inconsistency was a moot point for the moment. They followed the tunnel down by applying friction against the wall wherever they could touch to control their laughably slow fall speed. After they dropped about four decks, they pulled themselves into a side tunnel similar to the one they dropped from.
They spent another six minutes or so creeping their way into the heart of the geth ship before they paused to collectively decided on a room on their map to place some of the explosives. The room they picked was connected to a vast network of halls and tunnels that could easily be used to help them evade most, if not all of the geth that would no doubt try to swarm and flank them. Kevin estimated about two more minutes of crawling along before they reached that room. Just before he and Arla resumed their trek, though, they heard something out of place. Echos of fast paced metal taps in the tunnel coming from the direction they were heading in. It was the first noise of any kind they had heard since their arrival, so their first reaction was to freeze and try and gather more information on the source.
Arla and Kevin looked to each other to see if one of them had figured it out yet. Apparently, neither had. They couldn't see the source of the noise, but that was expected. The twists, turns and irregular nature of this tunnel didn't give them much in the way of visibility. One thing was evident, though – whatever was causing the noise, it was heading their way, and fast. Kevin immediately searched his surroundings for some place to move to. Somewhere to hide, or at least get out of the way. He could probably destroy what was coming with his biotics, but they weren't yet in a position where they wanted any attention. Getting noticed now wasn't in their best interest.
Kevin noticed a nook above him bigger than his body but smaller than the reach of his limbs. With as quiet a motion as possible, he leapt up into the space of the nook and stretched out his arms and legs to wedge himself in place. With the gravity as low as it was, it didn't take a huge amount of effort to remain there. He watched Arla backtrack somewhere out of his sight due to the edge of his nook, and he hoped she had an idea of where to go.
The tapping noise echoed louder and louder. It was less than forty five seconds, by Kevin's count, before the source arrived. As the object passed below him at surprising speed, Kevin got a short but full on look. It was a geth, as expected, but not like the typical infantry or combat type that he was familiar with. It was much more slender, lacking in armor entirely. It crawled on all fours, but its 'fingers' and 'toes' were longer than normal geth, even to a creepy degree. It reminded him of the geth 'hoppers' that no one had really seen in any number since the attack on the Citadel, but its features were slightly different. Its body was covered in tools which appeared to Kevin to be modular in nature, as if it could pull them off its body to be used in hand. The last major thing he noticed was how it moved. It crawled very low to the ground and its appendages moved fast enough so that it almost appeared to be slithering along. So that's how they used this small space so efficiently, Kevin thought.
Whatever it actually was, it failed to notice Kevin and speedily crawled on. As the tapping grew fainter and fainter, Kevin had to assume that Arla had also found a way to avoid detection. This was good news. He waited another minute in his nook just to be sure that it didn't have backup or turn around to see what it missed. By then, the echoing taps had all but been overtaken by the ever present hum of the ship, and Arla appeared under him. She motioned for him to stop playing around and get moving. Kevin dropped from his hiding place and swiftly resumed his course to the room they picked out for the explosives.
Two minutes later, Arla and Kevin were standing over a hole that occupied most of the floor of the tunnel as well as the left wall. They couldn't seem much of the room from here, but what they could see indicated a lack of activity, like most everywhere else. Kevin never expected a geth homeship to be so devoid of movement. He then reminded himself of what geth were. They were artificial intelligence. Programs and processes. To have to inhabit the synthetic bodies so widely known and exist in a universe that doesn't exactly move at the speed of light must seem as hugely inefficient to beings of pure data. He wondered if the geth ever felt frustration at that fact, or contempt for the constructs they controlled. Could they even feel those things?
Kevin snapped himself out of the untimely philosophical examination of the nature of AI and once again focused on his mission. He laid down on the floor of the tunnel and let his head fall into the room below. Unfortunately, the hole seemed to be depressed into the ceiling of the room he aimed to observe and the only thing he gained a view of from here was a wider portion of empty floor. Kevin pulled his head back up and signaled to Arla that he was going to drop in and that she should wait for his okay before following. She nodded and Kevin hopped over the ledge.
His decent was slow. Painfully so. The few seconds it took for his view to clear the ceiling were full of anxiousness – he wasn't the type of guy to just jump in blindly. What he saw around him after that, though, filled his heart with instant dread and caused adrenaline to shoot into his bloodstream.
He was slowly dropping into a room surrounded by standing geth.
He pulled his gun up and at the ready, but he quickly noticed that none of them were looking in his direction. In fact, each of the thirty or so geth in the room were like zombies – motionless and seemingly completely unaware that he had even entered the room. Additionally, they were all facing or perhaps focusing on large objects jutting from the floor. These objects were taller than the geth, and had to be a couple meters in diameter. It didn't look like much to Kevin outside that. Finally, his boots came into contact with the floor, generating the slightest of taps. Kevin kept his posture defensive, his pistol ready to fire at the first sign of threat.
But none came.
The geth remained motionless and inattentive. At first, he was utterly confused. He was standing amongst a host of enemies on their very own turf, and they were ignoring him. He then went back to his extremely recent thought about the nature of AI. Programs and processes. Was it that the geth troops around him were effectively empty? Could geth leave their bodies and download to a server? If that was the case and they uploaded themselves elsewhere, that meant that they wouldn't be aware of his presence no matter how close to the synthetic bodies he got. Not to say he was interested in testing that theory, of course. They were ignoring him, and that was good enough for now.
He signaled for Arla and she was on her way down only seconds later. Her initial reaction to seeing all the geth in the room was much the same as Kevin's, despite him standing there for at least a minute. When she got a better look at what was going on, she confirmed Kevin's suspicions.
"Looks like all these geth are uploaded to their central server a few decks away. I think those big things they are standing around are uplink nodes."
"Scared the piss out of me," Kevin admitted and let loose an overdramatized shudder. "Let's get these explosives placed. I get the feeling it's only a matter of time until we need to use them. Uh, will they wake up if we set these?"
"As long as we don't touch them," she warily replied. "They might be monitoring for physical changes, at most. As far as I'm told, they don't really maintain any connection with the platform when uploaded to another medium. It's so another host of processes can use it if need be."
"Alright, then let's tag this place and move on," Kevin said as he pulled out a brick of explosives and started walking towards one of the nodes.
Arla suddenly reached out and grabbed his arm to stop him in place. "Wait! Stop!"
"What?" Kevin asked in a hushed tone.
"Look at the floor. See the glowing areas?"
Kevin looked down and saw a faintly glowing section of the floor, perhaps around ten inches wide, running from a wall off to the side to the node he was approaching. "What in the..."
"I heard about this from research done on a big downed geth ship a while back. The rooms like this one with the nodes aren't made of the same material as the others. It's made of a type of semi-conductor unknown to us that allows large amounts of data to pass through it like a hardline wire. It'll change position and direction depending on where it is sending and receiving data. If you step on it..."
"It disturbs the connection and alerts them to our presence. Got it."
Kevin drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. There were several nodes in the room, each with it's own data stream sprawling across the floor and walls. If he even so much as accidentally tapped a corner with his heel, they'd suddenly have thirty geth bearing down on them within the second. He took extra care when stepping around and over them, as did Arla. They stuck the majority of the explosives on the nodes with the highest concentrations of geth around them. As he worked, Kevin noticed that every single geth trooper body here had a weapon of some sort. Most had the widely familiar pulse rifle, but some had others. One even looked like a geth version of a shotgun. Kevin had to wonder if it was some sort of annoying default setting that every geth outside of maintenance units have a weapon. This certainly didn't make anything easier.
Once everything was set and armed, Kevin and Arla met at the door leading to the hallway they wanted to move out to. It was locked, seemingly by default, but Arla was already working on it. She accessed the program that Tosh had provided earlier and caused the door to powercycle, at which point she made it open.
The hallway outside that room was identical appearance-wise as the others they had seen. Clearly the geth did not need landmarks to differentiate anything, nor did they have the ability to appreciate aesthetic appeal. There were things bulging out all over the place – opaque tubes jutting from the floor and ceiling, huge capacitors lining the sides of the hall and terminals that lacked haptic adaptive interfaces – but overall the hallways looked pretty much the same. If it weren't for that mostly-accurate map of theirs, they'd be lost for certain. Occasionally a particular hall would surprise them with a collection of crates or electronics, which were good for cover, but useless to them otherwise.
A few hallways down from where they set most of the explosives, they came to a four-way junction. Arla turned to Kevin and nodded. "We should set the rest here," she said. "There's a lot of semi-exposed electrical systems here, so it'll do more damage than just sticking them to a wall."
"And it might mess this junction enough to severely slow the flow of geth if we start to get overrun. I guess the decision to be made is whether we-"
Kevin's statement was cut short by the sound of Tyr's voice over the comms.
"Team two, this is team one. We've got ourselves a mess."