Chapter Twenty-Six: The Biggest Lie

The VI's fixed smile had grown irritating. "Do you require anything else, Dr. Baynham?"

"No." Shepard started to turn. "Wait. Yes."

"How can I be of assistance?"

"Within the company, who has records of the thorian project?"

"I apologize," it said, without ever varying its placidly helpful tone. "I am unable to access those records on account of your probation."

She blinked. "My… what?"

"You were placed under administrative restrictions following your vocal and persistent objections to established company policy regarding the thorian project, for which you were tasked with overseeing the health and safety of the Zhu's Hope experimental group."

"Right. How silly of me," Shepard said, distantly. Ian's defense of Lizbeth and her prevarication now made a certain degree of sense. Lizbeth was trying to protect the colonists- even if her reasoning was flawed.

Tali pressed forward. "Shepard, we've got to get that barrier down. It's interfering with communications and we need to warn the ground team what they're dealing with."

Shepard couldn't agree more. "We're done here. Move out."

They left the VI nattering behind them and pushed further into the complex. This was the laboratory wing. Standing-height counters graced with all manner of instrumentation were installed within the long, shallow chambers Prothean architects evidently favored. None of it was operational. All emergency power was diverted to critical resources, like the VI overseeing records and security, with none left for the experiments.

Liara, a scientist to her core, looked around in dismay. "This was a place of research and learning. Now it's a slaughterhouse."

Several bodies of colonists too slow for geth rifles lay up against the cabinetry. Garrus bent and closed their eyes. "We're not likely to find any survivors in this base."

Shepard shook her head. "The only thing we can do for them now is finish this. We need to find the source of the barrier."

Lizbeth's ident pass proved invaluable as they moved from one area to the next. Eventually, they stumbled upon two geth units tending to a room that once held ExoGeni servers. The synthetics fell quickly under the squad's surprise attack, but they weren't Shepard's deepest concern.

"Goddess," Liara breathed, staring. The thick walls were pierced by metal claws larger than their Mako, where the silvery geth ship had dug into the side of the facility.

Tali bent and examined cables running from the claws to disappear down unknown hallways. "The geth ship is almost certainly powering the shield, but I don't see a way aboard."

Garrus, not one for caution, let off a few rounds. The only result was to send bullets ricocheting into the ceiling. "It's going to take more ordnance than we've got to make it let go."

Shepard, however, was fixated on a blindingly well-lit area sheltered by the claws, forming the skeleton of a half-dome. There were two bodies piled within it before a terminal limbed with the same odd blue light as the jamming tower back at Zhu's Hope. The downed geth were tending it when they arrived. "What in the hell is that?"

Tali shied away from it, appalled. "Keelah… it looks like some kind of… shrine."

Liara wandered closer. "It does bear the hallmarks of a temple or sacred site."

"Maybe it's some kind of complicated comm device." She chewed her lip. The theory was plausible, but it was difficult to make out any features due to the intensity of the light. "Reapers are their gods, right? So what hell does this have to do with that?"

"It's got to be something else," Garrus argued. "Why would synthetics mess around with religion? They know their creators- they're the quarians."

Tali shuddered. "I don't know. I don't like it."

Shepard was tempted to kick the terminal over, it was that disturbing, but the thought of touching it made her stomach shrivel. Just like dragon's teeth.She turned away from the tableau. The simple motion was harder than expected. Her brain jumped to a memory of Darcy babbling before the jamming tower, but the exact connection eluded her. "I don't think we should spend more time here than necessary."

"Agreed." Garrus pointed with his rifle. "These stairs lead down to the shuttle bay, where they brought in deliveries from Zhu's Hope. If nothing else we should find the shuttles there."

The squad continued onward. Here and there, they found more evidence of geth hostilities, whether it was fire damage, bullet holes, or the more human relics- bodies, blood, and abandoned spaces thrown into chaos. They also found actual geth holding out in defensible areas, along with additional krogan. The way they rearranged the offices to form barricades and barriers infuriated Shepard. First they invade and disrupt these people's lives in a way that would never be forgotten, long after this was over, and then they repurpose all these very human things to entrench themselves within the facility. It was sickening.

Eventually, they reached the shuttle bay, which doubled as a warehouse. Shepard kept close to the wall, trying to get a sense of the terrain. She guessed that the geth would be unwilling to leave a major tactical resource like the colony's shuttle fleet unguarded.

She was correct. Patrolling the warehouse floor was a destroyer unit. Standing nearly four meters tall and armed to teeth, they were formidable enemies even without factoring in the close quarters. The warehouse was so stuffed with unopened crates, shuttles, and monitoring terminals that there was scarcely room to move. It was overseeing a dozen-odd smaller units toting everything from assault rifles to flame throwers to rocket launchers.

I really hate these bastards. She scuttled across and took cover on the stairs leading down to the floor. Garrus followed. Tali and Liara set up around the entryway and gave her the nod. Shepard took aim at one of the rocket-kitted geth towards the back and opened fire.

There were a lot of synthetics. The noise level rose immediately to a level that rendered ears useless. While she managed to take out her target in the opening exchange, thereafter she was forced to spend more time in cover than firing back. Their stray shots peppered the far wall. Between the shuttles, the hydraulic pipelines for the cranes, and the ugly claws of the geth ship, nobody was lacking for cover. Shepard thought with exasperation that they were doing more damage to the room than each other.

Liara created a mass effect field that cleared some of the mess, but it caught as many crates as geth. It did, however, allow Shepard a clear shot at the destroyer. The first took out its blue flashlight face. The following drove it back several paces. Liara flung a ball of dark energy that hit it squarely in the chest, causing it to stumble and fall.

Meanwhile, Tali was crouched over her omni-tool, doing everything in her power to interfere with the geth's electrical systems. Her familiarity with geth technology was as obvious as it was valuable. She knew exactly where they were vulnerable, and a week's worth of heavy fighting against them at Zhu's Hope, not to mention examining the remains, had done nothing to dull her skill. Her steady work was keeping their shields down and allowing the others to pick away at their hardware.

Shepard and Garrus squatted side-by-side and did their best to keep the geth off their friends, who were doing all they could to control the battlefield. There was a tense moment as one of the lighter geth units slipped around out of their line of sight, but that same maneuver left it very exposed as it attempted to charge up the stair. It wasn't long before the four teammates were the only ones left moving.

Shepard picked her way down over the debris. Someone from ExoGeni was going to have a massive clean-up job before this place would be habitable again. Where their bullets had pierced the great shuttle bay doors, dingy sunshine spilled through, casting the warehouse in the yellow of old attics, dust motes stirred up by the heavy fighting dancing in the light. Several of the shuttles were likely damaged beyond repair. These weren't military spacecraft with armor plating, and the geth were carrying some serious ordnance. Shepard was thankful that eezo cores were far more inert than their chemical predecessors.

Tali paused when they reached the destroyer to relieve it of its memory core. As Shepard understood it, each type of geth had a unique electronic design as well as the more obviously unique carapace. What made less sense was when Tali tried to explain that each unit also possessed individual characteristics, much as humans had roughly the same "hardware and software" but cultivated distinct personalities. A few AI had crossed her path over the years, and in her experience they had about as much personality as her ship. Sure, they were distinguishable from each other, but not in ways that could not be explained by differences in programming.

Some of the crew had taken to debating in their downtime whether the geth were sentient beings or simply advanced machines. Shepard had a hard time grasping the relevance. Were the times the Alliance sent her to fight batarians or turians or other human beings supposed to feel markedly different? If it was shooting at her, she felt little remorse in shooting back, regardless of whether it was toting a brain.

She reached the claw embedded at the far end of the shuttle bay. "We've got to find a way to make it let go of the building."

Liara glanced at the shuttle fleet. "Could we overload one of the eezo cores?"

"Only if you wanted to take out half the building with it." Tali was bemused. "But that gives me an idea. Does anyone see the control console for those bay doors?"

Shepard understood immediately what Tali was after. The claw closest to them was snaked in through an open door, massive in scope. If they could bring it down with enough force, it might damage the claw sufficiently to weaken the ship's hold. "That ship is incredibly heavy and these claws are tiny relative to its bulk. Holding it vertical like that has got to be precarious."

"It won't take much," Tali agreed.

"Over here," Garrus called, powering up a console along the back wall. There was a groan of hydraulics coming back online. Tali hurried over and began to interface with her omni-tool.

The turian gave Shepard a sidelong glance. "So. Still think these colonies can stand defenseless and wait for the government to save them?"

She shook her head. "You just don't give up, do you."

"ExoGeni was supposed to protect them until military help could arrive, and look how well that worked out."

"If ExoGeni had followed procedure, the Alliance would have been alerted to the problem as soon as Feros comm traffic stopped. A scouting ship would have arrived within two days, and the necessary support soon thereafter. We're going this alone because I don't have time to wait for them to show up."

"Procedure." He said it like a dirty word.

"How would you have it, Garrus?" Shepard asked, exasperated. "Gangs of armed civilians making up their own self-serving rules in the name of defending the colony?"

"As soon as you take people out of the equation and put 'corporation' or 'bureaucracy' in their place, everything goes to hell. ExoGeni is acting in its own best interests. You can never expect it to do otherwise." He sighed. "Anyway, that disturbs me less than the fact that it would be three days or more before real Alliance support arrived. There's always so many regulations and red tape tying everything down."

"You're right." She shook her head. "It is slower than anyone would like. But it's the best we've got. Not for nothing have at least four completely distinct civilizations come up with very similar answers to this problem. That should tell you something about how tricky it actually is."

"It's been a long time since asari, turians, or salarians expanded into unsettled space in any official capacity," he acknowledged. "I've always admired that about humanity. You never let comfort stop you from doing anything."

Liara offered her a warm smile. "You're explorers at heart. Since the Relay 314 Incident, everyone in the galaxy has been wondering what humanity brings to the table. It's this. Tenacity, curiosity, drive… I admit I did not truly understand before finding myself aboard the Normandy."

The corner of Shepard's mouth twitched. "Don't tell me you thought we were big bad bullies like the rest of them."

"Perhaps." Her own lips quirked. "The reality turned out to be far more nuanced."

"What, you mean you don't want to gobble up the galaxy one race at a time?" Garrus teased. "Better not tell Udina."

"If Garrus and Shepard are quite done sniping." Tali rejoined them, crossed her arms and sat back on her heels. "Honestly if I'd wanted to listen to political arguments I would have stayed with the Migrant Fleet."

Garrus grinned. "Just trying to make you feel at home."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "You have something, Tali?"

"I think so." She gestured at the console controlling the hydraulics. "If we back up pressure in the system at several key points, and overload it with very precise timing, we might be able to slam down the shuttle bay door. It may force the ship to loosen its grasp."

"Sounds good. Set it up."

"A word of warning. There is some possibility that the ship may damage the structure of the building by hanging on as it slides off." Her luminous eyes blinked behind her purple-tinted mask. "I suggest everybody stand back."

"Will do." Shepard and the others retreated to the stairs, shortly joined by Tali, who had programmed the console appropriately.

She spent the next minute twisting her hands and fretting. "I don't know if I set everything up correctly. I had to override several safety procedures. And I'm not very familiar with proprietary human technology. It's possible that I mixed up several of the sub-"

At that moment, the door came crashing down like the fist of a god. There was a scream of tortured metal, a shower of sparks, and suddenly the giant, severed claw was lying on the ground.

The four of them took a few seconds to reflect on that.

"Holy shit," said Shepard succinctly.

"Damn." Garrus shook his head. "That's gotta sting-"

The ship wasn't quite done yet. With a slow, momentous groan of crumbling concrete, the second claw lying in the bay slid out, like the calving of a glacier, drawing a foot-deep gouge as it tore loose. It left behind a hole in the building nearly large enough to fly through.

There was a horrible scraping sound, and the daylight shining through the warehouse's newest door was momentarily extinguished by the titanic slide of a slivery mass moving at some speed. In a matter of seconds, it was gone. Shepard counted in her head waiting for the crash, but it never came. It was a very long way down.

Liara stared, her blue eyes nearly wide enough to see white all the way around. "Was that… was that the geth ship?"

"Was is the key word here." Shepard clapped the quarian on the back. "Good grief, Tali'Zorah. I think you earned your keep today."

Tali was still in shock. Her mask swung towards Shepard and back towards the gaping hole.

Liara's brow bunched, worried. "I didn't hear it hit ground. You don't think it recovered?"

"Probably what, a hundred-fifty meters down?" Garrus clicked his mandibles. "No, never."

Shepard concurred. "That's not nearly enough distance to recover from that kind of dive."

Tali finally found her voice. "Good riddance," she said, fervently.

It was then that Shepard realized what she wasn't seeing. "There's no barrier over the wall. Looks like we were right- the ship was powering it."

"We can finally warn Zhu's Hope about that creature." Liara beamed.

Garrus, however, was thinking along the same lines as Shepard. "It was the geth ship? Not Saren's ship?"

Shepard cursed. "Fuck. He's not even here, is he. That's why we couldn't find his dreadnought on any of the scans. He delegated this to the geth alone."

"It doesn't matter. We have what he was after, and we got to it before his army."

Liara shuddered. "I dread what he planned to do with it. I don't want to think of someone like Saren being able to subdue minds at will."

Something about the situation felt off to Shepard. Her stomach was still curled up tight. He has an entire army already. He's not interested in domination, so why fixate on a mind-controlling plant?

Though come to think of it, she hadn't wasted much thought on his motives. They seemed irrelevant. What would drive anyone, regardless of how sadistic or racist, to usher in something like the reapers? In a game of galactic destruction, Saren would lose as much as anyone. It was senseless.

And she was wasting time. Shepard activated her comm link. "Shepard to Normandy."

"Fucking finally!" Joker sounded anxious. "Commander, you've got to get your ass back here ASAP. We've got a situation."

"Give me the rundown." She was moving before he stopped talking. Her squad, not privy to the conversation, trailed behind in confusion.

"The colonists lost their freaking minds, is what happened."

/\/\/\/\/\

Earlier:

Hana Murakami still hadn't left the crane control terminal. More than that, Lieutenant Alenko had been unable to approach the outlier module again, due to the increased scrutiny of the other Zhu's Hope colonists. It was the strangest thing. None of them had spoken to Murakami but somehow every time he tried to get away, one of them managed to waylay him. Once or twice he would call a coincidence, but a dozen times was a correlation.

"There is something weird going on here," he muttered to himself.

"You're telling me," Wrex rumbled, his keen ears overhearing. "This place smells wrong. These people act wrong. Like a pack of varren but with more brains."

"I'm surprised at you, Wrex. I figured after a couple centuries of merc work, you would have seen just about everything."

"I have. That's why I'm worried." He snorted. "If this was a regular sort of job, I would have beat tracks out of here two days ago."

Alenko glanced at a pair of colonists guarding the hall. They stared back. "You think we should leave?"

"I think Shepard told us to stay put, but sometimes the situation changes. There's more of them than us if it comes down to it."

The lieutenant thought about what she said, rubbed his nose and looked away. "Actually she ordered me to protect the ship and the ground crew, and if we could defend the colony in the bargain, great."

Wrex blinked. There was a note of approval in his voice. "And here I was starting to think she was some kind of idealist."

"She keeps her priorities straight." He hesitated. "She really wants to nail Saren to the wall. It's more than completing the mission or defending the Alliance. I'm worried she's becoming obsessed."

The krogan grunted, agreeing, and a dry grin crossed his face. "Shepard's found an enemy worthy of her. It's a good hunt. You don't get many like this in a lifetime."

"That's an… emotional way of putting it."

"With enough training anyone can fight by the book. And anyone can fight when they're cornered. But the best fights, the ones you sing about later, come between artists of the craft at the peak of their talents. That's Shepard and Saren." Wrex laughed. "Even if I didn't have my own bone to pick, I think I would've come just to watch."

Alenko wasn't impressed. "If you say so."

"You don't have any idea." Wrex pointed at him. "You really are an idealist. You fight because you think it's the right thing to do. I fight because I don't know any other way. Fighting an unworthy enemy is like squashing a bug. There's no honor in it. There's not even any fun in it."

He thought about. It was uncomfortably close to feeling like truth. Fighting geth bored Shepard. Abduction, murder, invasion- none of it fazed her. But Saren's audacity, the gall of tromping over her space and harming her people, that got under her skin. She spent a good deal of time trying to get inside his head, figure out how he thought, trying to guess his next move. Hatred warred with fascination.

But that was different from what Wrex was describing, recklessly waging war for lack of anything better to do. A hint of sarcasm entered his tone. "I'm sorry it frustrates you."

Wrex sat back, adjusting his shotgun. "You have to savor the good fights. That's all." He glanced up and his grin widened. "And I think you like that about her. You've never experienced that kind of relentless ferocity and you're curious what it feels like."

Alenko was spared answering when Serviceman Bakari came running up. "Sir, you need to hear this."

"Report." His brow wrinkled. "You look excited."

"Yes, sir. I've been listening in on geth comm chatter, using Tali's decryption program. It's fascinating, you know- they use a kind of inverted form of the Khouri-Chute algorithm, only it's-"

"Maybe we can have the details another time. What did you hear?"

Bakari refocused. "Right. It seems they're retreating, sir. Falling back. All of them."

Alenko blinked, taken aback. "I guess Shepard got through. This is better than we hoped."

He started to raise his hand to his ear, to call out an order. Then the two colonists at the hall abruptly went blank, their faces and body language wiped of all expression. Their weapons drooped in their hands.

That caught Wrex's attention. He raised his shotgun reflexively. "What the hell-"

Alenko's mind flashed to the crane, and the hab module. This will not end well. "Take cov-"

The colonists opened fire.

/\/\/\/\/\

"-and that's when everything went to hell, ma'am. You picked a bad time to go quiet." Joker was trying to sound casual, but relief colored every word.

Shepard started to run, heading for the exit and the Mako. "I need a status update. Did the ground crew make it to the ship?"

"They regrouped and made a full retreat. Bakari and two of the marines were injured. Chakwas is patching them up, but it's going slow, on account of her wrist getting all smashed up."

"What? How?"

"That colonist we were keeping in the med bay? David? Yeah, he kind of went crazy. She managed to lock him in Liara's lab."

"Get Khaledi and Crosby to help her. They've got battlefield first responder training." There was flight of stairs. She sat on the smooth concrete guard wall and slid down, to pick up a little speed, and hit the bottom running. "Is the ship secure?"

"Well, the colonists followed the ground team back, and now they're beating on the hull with their hands, rifle butts, whatever's available, barbarian-style. Occasionally shoot at us. You know, standard sticks and stones stuff." It would be funny in other circumstances.

"Well, they can't do any real damage. Don't hurt them if you can avoid it. This isn't their fault."

"Sure, Commander- it's not like they've been drinking the special kool-aid or anything." Joker was in disbelief. "They're nuts and they're shooting at us."

"I'm not kidding. There's a life form on this planet that's turning them into mind slaves, and now that the geth are leaving, it wants us dead. That's what ExoGeni was hiding. That's what Saren wanted." She hurried through the exit and splashed along the tunnel where they found Lizbeth. "We're going to take a shuttle back just as soon as I can find someone to fly it. Hold position. Shepard out."

Garrus grabbed her arm. "Shepard, what the hell is going on?"

"Once we knocked out the geth ship, I think the thorian decided the best way to wrap up this mess was to kill the last of the witnesses. Everyone made it out but the situation is deteriorating rapidly."

Liara volunteered, "I can fly a shuttle."

"Great. Do you know the launch codes that will release it from the electromagnetic clamps?"

"Well, no."

"There's no time to hack it. ExoGeni's running a cheap-ass tech mill using labor bought with a pack of lies, and that's exactly why the equipment that might conceivably get someone out of this hellhole will be locked down tight. And there's no time to take the Mako back over that sorry excuse for a road."

They made it up out of the tunnels and located the Mako. Shepard waited impatiently for it to power up before throwing it in gear and peeling down the ramp. Against all logic, this model of tank liked to bounce, and the ceiling wasn't that high. It took concentration to keep it from banging against the roof, which was quite irritating, as it kept her from fully enumerating the ways she was going to twist these ExoGeni bastards into pretzels. They lied to me to hide a dangerous discovery and the breaking of about three dozen colonial AND galactic laws, they used the colonists they promised a new start as test subjects, and my crew got caught in the crossfire.

She hadn't asked Joker about the severity of the injuries. This was largely because she suspected she would need Jeong alive for at least the next twenty minutes.

The Mako slammed to a stop and she jumped out. It caught her squad by surprise and they fumbled after, trying to follow. Shepard didn't bother to wait. Jeong had the security team back at their posts. The guards half-heartedly raised their weapons as she stalked down the ramp.

"You need to stop right there, Commander," Kelm ordered. The security chief didn't sound very sure of himself.

Shepard flashed him a glare that should have left him a smoking ash imprint on the far wall. "If you want me to stop, I dare you to try."

Kelm weighed ExoGeni's ability to make his life difficult in the long term against Shepard's promise to make it difficult in the extreme short term, and made the wiser choice. He stepped to the side and saluted smartly. "No, ma'am."

"Where the fuck is Jeong?"

The tiny middle-manager was standing in the middle of the garage, pale and sweating, waving his gun wildly every time the other refugees so much as twitched. They were clustered together in a far corner. Juliana Baynham was standing at the forefront with a look of absolute iron, cautious, but not at all cowed by Jeong's display. Lizbeth, equally pale, stood just behind her. She swallowed as Shepard came into view.

"Everyone just shut up! Stay where you are!" Jeong whirled on the spot and leveled the gun at the commander. "I suppose it was too much to hope the geth would kill you."

Shepard didn't even break stride. To his credit, he got off one shot before she reached him. It ricocheted off her shields and buried itself in a crossbeam. As with Greta, she grabbed the offending arm and pulled it tight behind his back, but unlike the colonist, she didn't bother to check herself when she felt resistance. "You son of a bitch."

The bone snapped with a crack louder than his pistol report. Jeong gagged at the sudden pain, dropping the gun instantly. Shepard kicked it away.

Garrus caught up, finally, his rifle leveled on the ExoGeni auditor. "You want to maybe fill us in on the strategy, next time?"

"You broke my arm!" Jeong's voice was several octaves higher than normal. He staggered away from her, clutching the damaged limb, staring at her like she was a vengeful ghost. "You crazy bitch! You broke my arm!"

"You lied to me, Jeong. And you shot at me. That was a very poor decision."

"We were waiting for instructions from corporate." He managed to straighten, finding the last of his dignity. "Which we finally received, once that barrier came down."

Juliana could no longer hold her tongue. "Commander, they ordered him to purge the colony!"

A bad taste filled Shepard's mouth. "What exactly do they mean, purge?"

Jeong wheezed and put a little more distance between them. "We don't have any other choice. Two seconds after you're out of here you're going to call in the navy-"

"Already done," Shepard said smugly. It was the first thing they did after wrecking the jamming tower at Zhu's Hope.

"-and someone has to look out for the company. ExoGeni keeps us all alive. We must act in the interests of the majority." His tone became pleading. "If that… thing is still here when they come-"

"You mean the best interests of your shareholders," Shepard snarled, drawing back her arm.

Liara grabbed at it. "Shepard, think. We need him."

"He can't help us if you cave in his skull," Garrus reasoned, looking over at the shuddering man. "No matter how richly he deserves it."

Juliana glanced between them. "What are you talking about? What 'thing'?"

Shepard addressed Jeong with acid sweetness. "Are you going to tell them about the thorian, or shall I?"

Jeong's face was a caricature of fury. He muttered something darkly.

Lizbeth twisted her hands. "There's… there's a telepathic plant living underneath Zhu's Hope. It releases spores into the air that cause exposed animal life forms to become slaves to its will. Almost all of Zhu's Hope is infected."

Juliana's mouth dropped open. Jeong, however, had no problem finding his tongue. He shook his finger at her. "That's proprietary company information. Corporate will have your head for this."

Shepard took a deep breath. "There's not going to be any purging. You made those colonists what they are, and you're going to live with it for as long as it lasts."

"I'm afraid that's unacceptable."

"Damn it, Jeong, people are hurt. This isn't company politics." She glanced around the room. "If even one person on this godforsaken planet had been honest with me, this would have been over days ago."

"Not all of us knew about this… creature," Juliana stated, with an annoyed look at her daughter.

Lizbeth exhaled. "You don't know what it was like. ExoGeni was breathing down the necks of everyone working on the project. Anyone who wasn't delivering results, anyone who was violating procedure, was deliberately infected. Nobody wanted to be next."

Shepard gestured around the garage. "Do you see ExoGeni here, Lizbeth? Or do you just see a bunch of frightened people who've watched their home overrun by machines?"

The young woman swallowed and looked away.

"I can't allow the thorian to survive, Commander." Jeong found some semblance of calm. "If the Alliance knew the full extent of what we did, everyone here would be liable. This isn't ExoGeni's only colony, and those people are depending on the money continuing to flow. You might not like ExoGeni, but they do look out for us, in their own way."

"Tell them the geth killed the thorian."

He shook his head. "Won't work. People are still being exposed to the spores."

Slowly, Lizbeth said, "If the primary… node were destroyed, it's possible the other, lesser nodes would wither and die. No more spores."

"Or one of them could develop into a new primary node," Jeong shot back.

Shepard overrode him. "It's worth a try. I need a shuttle pilot if I'm going to make it back to the spaceport and take this thing out."

Jeong took a step towards her. "I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

That was the moment when, for the first time, he experienced the full weight of Shepard's pointed gaze, with every ounce of every hopeless mission she'd seen through poured into it. Each awful memory, each unforgettable image, all the experience, determination, and sheer ungodly stubbornness that made her Commander Shepard fell on the auditor. It pinned Jeong to the air like the corporate cockroach he was.

Aloud, she merely said, quite calmly, "You're a bean-counter. I'm a spectre, and you're getting in my way. Tell me, how do you like those odds?"

The blood ran out of his face. He took a step back, stumbling into Juliana.

Her eyes lingered on him another long second, before lowering the wattage of her expression and turning to the refugees. "I need a shuttle pilot."

"I'll do it." Lizbeth's voice shook a little, but her face was determined. "It was my job to look after their safety. I used to fly over there all the time."

"Why aren't you infected, then?"

"Prophylactic anti-fungal treatments." Her nervous smile was fleeting and humorless. "Please. I want to help them, if I can."

"Alright." Shepard looked around. "The rest of you, stay put. We crashed the geth ship, but there may still be patrols out. Be ready for anything."

Garrus cleared his throat. "Are you planning to stop at the Normandy?"

"That's where the shuttle docks, and I'm going to need some of the ordnance we have aboard to kill this thing," she confirmed.

"In that case, I'd like to stay back. There's no room for five in the Mako. Four was stretching things already. Besides, these people could use some real protection."

She frowned. He had a point, but they were split up enough already. "Fine. If our auditor here tries to pull another hostage crisis, shoot him."

He grinned. "With pleasure."

Tali also volunteered. "I'll stay back as well. I doubt the thorian is going to have any fancy electronics anyway."

Shepard nodded. "Liara, Lizbeth, you're with me. Let's go."

/\/\/\/\/\

They hurried down into the shuttle bay. Lizbeth flitted around the room, flipping on terminals and ordering the VI to reroute power resources when necessary. When the VI objected that Lizbeth lacked the relevant authorizations, Shepard was chagrined to hear the young scientist simply declare "emergency protocols" to be in effect.

"That would have been useful an hour ago," she said.

"There wasn't enough time to explain everything." Lizbeth began entering commands. "I have to hard restart all the systems. I'm sorry, this may take a while."

"My crew's been Zhu's Hope well over a week, you know. I understand them not telling us, because they're under thorian control, but allowing this continue? Not owning up when I finally got to this end of the colony? That's inexcusable." She shook her head, disgusted. "I suppose after all that it was too much to hope you might be able to launch one measly shuttle in a reasonable amount of time."

Lizbeth glared. "That's not fair. I'm doing the best I can."

Shepard crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, considering her for a moment that stretched into discomfort. Abruptly, she said, "I've been told I expect too much of people."

"Too damn true," Lizbeth muttered, pecking away at the terminal.

Liara bit her lip. "You drive people to be their best. That's your job."

Shepard continued as if she hadn't heard either of them. "If you ask me, most people expect too little of each other. It's a sad day when the bar's dropped to 'refuses to collude with the enslavement of others', and there's the expectation of a gold star for effort when even that abysmal standard is not met."

Lizbeth spoke with cold fury. "I looked you up, while we were waiting for you to return. You're a special forces commando. You can't tell me you've never been ordered to withhold information for the good the Alliance."

"Never information that would harm innocent human beings."

"I stayed behind, you know." Lizbeth sounded quite put out. "I tried to alert Colonial Affairs but the geth cut the power first."

"Our little hero." Shepard was not impressed. "The time to call Colonial Affairs was when ExoGeni started exploiting colonists without consent to study a dangerous alien life form. Forget Systems Alliance law. This is a matter of Council sanctions."

Lizbeth fell silent, faintly red-cheeked and not without a slight air of shame.

Liara walked over to Shepard and started to lay a hand on her shoulder, reassuringly, an attempt to cool the temperature, but Shepard flinched away. "Don't."

Hurt flashed across the asari's face. Seeing it stung more than it should. Angry with herself, Shepard pushed off the wall and found another console, deciding that if they were going to be stuck here awhile, she could at least raid the ExoGeni data banks. She started with exports.

Unsurprisingly, most of the entries fed back into other ExoGeni sites. However, once she filtered those out, she made an unexpected discovery. There were a number of invoices bearing the same orange-and-black hexagon logo she spotted on the transmitter on Edolus. Shepard opened one at random.

Dr. Gamorle,

We require a new batch of samples. The previous shipment proved inadequate. Most specimens never awoke from hibernation and the remainder is not sufficient for a proper study. We may be able to harness Species 37's unique capabilities, but only with your full cooperation. Naturally, our data exchange remains in effect, as negotiated in our contract.

I will also take this opportunity to remind you that Cerberus research is held to a very high standard, and we have expended a hefty sum of credits on your discovery. We select our business partners quite carefully. It would be unwise to give our leadership cause to doubt this investment.

Sincerely,

Dr. Cynthia Wayne

Following that was a message from Gamorle expressing doubt in the arrangement. He felt it would have been wiser to wait until ExoGeni synthesized an antidote before selling thorian samples. ExoGeni evidently disagreed, as the response took the form a reprimand and clear instructions to proceed. Shepard copied all of it to her omni-tool.

They called themselves Cerberus. She'd never heard of them. They certainly liked sounding the cloak-and-dagger variety of darkness, but Shepard had a hard time picturing a criminal ring of scientists luring an Alliance ship into a fatal trap. Some pieces were still missing.

And then there was the signatory, Dr. Wayne. The name was vaguely familiar.

"Ready," Lizbeth called out. The door of the closest shuttle swung up as the vehicle rose on its stabilizers, prepared for launch.

The scientist, the archaeologist, and the commander climbed aboard. Lizbeth took the pilot's seat, scanning her instrumentation and making the necessary adjustments. Liara took the co-pilot couch while Shepard stood behind, leaning over her shoulder. "Get me the Normandy. We need to figure out how this is going to work."

"Right away." Liara flipped the comm switch and found the correct frequency.

Lowe came on the line. "This is the SSV Normandy, identify."

"Specialist Lowe, this is Commander Shepard. I'm on a shuttle headed back to Zhu's Hope as we speak. Please have Navigator Pressly and Lieutenant Alenko join me in the comm room."

"Aye aye, ma'am. Transferring now."

Shepard paced the rear of the shuttle as she waited. Meanwhile, Lizbeth got them in the air and set a direct course back to the spaceport. The disastrous Skyway flowed smoothly beneath them. Why the hell does the Alliance equip frigates with tanks instead of shuttles? This is so much simpler.

The comm crackled. "This is Pressly. Are you there, ma'am?"

She turned her attention back to the mission. "Copy that. How bad are things down there?"

"Bakari's in critical condition. The doc thinks the other two should be back on their feet in a few days. I still don't know what to make of Talaqani. He's beating himself against the hatch, trying to get out."

"Nothing we can do about that now. The plan is to kill the plant that's at the root of all this." Shepard cursed the unintentional pun, and cleared her throat. "Which brings me to my next point. Lieutenant, are you there?"

"Yes, ma'am." Alenko's voice crackled over the line.

Shepard suppressed her sudden and completely unexpected relief at hearing it. She cleared her throat a second time and laid out her idea, sketchy as it was. "The colonists are distracted by the thorian's commands to kill all of you. It must be angry, because they're not going about this intelligently at all. I think we can slip a team into Zhu's Hope."

"There's not enough room in this dock to pull up to the cargo bay, which only leaves the airlock," Pressly protested. "And the colonists are right outside."

"With due respect, sir, that's not entirely accurate," Alenko countered. "There are maintenance hatches at several points along the fuselage. They're not supposed to be opened- or even accessible- unless the ship is in dry dock."

Shepard was pleased. "There should be one going out the back near the entrance to the med bay."

Pressly had reservations. "Commander, those hatches are restricted because they expose the space between the inner and outer hulls. There's all kinds of nasty materials in there to protect us from vacuum, radiation, and the byproducts of our own systems, not to mention the structures supporting the IES."

"We're in atmo, so the hazards should be minimal. Get engineering to help." Shepard moved along to the next phase of the plan. "Our pilot will hover on the far side of the ship, and an infiltration team will board. We'll set down in Zhu's Hope, find the exact location of this zombie plant thing, and take it down."

"I can help you with one of those." Alenko coughed. "I'm reasonably certain they're hiding the entrance leading to the thorian under a hab module. It doesn't connect to anything and they left it under guard. Took me awhile to catch on, but once I figured it out, they wouldn't let me near it."

"Good work. We'll try that first." Shepard leaned against Liara's couch, folding her arms. "Pick who you want for the team. Not too many. I want a good-sized force left behind in case the colonists do find a way to board the ship. I don't want to hurt them, but I damn well will if they threaten any more of us."

Pressly made a sound of concurrence. "Understood, ma'am."

"Lieutenant?"

"I'm on board. Do we know what we're up against?"

"Other than its powers of influence, no. But there are a few things I want you to collect."

/\/\/\/\/\

Adams' engineers located the necessary maintenance hatch in short order. Unfortunately, it was not a straight shoot to the outer hull. Adams himself squeezed through the hatch and worked his way down the narrow space until he found the exit. "We've got a problem, Commander."

Shepard glanced at Lizbeth's instruments. Their ETA was less than five minutes. "What kind of problem?"

"There's not enough room to maneuver in here to open the outer hatch from this side. We've already had to deactivate cooling and the kinetic barriers to make this safe. The ship can't stay fully powered like this for long without accruing damage."

"Roger that. We're a few minutes out. What do we need to open the hatch?"

"A wrench, for starters."

"Where am I going to get a wrench on a-"

"There's an emergency maintenance kit in the passenger compartment," Lizbeth interjected. "Under the seat."

Shepard located the toolkit and hauled it out, raising her voice to reach the comm from the shuttle's rear. "Next question. How do we know where to park if the door's shut?"

"I'm attaching a homing device to the inside of the hatch. Your shuttle ladar should pick it up."

A bright dot appeared on Liara's screen, overlapping the bulk of the Normandy. "Got it."

"Godspeed, Commander. Adams out."

Shepard turned her attention to Lizbeth. "Go in as smoothly and discreetly as possible. Use the ship to hide us. We can't afford to capture the colonists' attention."

The young woman nodded and eased them forward. Sweat beaded on her brow. Lizbeth was intensely out of her element. Shepard's eyes rose from the instrumentation to the shuttle window, watching as they turned into the docking bay. "Easy does it… little further… there. Stop."

The wash from the shuttle's stabilizers brushed the paint of the SSV Normandy with gentle efficiency, polishing off the dust and leaving a fan-shaped spread so porcelain white that it made the rest of the ship look filthy in comparison. Shepard couldn't suppress a wince. She sure as hell doesn't look new anymore.

Lizbeth popped the side door and Shepard leaned out the side of the compartment, Liara hovering nervously at her elbow. It only took a few moments to locate the frame of the hatch and the bolt that secured it. Shepard scraped at the cover, trying to expose the bolt, but it was wedged shut and she was forced to abuse the wrench as a crowbar to pop it open. The bolt similarly required several muscle-aching yanks before she felt it start to give.

The maintenance hatch popped open with a hiss of equalizing pressures. It was less than half the size of a standard hatch, a bit of a squeeze to fit through. None the less, she was nonplussed to find a lumpy plastic bag staring up at her when the door swung clear.

Alenko leaned into the frame. "It's pretty tight in here, ma'am. We could fit us or the gear but not both at the same time. Catch."

He tossed the bag at her. She caught it and hauled it inside. Alenko followed, hauling a hard trunk the size of a carry-on suitcase behind him. After him came Gunnery Chief Williams and Corporal Greico. Once they were on board, Shepard secured the hatch and gave Lizbeth a nod. "Take us out. If it looks clear, set us down in the shipping yard."

"Understood." The shuttle pulled away from the Normandy.

Alenko squatted and ripped into the bag, revealing a jumble of hardsuit pieces. He passed them to their owners and they began suiting up. Shepard prodded the case with her boot. "These are my mines?"

"Remote detonation, just like you asked." He locked his glove into place. "Commander, what exactly are you expecting to find under Zhu's Hope?"

She opened the case to double-check the munitions. "I'm not sure. Some kind of large spongy mass of sentient plant matter."

Lizbeth looked over her shoulder. "We're not certain the thorian has the capacity for higher reasoning."

"Until we know better, we're going to go with the worst-case assumption." Shepard took out several charges and clipped them to her belt, keeping the detonators separate, and passed the remainder to the lieutenant.

Williams was cocky, as usual. "It's a plant. It needs to turn people into robots to get anything done. It's not like it's going to fight back."

Liara leaned back in the co-pilot couch, folding her arms over her stomach. "How old must a creature this large be? It could have been a sapling when Feros was inhabited by the Prothean Empire."

Lizbeth bit her lip. "Some of the oldest fibrous samples we've taken indicate it may be much older than that. It could have controlled the Prothean settlers in a similar manner."

"That's impossible. The Protheans would have quarantined the whole planet. Wouldn't anyone?"

Shepard shrugged. "Look around, Liara. Does Feros look like it was a shining example of Prothean colonization, or does it look like as much of a backwater as it is now?"

"More developed, perhaps." Liara was wearing one of her earnest frowns, deliberating. "I will admit it does not seem as though the Protheans gave any attention to detail on this world. Everything is so… plain and functional."

Alenko leaned towards the window. "Shepard, I think we're coming up on Zhu's Hope now."

Williams, too, craned her neck to get a look. "The place looks abandoned."

"It's a good sign, but don't take anything for granted." Shepard checked her gun and made her way to the hatch.

The chief glanced her way. "Why try to kill us, ma'am? Hell, everything we did protected this plant thing as much as the colonists. Where's the gratitude?"

"I don't know. Maybe after facing the geth it decided all of us are just too much trouble." She gave her a weary half-smile. "Doesn't matter. We're going to destroy it. Saren won't be able to exploit its abilities."

The shuttle settled in the middle of the yard. The marines disembarked, sweeping the area for any lingering colonists. As Shepard made to follow, Lizbeth suddenly turned around in her seat and snagged her hand.

Shepard frowned. "What is it?"

"There's more," she said, conflicted but urgent. "I couldn't say back at HQ. The thorian creates seedlings of a sort, mobile bundles of fibrous tissue about the size of an adult human when they're… unfurled."

"Unfurled?"

"We call them creepers. We've only ever found them in a stasis. They ball up on the ground near thorian offshoots, almost like seed pods. I have no idea if they've woken, but…"

"It could be trouble," Shepard finished. She regarded the woman for several seconds. "Thank you for warning me."

Lizbeth gave a curt nod and withdrew her hand. "I understand why you don't believe me, but every choice I've made was my best effort to protect the colony- from everyone. I'm not going to apologize for it."

Then Shepard did smile, full and genuine. "Good for you."

Lizbeth nodded again, her face ever-so-slightly pink. "I'm going to barricade myself in the shuttle. I'll keep it running."

Shepard moved into the shipping yard and found the crane terminal. It was easy to spot the misplaced module- it still had the lift ties fixed to the roof. The only mystery was how they didn't notice it sooner.

She had just hooked the hoist line into place when she caught a shuffle of movement out of the corner of her eye. Her hand went to her pistol on autopilot, drawing smoothly as she turned.

Fai Dan shambled towards her. One of his legs was dragging, as though he'd been injured, and a sidearm dangled in his left hand.

"Commander," he said weakly, coughing.

She kept her pistol trained on the colonist, but held her fire. "Why aren't you with the rest?"

"I tried to fight it, you know." He flinched, and swallowed, tightly. Every muscle in his face was pulled taut. "It gets in your head. You can't imagine the pain."

"It doesn't have to be this way, Fai Dan." She moved her other hand to brace her gun and took a step to the side, keeping him in her sights. Behind him, she saw Alenko come out from behind the hab, his own pistol also raised.

"I was their leader. They trusted me." The old man coughed again. "It wants me to kill you."

The gun swung up in his hand. Shepard tensed, her finger pulling on the trigger, no quite enough to fire.

Fai Dan's right hand rose with infinite slowness and wrapped around the barrel. A vein throbbed in his forehead. In the background, Alenko moved closer, steadily, not fast enough to catch his attention. Shepard kept her eyes on the colonist.

"But I won't," he said, softly, almost too much so to hear him. With his right hand he forced the gun upwards until it touched his temple. The angle was awkward, but more than sufficient to atomize most of his brain. "I won't."

Fai Dan heaved a sigh and closed his eyes.

Shepard adjusted her aim by a fraction as swiftly as she could, meaning to stop him, but not soon enough. A look of intense peace came over his face, a half-second before it vanished in a shower of gore.

She eased the tension on her trigger and blew out a sigh of her own. "Damn it."

Alenko came running. "Are you alright, ma'am?"

"I'm fine."

Williams, hearing the shot, hurried from the other direction with Greico and Liara in tow. She stopped short when she saw the corpse. "We're clear. Jesus Christ."

Shepard turned back to the terminal, entering her commands with a bit more force than necessary. "He made a choice. I daresay, of the options available, it was not a poor one."

There was little to say to that. Williams located a blanket in the shipwreck and draped it over the body. She might have whispered a shred of prayer; it was difficult to tell.

Meanwhile, Shepard continued to work the crane. The apparently empty module lifted clear with ease, revealing a staircase leading down into the ruins. Unlike the rest of Feros, it was scrubbed clean. There was no sign of debris or decay.

Alenko made the same observation. "They were tending to it."

"I'm sure it had everything an overgrown toadstool could want out of life." Shepard maneuvered the hab to a clear spot in the yard and unhooked the crane, to make it more difficult for anyone to seal the exit behind them. "Let's go give it the happy ending it deserves."

She turned and addressed her team. "Williams and Greico, stay topside and guard these stairs. We're going in."

Williams groaned. "Aww, c'mon ma'am, there's nothing up here-"

"I believe I gave you an order, Chief." Shepard's tone was solid iron. "We've received information that the thorian may have other units available to mobilize. I'm not going to be attacked aft and fore at the same time. Understood?"

The chief opened her mouth. Shepard raised an eyebrow. Williams swallowed. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good." She jerked her head at Alenko and Liara. "Let's go."

The stairs wound down beneath the artificial skin of the world-city, well below where Shepard would have gauged the natural level of the ground. The temperature stabilized to a pleasant basement cool compared to the heat of the surface. The way was well-lit. The colonists of Zhu's Hope lavished care on this place they had not given their own home, much less anywhere else. The staircase leveled out into a long, narrow hallway strung with utility lights, creaking with the weight of the structure above. Otherwise it was utterly silent. No signs of debris or decay graced its walls; indeed, even the faint cracks one would expect as the minimum toll of fifty thousand years' neglect were carefully stopped up with reparative compounds and painted over a uniform shade of gray.

Liara shuddered as another settling groan echoed through the building. "This place will live on in my nightmares."

"Who knew something this bright and sterile could be nightmarish?" Alenko kept his pistol drawn.

"It's just a hallway," Shepard protested.

Alenko jumped slightly as a distant drip of water echoed against the walls. "Not going to lie, Commander, this place is freaking me out."

She was exasperated. "It's a single, simple, damned-"

The words died in her mouth as they entered a vaulting chamber, at least five stories high, and were confronted with the true, horrific majesty of the thorian.

"-plant," Shepard finished lamely, staring up at it. "We're going to need bigger guns."

"That's why we brought the mines, ma'am."

It was a vomit-green ranging to olive in more shadowed places, a bulky, pulsing mass suspended within the room by ten long, vine-like appendages disappearing into higher side rooms. Each floor was exposed to the central chamber with scarcely a guard rail for safety. The plant was teardrop-shaped and had no true eyes that Shepard could see, though soft bronze-touched indents near the low-hanging taper gave the impression of ocular sensitivity. The tip of the teardrop curved ever so slightly towards them, dangling a mass of slimy, draping vines over the platform on which they stood. The remainder of the creature hung over an abyss that vanished into darkness long before showing any sign of a floor.

The three of them approached with caution. Shepard could not imagine something that large would move easily, but there was no sense in being reckless.

The plant stirred. There was a gurgling noise, followed by a slithering sound of slime against slime, and a slight form dropped from the wreath of tentacles onto the platform.

"Oh, goddess," Liara breathed, stepping back, as the creature slowly uncurled with almost boneless grace.

It was a green-skinned asari, with over-large pupils and facial markings to match. She was clad in tight-fighting black commando armor, recognizable by the brown buckles running from groin to neck. Her head straightened and she regarded them steadily. There was something faintly speculative in her eyes. "I speak for the old growth, as I spoke for Saren. The creature before you has endured the long cycle and longer still, centuries beyond counting. You should be in awe."

Alenko trained his gun on her, glancing at Shepard for instructions. She wasn't certain she had any to give. This was an unexpected curveball. Saren was here. When he was done he left this woman as a captive, along with a garrison of geth to destroy the thorian. Why?

And then, slightly amused. I guess the thorian was more than a match for the geth. It used the colonists to outmaneuver their patrols.

Behind her, however, Liara took a tentative step forward. She sounded confused. "Shiala?"

The asari's eyes drifted to the archaeologist for a fractional second, but soon refocused on the task at hand. "Speak. Why have you come here?"

Shepard kept her gaze fixed on the thorian itself. The asari was obviously a puppet. "I want what Saren wanted. Give it to me, call off your attack on my ship, and we will depart in peace."

"The air you push is lies, ones we have heard before." Her green eyes flashed with anger. "The old growth senses you are meat, fit only to consume. We will hear no more."

The attack came without warning. Shepard had a vague recollection of the asari flinging out her hand before the back of her head collided with the wall and she was shaking stars out of her vision. Alenko responded in kind, tossing the commando back against her thorian master. Liara threw up a singularity that pulled her away from the plant and into empty space.

Shepard shot at the asari puppet, but between having her bells rung for the second time in a week and the way the asari was bobbing around in the grip of the mass effect field, the shots went wide. The fungal mass of the thorian simply absorbed them, like a sponge taking on water. She was heartily glad they brought explosives.

She shook off the blow and scrambled to her feet. "Come on. When the field gives out, she's done for. It's a long way down. We've got to finish this."

They headed for the stairs to the second level at a dead run. Skittering echoed down the stairwell, like thin, stiff strips dragged across concrete, but they saw nothing. They did, however, pass a number of wicker-wood objects the size of beach balls that one could interpret as humanoids curled in a fetal position, if that was what one wanted to see. Shepard noted their presence, but filed it under the growing pile of troubling things that for the moment she could do nothing about.

They found the first node as they rounded the top of the stairs, anchoring one long thick vine. It was bulbous and almost fleshy, maybe two meters across, and a shade of peachy orange that made it seem more like animal flesh than plant matter. Shepard pulled a knife from her boot and slashed a deep gouge. It was warm, like compost, and there was no describing the stench. The nearest approximation in her experience was a stopped-up shower drain full of rotten hair.

The skittering grew louder. "Do something about that, would you?"

Alenko moved past her, up the hallway. Shepard pulled the brick of explosive compound and a detonator from her belt, connected the two by rote memory, and keyed it to her omni-tool. The whole package was shoved elbow-deep into the node. "Well, that's one."

There was a brief buzzing in her head and shots rang out down the hall. She raced to assist.

A solid half-dozen woody assailants pressed them back. They were the size of human adults, and were bipedal and bilaterally symmetric, but that was where the real similarities ended. Their limbs terminated in a lengthy tangle of branches, lethally sharp, and their sightless oval heads twisted to and fro on spindly necks. Liara and Alenko's biotics were holding them back, but wherever bullet or warp ripped a hole in the creatures' bodies, acrid green fluid bubbled out onto the floor.

Wherever it fell, it ate miniature craters into the concrete. Shepard groaned. "You've got to be kidding me."

Whatever they were made of, it was exceptionally brittle. Two sweeps of her rifle destroyed their legs and covered the ground in slick, smoking acid. They thrashed on the floor. Another couple of bursts and everything went still and quiet, save for the slow hiss of the creepers' dissolution by their own internal fluids.

Shepard took a breath. "Ok. We want to stay away from the creepy acid-spewing woodmen. Noted."

Alenko checked his heat sink. "This planet just keeps getting better and better."

Liara rubbed her neck. "I think I see another node ahead."

"No choice but to keep going." Shepard took a breath. "Try to toss them over the banister if you can. Punching holes in them should be a last resort. Move out."

The second explosive went in as smoothly as the first. Shepard's arm was caked almost to the shoulder in thorian goop. She was already looking forward to a shower the way sailors longed for dry land.

Another wave of creepers hit just as she was withdrawing her hand. True to her instructions, her squad attempted to herd them out over the pit with the use of their biotics. Shepard, having no such capability, took a more direct approach. She barreled into the nearest creeper and lifted it off its feet.

The creatures weighed nearly nothing, as flimsy and dry as a pile of autumn leaves. Those long claws, however, were razor sharp. They left scratches where they scraped across her armor plating. The hard suit protected her from the worst of the damage, but as she pitched it over the edge, one of its fingers caught in the webbing. She was forced to tear it loose.

The bereft finger twitched once before going still, stiffening as it died. She prised it out with a grunt of irritation. Another one flew at her and she used its own wild rush to help it over the edge. When the dust settled, she realized there were still four of the things curled up on the floor. Waiting.

Shepard tried to pick one up, but for all its lightness, it might as well have been bolted to the ground. She stood back and attempted to shoot it, but apparently hibernation hardened their structure because the only result was a shower of wood chips. Great. Just great.

Lacking other options, they continued up the structure in the same manner, stuffing the nodes supporting the inert thorian with ordnance and fighting off creepers from front and back. Shepard was arming the eighth node in a moment of relative calm when she saw Liara suddenly stiffen. "What-"

She turned on the spot, just in time to see the green-skinned asari commando float over the guard wall in a bubble of blue light and land lightly on her toes. Her face was full of malice. "We see what you plan. The seedlings have done little to stop you, but it is of no concern. Your flesh will feed the new growth to come."

Shepard was ready for it this time. She raised her rifle and held down the trigger, forcing the asari to sacrifice her attack in favor of a barrier against the barrage. The others joined her. Under the steady stream of gunfire, the commando's strength was fading fast. She ducked around a corner.

The immediate attack as they gave pursuit was expected. What was not anticipated, however, was Liara's counterattack meeting it in midair and causing a titanic explosion that left them all scattered on the floor.

Shepard found her feet and gave herself a quick evaluation. Nothing seemed broken. She leaned down to help Liara up. "What in the hell was that?"

"I readied an attack. There was no time to adjust for her choices."

That was clear as mud. "Let's pretend I'm not an asari biotic."

"It's a mess of poorly understood dark energy theory and wave mechanics," Alenko said. "The important part is some biotic effects interfere with each other. A barrier can neutralize another biotic attack, for example, or in a different case…"

"Cause an explosion. Right."

He nodded. "It's not all that different from overloading an eezo core, except in the scale."

Liara blinked. "I'm surprised you didn't know. This is considered very basic tactics within the asari military."

Shepard went to check the stairs. The commando was crumpled at the bottom, not moving. She fired two bullets into her back just to be sure. "We've only had our own enlisted biotics for less than fifteen years, and not many of them. Officer training hasn't really caught up yet."

"Isn't that the truth," Alenko muttered under his breath.

Shepard rolled her eyes at the both of them. "I'm learning as fast as I can, ok? It helps when you point out facts like 'can create massive detonation when combined in the correct order'."

Alenko snorted. "I think there's only two or three more nodes left, ma'am."

"Let's blow this place and get the hell out."

Five stories up, they finished rigging the last of the explosives. Shepard took one last long look at the thorian. It had less than zero mobility, but she swore it was glaring up at her with the kind of relentless hatred only a creature dozens of millennia old could muster.

She stared back, recalling the colonists fighting the geth, ragged, worn, and not altogether there. Ian screaming in punishment for attempting to communicate basic intel. Lizbeth shaking in the corridors of ExoGeni, trying to find the right actions in an impossible situation. Fai Dan with a gun to his head.

Just as easily, she could imagine Bakari lying on one of Chakwas' operating tables, cut open, while she labored to close his wounds with a hand that wouldn't work properly, while all the while a crazed colonist threw himself at the hatch, regular meaty thuds punctuating the delicate surgery.

A soft growl rose in her throat as she looked down, more promise than threat. "I'll see you in hell."

Liara called from the back hall. "Shepard, everything's ready. We're just waiting on you."

"Coming." She spat and turned away, making for the stairwell. It would provide some shelter from the catastrophe that was about to take place. The structure was old; Shepard had no idea what would bring it down, but she was about to set off ten charges. Common sense said to stand back from the fragile balconies.

They huddled together over the corpse of Saren's henchman. Shepard activated the detonators.

She thought it would be louder. It was plenty noisy, but not blow-out-her-eardrums loud. Each explosion was punctuated by a wet, pulpy pop. There was a straining groan, as the tension in the vines struggled against gravity, and then a number of snapping sounds as gravity won. Slow at first, and then in rapid staccato as the plant's weight dragged on the remaining supports. The thorian dropped with a whoosh of air, whistling down into the darkness. There was a splat like a million eggs breaking all at once.

Dust rained from the ceiling, turning them all into moths and sending them into coughing fits. Shepard sought the tube of water at her neck, blindly, and gulped it down as her lips sealed around it. Once she had her voice again, she asked, "Everyone ok?"

There was some more coughing. "In one piece, ma'am."

Liara echoed the sentiment. "I'm fine. Is it over?"

"I'm going to find out." Shepard started making her way up through the dust to view her handiwork, when something snaked out of the debris and seized her ankle in a death grip. She jumped half a meter, but the hand didn't slacken in the slightest.

The asari groaned. "I'm… I'm free."