Chapter 28: The Codemaster
The hologram of the space station hung in the air, its strange construction drawing all eyes to it. The pictures and recon photographs revealed quite a bit about their target and its surroundings. The area was covered in debris, small floating asteroids and other refuse that hid the station from potential prying eyes. Its construction was the most peculiar though. It looked like a peculiar mishmash of two aesthetic styles.
Half of the station looked similar to standard Covenant construction, but the other half seemed more alien, older even. Liara couldn't recognize who could've originally owned it. The Covenant's repairs and modifications had made it difficult to discern its origins. It could be anything from an appropriated Geth Station to a decommissioned Batarian Military Facility.
How the Covenant had acquired it was not their chief concern though. Liara's primary focus was getting inside more than anything else. That was what this briefing was for, to hammer out the details for the finalised plan. Admittedly, it was a plan that relied a lot on their ability to improvise. Lucky for her, Liara had experience with such missions thanks to Shepard. That wasn't to say she didn't have any clue on how to accomplish the mission, just that she had made it a bit more flexible. It wasn't entirely by choice though.
"Alright, let's go over some complications," she shrewdly began. "We're going to play this like Rakavekyon for the most part. We can't really sneak inside the station, so we're going to get into a firefight pretty quick. Unlike Rakavekyon, however, we have no idea of the station's layout beforehand. Finding that out will be our priority when we get inside."
"I'm guessing that's not the first hurdle then?" Nel reasoned rather perceptively. "The Covies won't make getting inside easy."
"No, they won't," Liara answered her. "As you can see from the hologram and recon pictures, they've outfitted the station with several defensive systems. Given their aesthetic construction, they are most likely Covenant in origin. Which no doubt means plasma-based weaponry."
Liara highlighted the various guns for the team in the hologram. Although it wasn't much to go on, Kayap was able to confirm their dangerous nature just by how they looked.
"Plasma turrets, straight off a starship," he told them all, slightly unnerved. "They can rip smaller ships to pieces pretty quick, ships like ours actually."
"They're not the only problem," Liara noted, enlarging one of the smaller photographs for everyone. It revealed the familiar, although tiny, silhouettes of a familiar craft. "I think these are banshees, ones designed for space combat to be exact. They're in tight formation, constantly patrolling around the station's perimeter. Our shuttles can probably get under the plasma turrets, they're too small for them to target as long as we stick to a very specific vector out of their targeting sight. That leaves us open to the Banshees, however."
"Don't the shuttles have guns?" Nel asked. "We can defend ourselves.
"They're not built for space combat and we can't risk getting into a fight with them if we wanted to," Liara explained. "We need to land as quickly as possible, not get ourselves stuck fighting them."
Nel nodded, seemingly recognizing for once that maybe a head-on fight wasn't their best move here. Luckily, Wrex had an idea of his own.
"The Lucen can keep out of range of the turrets," he suggested. "Then fire shots towards the station proper from its cannons. We can make sure they don't hit, but it might register as big enough of a threat to get the banshees to chase this old turian tin can."
"And then the shuttles can sneak in while they're off chasing the frigate," Vik reasoned excitedly, but then suddenly shook his head with doubt. "Wait, won't they realise something is up though? The sangheili pilot those Banshees, right? They're not stupid."
"No, but they will see the Lucen as a threat," Kayap was quick to inform him. "Sangheili pride won't allow them to pass up engaging an enemy, especially when it is directly threatening a place they've sworn to defend. They'll see the Lucen as a challenger. But they probably will figure it out eventually and return to their assigned patrol."
"Which means we'll have a limited window of opportunity," Liara surmised. "We'll have to ready the shuttles for the run prior to the Lucen opening fire. We can probably hide them just out of range of their scanners in this debris field where my drones have been keeping tabs on the station. That brings us to our other problem, we only have two shuttles. That's not enough to get us and our strike force onto the station at the same time."
They couldn't do two shuttle runs. The banshees would be back before that, especially if they saw a shuttle leaving their quarry. They had one shot at getting everyone they had onto the station, but not enough landing craft to do it.
"How long would it take for you to get another shuttle here?" Nel asked, obviously dreading the answer.
"Too long," Liara replied regretfully. "We can't be sure the station will remain this vulnerable. Vorsa could decide to send a larger starship to keep it garrisoned. We have to hit it before that happens or we'll never get inside."
"Well," Vik reluctantly began. "If we need a shuttle that bad... how about we use the Truth?"
Everyone looked to Vik with a mixture of surprise and apprehension. As per usual, Nel was rather blunt about what she thought of the suggestion.
"Don't take this the wrong way, Bucket," Nel stated suddenly. "I mean, it's nice of you to offer, but that junker isn't built for insertion runs on hostile enemy space stations. It's supposed to take families camping and on small space flights to the local moon. I mean, Liara's shuttles have stealth drives, yours isn't even outfitted with proper stabilizers."
"True," Vik admitted with a shrug. "But I do have a small scrambler aboard. It helps keep people from tracing and pinpointing my ship. How else do you think I avoid getting tracked down when I'm hacking into things? It should keep them from finding the shuttle for a little bit."
"I don't see many other options," Liara admitted. "But we'll need to be careful. We'll keep the shuttles apart from one another until we're close to the landing bay. That should allow us to avoid getting targeted at the same time. We'll all have to be quick to cover each other's backs if something goes wrong. We just need to reach the landing bay. We'll pass through the hangar's mass effect field, land and then the real work will start."
Liara looked to each member of the team commandingly as she prepared to list off their assignments.
"Our primary objective is the Codemaster, so our first order of business is locating it, whatever it is," she readily explained. "We need to find a terminal inside that station and use it to locate the security room. From there, Vik can hack into the systems, shut down the station's defences and start searching for any clues on where to find our target. As well as get us a layout of the place."
Vik just nodded in response to the task given him as Liara continued. She looked next to Saya and Wrex.
"We're going to need to keep the Covenant at bay, it's the only way to get Vik enough time to search," she continued. "Wrex and Saya, you two will take the Urdnot Warriors and use them to clear out the station and keep the majority of the fighting away from us."
Wrex looked to the salarian with a grin.
"I'm sure we can handle that, right?" He asked the STG agent.
For a moment, Saya didn't seem to respond. Then he gave a reluctant nod, not abrasive or unsure, but simply accepting. Liara hoped that meant he was okay for the mission ahead and with working among krogan for the majority of it. She next turned to their turian soldier.
"I'll need you to help me keep Vik safe," she told her. "I'll be coordinating the ShadowNet Operatives to run similar interference against the Covenant. If any get past them, however, we'll need a strong defence. Can you handle that?"
"We'll see," Nel sighed despondently. "With everything that's been going on I mean, I... well... whatever, I'm up for bodyguard duty, Doc. No problem."
Nel's strange onset of doubt was disconcerting, although not entirely unexpected given the fact she was still recovering from her co-dependence addiction to the Juice. Liara could only trust that she'd pull through when they counted. She'd have to, otherwise they wouldn't make it. They couldn't afford to doubt themselves now. Finally, Liara turned to Kayap.
"I need you to provide heavy weapons support inside, Kay," she told him."We don't know what we're facing in there and you know how to handle the Covenant weapons we stole from the bunker better than any of us."
"You thinking Bash and Blast are going to be there?" Nel asked her, sounding slightly concerned.
"We need to be ready for any possibility," Liara replied. "If not those two, there might be others of their species there."
Kayap readily nodded at Liara despite the dire warnings.
"I can do it, a few good shots from a Fuel Rod Cannon will take down any mgalekgolo," he assured her.
"Good, we'll all need to be on our A-game here, team," she informed them. "We have little information to go on for this attack and we'll be in the dark until we're actually inside. Like I said, this isn't going to be easy, but if we take it one step at a time, we should be able to get the Codemaster and get out before things get too hairy. Any more questions?"
"Just one," Nel spoke up. "When do we get this party started?"
The wait within the asteroid field was arduous, especially when one took their view into account. The space station was a lot bigger in person than even Liara expected. It loomed in the distance like a menacing dark castle fortress straight out of some fairy tale. Thankfully, they were out of its scanning range and hidden within the debris field nearby. The shuttles were all ready to go. They just needed to wait for the Lucen to make the first move.
Wrex was in his shuttle with his own forces, while Saya was with the ShadowNet operatives in the other shuttle. Everyone else was piled into the Truth. Liara was still surprised Vik had offered his shuttle's services. She never thought he'd be so willing to trust them to stay in here for so long. Maybe herself, since she was his captain, and Kayap, because they were on good terms, but not Nel. If the invasion of his privacy bothered him, Vik didn't show it. He just kept at the pilot controls, patiently waiting for the attack run to start.
"You ever clean in here, Bucket?" Nel asked the quarian as she stared around the shuttle. "This place is worse than my room. Why you need all these datapads anyway?
"I have everything organized," Vik assured her. "Cleaning up would ruin my system. Just don't touch anything, please."
"Fine, but just so you know, you're never gonna get laid with all this crap in here," she informed him. "Although I'm guessing most women would be turned off by the fact you live in a clunky old shuttlecraft."
Vik could only sigh in exasperation and Liara was quick to speak up.
"Try to be courteous, Nel," she requested. "We are in the only home he has now, remember?"
Nel's softened and she shrugged slightly.
"Sorry, Vik," she sincerely apologised. "I guess I'm just a bit irritable. My eyes and throat are still itchy and all that. I just wanna get this done, you know?"
"Fair enough," Vik relented. "If you want you can read one of my books while we wait."
Nel stared awkwardly at the small library of counter-culture and conspiracy literature. Two stand-outs were one about Secret Turian Black Ops and another about the use of anti-biotic propaganda by the Hierarchy. She was quick to shoot down Vik's proposal.
"Yeah, um, not my thing," she stated with a slight dismissive nervous laugh. "Unless you got some vid-comics, I'll just sit here and listen to my tunes through the comm-link... for the sixth time now."
Liara had a reason for making this a long wait. She wanted to be sure most of the banshees were out on patrol. When the Lucen attacked, she wanted as many of the station's fighters to chase it. The risk of potential banshees waiting in the wings was not a good prospect to her. Given what her drones had picked up, most of the fighters were outside during mid-day at standard galactic time. She just hoped that they'd take the bait when the Lucen made itself known.
A few seconds after the hour arrived, the Lucen would open fire. She kept her eyes on the station itself, not wanting to miss the moment. She didn't have to wait long, as several cannon shots soon rocketed past the station on all sides. None of them were meant to hit it as they couldn't risk damaging the station. The shots instead slammed into the small asteroids and debris surrounding the area. It was enough to make the Lucen's presence known and that was all that mattered.
It took moment for the Banshees to take the bait. As they had hoped, the fighters eventually moved to attack the offending frigate. They sped away from the station, leaving it open for their shuttle run. The Lucen turned away and began to lead the banshees on a chase.
"All shuttlecraft, move in!" Liara ordered over the radio. "Head for the designated hangar bay I've marked on our navigation computers. Do not stop for anything and keep an eye out for any stray fighters. We need to get inside before they realise what's happening."
The shuttles began their run on the station proper. They kept a loose formation so they wouldn't present too big a target, but could easily cover each other if something came up. Liara wasn't too concerned about the other shuttles, they had stealth drives. She was just hoping this scrambler of Vik's held out. If it didn't, they at least had scanners of their own. The banshees wouldn't be able to sneak up on them.
"We need to find a terminal as soon as we land," Liara reminded the others. "Wrex, Saya and the others will keep us covered while we look."
Liara eyed the others to try and gauge their thoughts, but it wasn't that easy. Vik was rather quiet, unusual for him. At least he seemed more focused on the mission. She could tell that Nel's eyes were still a little bloodshot and that she looked a little unhinged. She was paying more attention to the gun in her hands than anything else. Liara also noticed a slight bit of shaking, something that gravely concerned.
"Are you going to be alright?" She asked the turian.
"I'm fine, I swear, fine," she insisted shakily. "Just get me in there, I'll tear them all a new one."
Nel was acting confident, but Liara wasn't so sure that translated to actual confidence. Knowing where that was probably coming from, she tried to offer reassurances.
"You don't need the juice, Nel," she tried to tell her. "Fall back on your training, what you used to do before the program."
Nel couldn't directly look at Liara, hiding her face from her entirely.
"I... I just need to get in the fight," she nervously declared. "Just get me in there."
"If you say so," Liara answered.
Liara didn't want to push Nel too much, she had already done enough in that regard before. Wrex was right to warn her about forcing her to quit her addiction. She knew the potential consequences of that, but there was no going back now. Nel would just have to realise she didn't need the drugs on her own. Perhaps getting into a fight and being forced to rely on her natural skills would help.
At that moment, the scanners began to blare. Liara rushed up to the cockpit to see what the problem was. Vik was already hurriedly looking over his dashboard.
"What's going on?" She asked him frantically.
"We got hostiles," Vik warned. "A banshee I think. He looks like he came out of one of the debris fields."
Liara contacted Wrex to get confirmation.
"Shuttlecraft Two, what do you see?" She hurriedly asked.
"A banshee, bearing in on us from the looks of it," Wrex replied. "I think it may have seen us as we passed by the debris field because he's headed right at us."
"Evasive manoeuvres everyone," she ordered. "Head towards the hangar immediately, do not engage the hostile unless you have to!"
The shuttles broke off from each other. Since there was only one Banshee, from the looks of things, it couldn't go after them all. Unfortunately, according to the scanner, it chose to go after the Truth. Vik pulled down hard as a series of plasma bolts sped by them. The team was jostled about by the sudden shift. Vik activated the shuttle's boosters, hoping to increase their speed. Unfortunately, he couldn't get much out of the aging craft.
"I seriously need to get this thing a better fuel cell and thrusters," he grumbled before hitting the dashboard a few times.
"How much firepower can this tub take exactly?" Nel anxiously asked the quarian.
"As you mentioned before, it's designed for camping," Vik reminded her, sounding slightly agitated by the question. "You figure it out."
Vik turned on a camera for the back of the shuttle. Before them on the screen was the Banshee, chasing after them like a demon. He did his best to avoid the next series of shots, but Liara knew the odds weren't in their favour. This banshee knew they were the weak link here and it was going to hound them until they were shot down. They needed help, fast.
"Wrex," she called up. "He's not letting up on us, we could use some assistance."
For a moment there was no answer. Liara sheepishly called again, sounding more worried this time.
"Wrex?" She whispered into the comm-link
For a moment she was worried Wrex was having his own problems. Had another banshee shown up out of nowhere? Her fears soon proved unfounded though, when his shuttle appeared on the scanner.
"Hold on, T'Soni," he suddenly called up. "I'm having the pilot line up a shot."
At that moment, the Wrex's shuttle appeared on screen from the right and fired its onboard guns at the banshee. It scored a lucky hit that ripped apart the cockpit of the Covenant craft, killing the hostile immediately in a fiery explosion.
"Good shot, Wrex," Liara congratulated. "That was too close."
"No problem, I'll shadow you guys for now until we get inside," the krogan leader told her through the comm. "We don't want any more surprises."
But there was another surprise to come. On the scanners soon blared again and Vik gripped harder on the controls as he steered.
"Keelah, four more of them," he growled. "They're bearing down on us from on high and coming in fast."
"Prepare to evade, push this thing towards the hangar!" Liara ordered. "We cannot stop!"
They dreaded the inevitable incoming fire, expecting it to rain around them at any second. Vik kept pushing the controls, Kayap remained huddled in a corner and even Nel seemed frightened. Liara waited for something to happen, but nothing did. Suddenly, as quickly as the blips on the scanner were there, they were gone again.
"Wait, where'd they go?" Vik asked, confused himself at the suddenly blank screen.
"Are they messing with us now?" Nel asked. "They got stealth drives on those things too?"
"Banshees don't have cloaks," Kayap informed her. "Not as far as I recall."
"Besides, why would they reveal their position and then cloak?" Vik asked, still puzzled by the whole thing. "And sangheili don't just back off either."
Liara contacted Wrex.
"Do you see anything out there, Wrex?" She asked.
"Uh, yeah," he replied. "I'm looking at where they should be and... I'm seeing some debris. I... I think someone shot them."
The asari was taken aback by the news, her face turning to one of disbelief.
"That's not possible," Liara told him, stunned at Wrex's report. "The Lucen is the only other ship in the area and it could never get this close without the turrets ripping her apart."
"I'm just telling you what I'm seeing, Liara," Wrex reiterated. "Something shot at them from the looks of it."
"But who?" Vik asked. "I'm seeing no other ships on the scanner."
Liara didn't like it, but they had no time to speculate what had happened. All she knew was that it had saved their asses. No sense in dwelling on it.
"We'll figure it out later," she stated, her tone becoming more reserved again. "We need to get inside now, before more Banshees show up."
No argued with her. Vik put the Truth back on course and started flying it towards the station once more. Saya's shuttle was already there when they arrived at the hangar entrance. They passed through the mass effect field covering it and quickly touched down.
The Truth's doors opened immediately, as did those of the other two shuttles. Everyone ran out, guns held high and ready for a fight. They could already see several Covenant fire teams moving among the assorted equipment. Hanging high above them was a Phantom dropship, situated next to a large platform where a number of sangheili were taking up positions. Most of them were wearing black armour. Spec Ops soldiers, just as Liara had predicted.
As everyone looked for cover and the shooting started, Liara frantically searched for a terminal in the room they could use. Wrex fired a carnage blast at one of the sangheili on the platform above. Saya was using a sniper rifle to keep the other Covenant officers pinned behind cover. The ShadowNet Operatives and Urdnot Warriors were also heavily involved in the fire fight at this point. The increased firepower kept the Covenant's heads down while Liara looked for their first objective.
She soon spotted it along one of the far walls and called over to Wrex.
"I need an opening!" She shouted to him.
"You have it," Wrex assured her. "Move!"
The Urdnot clan leader pulled a missile launcher off his back and fired into the assorted Covenant soldiers who were likely to be in Liara's way. As the sangheili were blown to pieces, Saya picked off their subordinates as they ran for better cover. He managed to catch one of the kig-yar through the eye as he tried to strafe their lines.
Nel provided cover fire with her assault rifle along with Liara as Vik rushed to the terminal. Kayap hobbled after them, lugging the massive Fuel Rod Cannon he had with him. Vik threw himself at the terminal and scrambled to get it working. They had limited cover here, so he'd have to work fast. As plasma and gunfire echoed through the air he did his best to break into the terminal.
"I think this thing is used for communications and direction," he stated. "Not much for security, I just need to pull up a floor plan of this place."
"Well hurry," Nel demanded in between shots. "We're too exposed out here!"
As Vik continued to work, the Covenant started to press. The krogan and ShadowNet Operatives were holding the line, but the sangheili were pushing hard. Nel tossed a cluster grenade into the fray, managing to kill one of the Covenant Officers in the blast. As she did, she looked up to the platform and saw a sangheili with a strange looking weapon aiming at them. She pushed Liara back into the wall as the alien fired at them.
"Watch out!" She called out, as a long beam of energy cut through the air towards them.
"Ion Beam!" Kayap cried aloud as he ducked low. "Not good! Not good at all!"
Nel took aim at the offending shooter and fired a short burst at the Covie. She managed to catch him in the head, taking down his shields. The last shot hit him in the eye and he fell off the platform to the hangar floor with a splat.
"Good eye," Liara told her. "I didn't see him."
"Too busy staring at my ass for a change?" Nel cheekily asked her in response.
"No," Liara replied rather monotone.
She wouldn't admit it, but she was happy for once to see Nel acting a bit more like herself. It helped ease her fears that the turian wasn't ready for this. Regardless, she had other things to worry about.
"ShadowNet Team, move up and secure the hangar!" She ordered.
The Operatives obeyed her command and they moved into the hangar proper. The krogan followed, Wrex leading the charge of course.
"Don't spare a single one of these pyjaks!" He ordered his men as he fired off his shotgun "Rip them apart if you have to!"
Wrex punctuated that last remark by firing another carnage blast into the fray. Liara watched him and the others move up, only taking her eyes off them when Vik spoke up.
"I got it!" He shouted happily. "I have the floor plan! I'm uploading it to everyone now."
Liara turned away from the fighting to bring up the map on her omni-tool. Nel, Kayap and Vik gathered around her to get a look. Liara searched the blueprint carefully, looking for any signs of a security room. Vik eventually pointed to something on the map for her.
"I think that's it," he confidently told her. "Data from this terminal indicates this is where all secure visual feeds go to. It's likely where they monitor the whole station."
"Alright then," Liara nodded. "Wrex and Saya will continue to push through the corridors and clean out the enemy. We'll move to this room and see about finding the Codemaster from there."
"What exactly will we be looking for?" Nel asked her.
"A blocked off room, camera feeds, high security levels," Liara listed off frantically. "Anything that could reveal where they're likely keeping whatever this thing is. Now let's move. We don't have much time."
They slipped away from the hangar fight as Wrex, Saya and the others continued to press the enemy. The plan was going good so far, but Liara was hesitant to think things would be smooth from here on out. She still didn't know what was waiting for them deeper inside this place.
Saya kept close to Wrex as his krogan separated from the ShadowNet Operatives. Liara had wanted him to work with him and a part of him actually wanted to for once. The asari's words from before still hung heavy in his mind. As was the face of the young krogan he had killed. He still hadn't brought out his sword during the fight, preferring to keep to either his pistol or rifle. He had cleaned it, but he wasn't sure if he could shed blood with it again. Perhaps actually fighting alongside some krogan for once would help him sort things out.
The battle was at the forefront of his mind though, as he did not intend to let his doubts cost them this mission. The Covenant were losing ground, but they weren't retreating. The sangheili fought for every inch of the station and only death would end their stand. Luckily, the krogan were more than capable of standing against the Covenant Officers. It still took a lot of firepower to bring one sangheili down.
Wrex thankfully had that firepower and he remained at the tip of spear as they advanced. Saya stayed slightly behind him, acting as sniper support. He had split their miniature horde into teams to fully saturate the Station's halls, but his group was the forward thrust of the attack. He was leading it straight up the central corridor from the hangar, where it seemed most of the Covenant forces were congregating for the defence.
Wrex's style of fighting was well-suited to these enclosed spaces. His shotgun blasts cut the sangheili down within a few good hits. His specially modified Claymore was all the krogan needed to devastate a sangheili's shields and then fire another shot to rip open the alien's body. And if that somehow wasn't enough, Wrex could always just charge in scream. He managed to force one of the sangheili into the wall of the station, crushing the alien's rib cage. He then tossed the body at another of the still living aliens as a diversion before firing off a carnage shot next and pulping the distracted Covie.
"Keep your fortifications up and don't rush out into the open," Wrex warned the others as he took cover from the offending plasma fire. "You probably can regenerate from a plasma bolt hitting you, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to stay in the fight."
Wrex sent out a shockwave next that forced two unggoy to fly backwards down the hall. His men quickly moved up with him, firing like mad. Saya remained behind them all, taking a more cautious approach with his sniper rifle. While it wasn't made for such tight quarters like a space station, that didn't make it any less powerful. It was, after all, a stolen Kishock Harpoon Rifle they had taken from Khar'shan. Given the power of the weapon's shots, he presumed it would be more than a match for the sangheili shields they would no doubt encounter.
Saya scanned the enemy lines ahead of Wrex's company, looking for prime targets. He spotted one of particular note, a sangheili in red armour firing from behind a window he had smashed open. He had pretty good cover, but he was focused on the big hulking lizards charging at him. Saya took aim at the alien's head and fired. The kickback of the Kishock was brutal, but it got the job done despite the recoil. The shot sailed across the corridor and impaled the sangheili through the head with ease.
As Saya prepared another shot, plasma bolts exploded from behind a corner. One of the krogan warriors was hit in the knee and kneeled over. Wrex quickly rushed over to grab the downed Urdnot by his hump and tossed into some nearby cover.
"I told you to watch out for that!" He shouted at the krogan. "Stay down! I'll take care of this!"
Wrex moved out again, using his biotics to pull the offending shooter, a kig-yar with a plasma pistol, into the open. He fired a blast from his shotgun that ripped the bird-like alien apart. He then suddenly turned to see on krogan that had gone out ahead and was now pinned by a sangheili's plasma fire. Wrex quickly ran across the hall, changing his weapon to his assault rifle as he ran. He fired a stream of incendiary rounds at the Covie, pelting him with fire. He slammed into the wall next to the pinned krogan.
"Pull back to our lines," he ordered. "There's no sense in rushing this, the Covenant isn't running away. You'll get your chance, rejoin your brothers. I'll cover you!"
Wrex opened fire on the sangheili as the Urdnot Warrior pulled back. However, as he did, one of the doors to the Urdnot leader's side chimed. It opened moments later to reveal a black armoured sangheili. The alien growled in its own tongue before trying to shoot Wrex. The krogan turned just in time to swat the alien's gun away and hit him with a biotic punch. The sangheili was undeterred though and delivered his own punch to the side of Wrex's face.
As the two started grappling with one another, Saya tried to take aim at the offending sangheili, but couldn't get a good shot with how much they were moving. Someone else had a better shot though, the sangheili with the plasma rifle Wrex had shot at before. He was moving out to get a better angle to kill the Urdnot leader. Saya spotted him and turned his sights onto the alien, firing the Kishock again. The round penetrated the alien's head with ease, splattering his brains across the floor, but Wrex wasn't out of danger.
As the krogan struggled with the sangheili, the Covenant officer pulled out a plasma dagger from his belt. He went to jab it in Wrex's neck, but the krogan managed to take hold of his hand before he could get close. Roaring in Wrex's face, the sangheili tried pounding on the krogan as hard as he could in an attempt to lessen his grip.
Saya knew he had to act fast to help Wrex, but he didn't have a kill shot. The two were so close to one another, that the Kishock's harpoon round could potentially cut both of them down with one shot. So Saya decided to try something else, he reloaded his rifle and took aim at one of the sangheili's knee caps. He fired once, blowing off a chunk of the alien's leg. Wrex took the opportunity of the sangheili's pain and butted the alien's face with his own head.
The sangheili stumbled back, dropping the plasma dagger as he collapsed to the floor. Wrex wasted no time in stepping over to him and stomping the Covie's skull into the ground. He turned, looking over to Saya almost and gave a grin. Then he waved to his fellow warriors and called them to follow him further down the hall. The krogan answered with hearty battle cries, while Saya just looked on humbly.
He had just gone out of his way to save a krogan's life from two assailants. It was a new experience for him, one entirely of his own doing in fact. He had just reacted, without even thinking. He just accepted he couldn't let Wrex die. What was even stranger was seeing Wrex silently acknowledge who helped him. He had never gotten acknowledgement from a krogan before.
He quickly put his thoughts aside for the moment. He needed to keep up with the Urdnot Warriors. If anything, this experience taught him that they needed sniper support to complement their "up-close & personal" style of combat.
Reports from her Shadow Operatives were good, the Covenant were fully focused on the main assault. Their path to what was hopefully the security room was more or less clear. They just needed to get by a few unwanted stragglers. Mostly kig-yar and unggoy, but there was the odd sangheili or two in their path and that slowed their progress a bit.
Kayap stayed in cover, placing his Fuel Rod Cannon down. He overcharged his plasma pistol, taking out the shield of one of the kig-yar defenders. Nel took advantage of the attack, firing a burst from her assault rifle that took the Covie down. At the same time, Vik released a turret drone that fired on the Covenant lines. It took out a number of unggoy and pinned down one of the sangheili.
"Move up and take him!" Liara ordered.
"He's as good as gone, Doc!" Nel assured her.
The turian rushed out into the open, sliding into the cover of a small piece of architecture along the edge of the hallway. The sangheili spotted her as she slid, opening fire immediately. Nel pushed herself into cover as plasma fire hit along her bit of cover.
Seeing her in trouble, Vik hit the sangheili with an overload attack. The electrical blast shorted out the alien's shields, the shock of the attack forcing him to stand. The turret drone locked on and hit the Covie in the shoulder and the momentary distraction gave Nel the opening she needed. She opened fire on him, blowing him apart with Shredder rounds.
Liara now moved up into cover alongside Nel. She could already see the other Covenant squad pushing towards them, the sangheili knocking over a weapons container to act as his own bit of cover. As the plasma fire renewed, Liara looked over to the turian, now reloading her rifle.
"I'm going to send out a throw attack wave," she told her. "Get ready to move when I do! We'll rush them and flank their leader from both sides!"
"You sure that's a good idea?" Nel asked, hot plasma whizzing past her. "There's a whole lot of guys between us and them!"
"Vik and Kay will cover us," Liara assured her. "Don't worry! You were a Havoc Soldier, you're trained for close-quarters, use that!"
Liara looked back to Vik and Kayap and called over to them.
"We're going to move in," she shouted at them. "Move up to our position and cover us as we do!"
"I'll send a combat drone to help!" Vik added.
Meanwhile, Nel's grip on her rifle tightened. It was something like that she usually prepared to inject herself. She couldn't though. She didn't have the juice anymore. With her usual strategy now defunct all she had was her training. What if it wasn't enough? What if she got shot again? She couldn't take getting shot again.
Nel forced herself to banish the thoughts from her mind. Liara needed her and there was no time to argue. She prepared her rifle with incendiary rounds and took a deep breath.
"You can do this, Nel," she told herself. "Just pick your targets and move up. You've done this a thousand times, it's no different now. It's no different."
Liara let loose her throw attack, knocking two unggoy on their back sides and into a kig-yar's shield. She took off running forward and Nel was right behind. Vik's combat drone rolled up alongside them as the quarian and Kayap raced up to help cover the two.
Liara fired her pistol at another kig-yar as she moved up, distracting him as Vik's combat drone blasted the Covie with a full burst of energy. Nel raced past the first kig-yar as he recovered from the distraction of two unggoy hit his shield. She slammed the butt of her rifle into the side of the little alien's face and kept going.
As she turned her gun sights to her front, she saw a single unggoy charging up his plasma pistol. She let loose with a full burst from her assault rifle, cutting the little alien down. She turned back to her side and saw a powerful plasma charge hit another of the kig-yar square in the back as he took aim at her. Liara was also using her biotics to punch another of the unggoy in her path.
Nel turned her attention to the sangheili who was now standing up from his cover, plasma rifle raised. She ducked to the side, firing her gun as plasma bolt trailed at her. Several pistol shots from Vik struck the alien's shields as Liara peppered him with her submachine gun. The sangheili turned to them to engage, leaving Nel with an opening.
She levelled her gun on the sangheili and, just as his shields gave out, she fired a concussive shot at him. The alien stumbled backwards while Liara hit him with a warp attack. Nel now charged in, screaming at the top of her lungs, firing like mad. The sangheili went down as several burning incendiary shots cut into him. Nel only stopped her run when she kicked the falling sangheili's head in, just to be sure he'd stay down.
Liara approached Nel as she stood over the body. She saw the turian was still breathing heavily, the assault still fresh in her mind. Before the asari could even say anything, Nel let out a nervous chuckle.
"Heh, we totally smoked him, huh?" She asked apprehensively. "I mean, he's not just done, but well-done. Ha! Loser."
"Knew you could do it," Liara commended her.
"Well of course I could do it, I'm awesome," Nel sheepishly replied. "So, uh, is the security room much further?"
Liara could see Nel was still a bit wary about her own abilities, but she at least seemed to be getting some of her old confidence back. In any case, they had other priorities.
"It should be just ahead," she told the turian. "Come on."
They soon arrived at the door and Vik placed a breaching charge on the lock mechanism. They took positions along the side of the doorway and the quarian detonated the charge. The blast burrowed through the steel and the door slowly opened as smoke billowed outwards.
They all moved in at once. Vik fired off his shotgun into the gut of sangheili while Liara hit the alien with a powerful throw attack. Kayap shot an overcharge at a kig-yar and then fired several more rapid shots at his exposed body. Nel meanwhile fired her rifle full blast at another sangheili, cutting through his shield with ease before turning to shoot a second kig-yar running for cover.
With the hostiles in the room dead, the team wasted no time in setting to work. Vik rushed to the nearest terminal and began his hack. Nel and Kayap watched the door while Liara kept an eye on Vik's work. It went steadily as the quarian cut through the first security gate with ease. As he connected to the system, however, his omni-tool started to bug out him.
"Ugh, more of that sudden interference, same as Rakavekyon," he growled. "I'm going to have to check my omni-tool's systems, something must be wrong."
"You sure it isn't a security protocol you missed?" Liara asked.
"Now, we're in, I'm sure we're fine," he assured her. "Just give me a minute here."
Liara patiently waited as Vik began messing about with the systems. He did so at a frantic pace and Liara had trouble keeping up with him. Eventually, fearing they were taking too much time, she decided to request an update.
"Did you get have access to the guns?" Liara asked the quarian.
"Sorta," he stated hastily as he worked. "Defensive gun targeting systems run through here. I've scrambled them, but we can't turn them off from here. We'll need primary access to the station's power core to cut it off."
"Then that will have to be one of our stops," Liara concluded. "We can't leave this station with those guns still active. They'll blast the Lucen into atoms otherwise. What about camera feeds? Where's the Codemaster?"
Vik brought up a number of camera feeds, as well as several station status alerts.
"I searched the name," he explained. "These alerts pertain to the Codemaster's status. If I'm reading this right, they've diverted significant forces to the communications hub server to guard him."
Liara looked at the feeds themselves and saw a number of sangheili moving to defend the communications hub room. They crowded around the door, setting up barriers and barricades. Of course they weren't going to make this easy, when did they ever.
"I'll inform Wrex to make his way towards it," she determined. "What's the fastest route from here to there?"
"According to the floor plan," Vik stated as he brought up a holo-map on his omni-tool. "We need to head through... the Hot Labs. Huh, I can't seem to get any camera feeds on that. They must not have installed them there. We won't know what's in there."
"That's typical for this mission," Liara told him. "We need to hurry before there are too many guards between us and the Codemaster."
At that moment, there was the sound of several footsteps coming up the hall towards their room. Nel prepared a cluster grenade and called back to the others.
"I think that's our cue to go!" She warned the others.
"We can head out the back door to this room," Vik said. "It will take us straight to the Hot Labs."
"Then let's move!" Liara ordered.
The sangheili popped up at that moment, firing their weapons as they fled the room. Nel tossed her cluster grenade as she fired off her assault rifle.
"Don't worry fuckwits, we were just leaving!" She called back.
The grenade exploded as the team evacuated the room, what was left of the sangheili in hot pursuit.
With news of where their target was located, Wrex began leading his krogan towards it, intending to help Liara breech the barricades the Covenant were setting up. Saya never had many good things to say about Krogan, but he knew better than to doubt their abilities. If anyone could smash through the sangheili defences, it was them. Saya just hoped they got there in time to coordinate with the ShadowNet Operatives making their way there as well.
What he and the krogan hadn't counted on was that they'd be hitting those defences a lot sooner. An advanced squad of sangheili met them as they passed through what looked like a living quarters for the station's garrison. The sangheili had been smart enough to guess their route, which worried Saya. They seemed heavily invested in keeping them away from the Codemaster. If they knew they were here for it, how long before Vorsa and Balak discovered their reasons for coming after it?
Saya couldn't think about that now though, Wrex and his krogan were under heavy fire. The sangheili had brought their heavier weapons, concussion rifles to be exact. They were bombarding Wrex's krogan heavily, stalling the advance. Either out of stubbornness or bravery, Wrex's warriors refused to give up what ground they had gained.
Wrex was moving among the pillars and overturned tables the Urdnot soldiers were using for cover. It was all he could do to keep the line from faltering. He tossed out frag grenades at the sangheili, trying to break them up. When some of the Covies charged their lines with plasma swords at the ready he took them head-on, firing off his shotgun or biotics to send the Covenant flying.
At one point, a stealth sangheili had flanked the krogan lines and hit one of the Urdnot Warriors in the hump with a full blast from his plasma rifle. Wrex immediately engaged the alien, charging at him full bore. He rammed the alien into a nearby pillar, crushing the sangheili's ribcage before throwing him to the ground and stomping on his head. He then turned back to the battle proper.
"Come on, men!" He ordered. "Are you going to let these bastards beat us? We're Urdnot! We're the head clan of all of Tuchanka! Now show them why!"
The krogan rallied behind Wrex, while Saya attempted to help from a distance. He pinpointed the sangheili armed with the concussion rifles. He got a bead on one who was hitting the krogan positions pretty hard. With one good shot from his sniper rifle he managed to puncture the alien's shields and take him down with a single shot.
As Saya readied to fire again, however, the back wall of the living quarters exploded open. When the dust settled there was a large, three-legged weapon staring them in the face. It looked like some kind of turret and when it began opening fire on the krogan that hypothesis was confirmed. One poor krogan took a hard hit to the chest and went down, Wrex immediately ran in to cover the fallen warrior's position.
"Keep your heads down," he ordered. "We need to find a way to flank that thing!"
But Saya realised they didn't have time to figure that out. Wrex's people were in danger. That turret needed to be dealt with now. He tired getting a bead on the gunner, but didn't have all that great a shot. There was one other option, but it required his sword. A weapon he still didn't really want to use, especially when he still had reservations about using it to help Krogan.
Saya pulled the Shiakala out of its scabbard and gave it a hard look. Liara's words returned to his mind as he did. He had killed a lot of krogan with this blade, all out of anger. He had killed so many he had lost count. He couldn't deny that in some ways he still hated them, but it seemed so hollow now, pointless even.
That didn't make it any easier though. The Shiakala had been reformed to kill krogan, not to save them. That was why he started carrying it, why he had retrained himself to use it. Wrex would probably figure something out on his own, he didn't need to go out of his way to protect him or his men.
Before, all that really mattered to him was killing the krogan. He wanted to make them pay for valuing life so little. That was just how he saw them. Now he could just see Wrex, standing and fighting with his men, defending them at risk to himself. He was not at all like the image of his kind that had been seared into his brain.
His issues with krogan notwithstanding, to do nothing to help Wrex now felt wrong. Liara had been right, hatred wasn't enough anymore. All he could see when he looked at these krogan was the face of the last one he killed. That didn't mean he liked them, but he couldn't do nothing either.
He jumped out of cover, his sword held tightly in his hand. He rushed across the tables and chairs scattered among the room, his cloak activated until he closed in on one sangheili in his path. With one swift cut of his blade, pulsing with electricity, he cut deep across the Covie's throat and kept going.
His cloak was gone now, but he refused to stop running. He thought he saw more sangheili and even the turret turning to face him. Saya ducked as one of the Covenant Officers took a swipe at him. He then spun himself into the cover of a pillar as the plasma blasts from it targeted him. He was worried he was pinned until the turret's focus turned away. He looked to see Wrex had ordered his men to open fire on it with everything they had, forcing it to turn away.
Good, now he could finish what he started.
Saya ran from cover, scraping the sword against the ground as he did. Sparks lit up the floor as he closed in one of the sangheili. He rolled to the side and forward as the alien fired on him. He popped up alongside the alien's left leg and sliced deep into the tendon, forcing the sangheili to kneel. Saya slashed the sword across the alien's throat next and kept moving as dark blue blood squirted from the wound.
He charged now at the open hole in the back wall, leaping towards the turret. He stabbed down hard, deep into the sangheili's back before hitting the electrical charge again. The alien screamed in agony before slumping over dead.
The salarian forced the body out of the chair and took control of the turret for himself. Quickly deciphering the controls he began firing on the remaining sangheili in the room, their backs completely exposed to the turret. The Urdnot Warriors and Wrex seized the moment, rushing the sangheili defences. Wrex's led the charge of course, using his biotics to propel him forward. He delivered a crushing right hook on one sangheili before sending a shockwave to uproot another.
It didn't take long for the remaining Covies to end up crushed between the combined strength of the krogan and Saya's newly acquired turret. Wrex met the salarian as he exited the gun proper, an unassuming smile on his face.
"Quick thinking there, salarian," he told him gratefully. "Stealing that gun was smart move. I'd probably have done it myself, if I wasn't nearly as big a target and had a crazy lighting sword to boot."
"It feels weird knowing a salarian got us out of a jam," another of the Urdnot warriors told Wrex, sounding rather befuddled at the whole situation.
"Then don't think of it as a salarian saving you," Wrex informed him bluntly. "Think of it as a member of the Krant doing his duty for his brothers in arms. He doesn't have to be krogan to be Krant."
The Urdnot soldiers seemed confused, but accepting of Wrex's reasoning. It was an interesting philosophy, coming from a krogan no less. More importantly, he seemed to believe it completely. Not something he expected from the usually xenophobic species.
Wrex eventually turned back to Saya and gave a knowing nod that the salarian returned. The krogan leader than marched past the STG Agent, making his way through the hole the Covenant had blown in the wall.
"Enough chit chat, people," he commanded. "T'Soni needs us at those barricades. We need to break through to this Codemaster, no matter the cost."
Saya was right behind him, a newfound respect for Wrex slowly growing in him. Another thing he never expected to see. He just hoped that any other surprises in this station would be just as positive.
Getting to the lab was easy, getting inside not so much. Not wanting to risk the explosion catching the attention of more Covenant soldiers, Liara asked Vik to hack the door. It took a lot longer than even he expected. Nel was nervously covering the corridors for more than a few minutes with Kayap, much to her chagrin.
"Can you hurry up?" She asked the quarian. "I feel exposed standing out here."
"I'm almost there," Vik sharply responded. "Just be patient. Whatever is in here the Covenant locked it down pretty tight. They have several security gates and it takes awhile to crack each individual one. They really don't want anyone getting in here."
"All the more reason for us to check it out then, as discreetly as possible," Liara added. "There's a reason the Covenant don't allow the Hegemony here and it can't just be the Codemaster. We're here now, so there's no sense in not taking a peek ourselves considering it's our fastest route anyway."
At that moment there was a chime from Vik's hacking device and the door opened swiftly.
"Ha, we're in," the quarian laughed. "The Covenant may be experts in subjugating races to follow their stupid religion, but they can't beat us quarians at tech. Now I don't have to turn in my hacker card."
"Great work, Vik," Liara congratulated. "Now let's see what they wanted to keep us from seeing so badly."
The four entered the lab carefully, minding their corners they made their way inside. As they scanned the room, they saw a number of medical slabs on the right side and several stasis pods lining the walls to their left. Suspiciously, they looked very similar to the ones they found at the Charlan Research Centre. The only difference was their glass was tinted black. Nel want over to one and tapped the glass with her talon.
"What do you think they're cooking in there?" She asked aloud. "More messed up genetic experiments?"
"Possibly," Liara concluded. "We'll need to dig deeper to find out for sure. Vik, see if you can hack their systems, everyone else scour the room for intel. Be quick about it though, we can't stay here for too long."
Vik set to work, using his omni-tool to hack into the vital stats on one of the pods. Nel and Liara, meanwhile, checked out the various bits of lab equipment in the area. They were archaic at best, slabs, crude medical tools and a single medical scanner at the back. It was definitely some kind of genetic research lab, but its ultimate purpose was still unclear.
"Is this where Charlan moved their experiments after we attacked?" Kayap fretfully asked as he eyed the medical tools.
"I'm not so sure," Liara replied. "A lot of those experiments were carried out by the batarians. It would be difficult to continue their work without their knowledge."
As Nel looked at the medical scanner, she picked up a datapad from a nearby tray and read it.
"You may be right, Doc," Nel told her. "I'm not much for science crap, but their lab notes are dated prior to when that shit at Charlan went down. They've be working at this stuff for the past few months now. If anything, maybe some of this stuff was spun off to the batarians."
"What do you mean?" Liara asked.
"Well, I'm not much for science," Nel casually admitted. "But bio-engineered armour, increased aggression, greater survivability, these are all the things they're trying to add to their subjects. Something the Covies keep referring to as 'Ascended Ones' or some shit. I never understood half the religious shit they spewed even when I worked for the Blood Pack. It's probably just more of that genetic crap we saw on Khar'shan."
All those things certainly sounded familiar to Liara, especially the bio-engineered armour. For a moment she wondered if this was where the Covenant tested out potential gene mod ideas of their own before handing it off to the batarians to improve upon. It didn't entirely fit though. The Covenant's sense of superiority wasn't in line with that. Why would they trust heretics to improve their soldiers and acknowledge they had failed to do it themselves? Unless, and this was the scary thought, they weren't working on their soldiers here at all.
"Hey, look what I found!" Kayap called over.
Nel and Liara looked to where Kayap was pointing. Hanging over their heads was a significantly large stasis pod, bigger than the others.
"I don't think we want to see what's in there," Nel noted.
Before they could speculate further on what was inside the pod, Vik called over to them.
"Hey, I cracked into the data file," he told them. "I think we have something."
They all joined Vik as he brought up the data on his omni-tool.
"According to this, these pods are being used to implant information," he explained. "Whatever is inside is being fed a bunch of data directly into its brain, but I can't make out exactly what. Knowing the Covenant though, it's probably a bunch of advanced battle tactics designed to speed up training."
To Liara, that sounded eerily familiar to a certain krogan super soldier she had recently met. There were, however, bigger questions on her mind.
"Can you figure out exactly what's inside them?" She asked Vik.
"Not really," Vik disappointedly shrugged. "Other than the fact there seems to be a lot of tech installed into the host that the computer says is functioning properly, I got nothing. This pod specifically monitors vital signs and the cerebral data upload, I can't really read what exactly is-"
Just then a klaxon ring sounded off in the lab, it was accompanied by bright flashing red lights that nearly blinded them all. Vik looked to his omni-tool, still connected to the pod's primary systems and read the words on it aloud.
"Stasis interrupted?!" He shouted at the screen in confusion. "Safety protocols disengaged? What the hell?"
"The Covenant," Liara reasoned suddenly. "The others must be hitting them hard! They're unleashing their experiments remotely to help them drive us back!"
"Well fuck," Nel grimaced. "They couldn't have waited until we left their stupid-"
At that moment, the pod's glass broke apart as an arm, covered in something that looked like a brown shell, burst from within. Everyone backed up, pointing their weapons at the pod. As they did, the creature within continued braking its way out, shattering the glass with relative ease. As it stepped out, everyone got a frightening first look at it. An exoskeleton covered its entire body, its hands claw-like and vicious looking, and, most tellingly, a large tapering head with four yellow glowing eyes.
While everyone else looked on in puzzled fearful confusion, one of them was more terrified than anything else.
"No," Liara said stepping back, eyes widening in fear. "No, this isn't possible. Shepard killed you. He killed all of you!"
"Uh, Doc, we're a little in the dark here," Nel nervously stated, keeping her gun held high. "So if you know, mind telling us what the fuck we're looking at?"
Liara wasn't able to answer, events were still in motion. A compartment opened along the side of the pod and the creature reached inside, pulling out a strange gun that looked like an extension of the alien's body. The weapon resonated with a yellow glow inside it with a brown insect-like casing making up the stock and barrel. As the monster screeched a high-pitched shriek, Vik fired on the creature with a full blast from his shotgun. Everyone else did the same, ripping the monster apart before it could raise its weapon to fire.
Only when the creature had stopped moving did Liara try to explain.
"It's called a Collector," she grimly informed her companions. "They were responsible for those colonies going dark a few months back. Commander Shepard was sent to kill them, I thought he had."
"I guess he missed some," Nel mordantly noted.
"Wait, you're talking about THE Collectors, right?" Vik asked, still visibly shaken. "The fabled mysterious race of aliens who kidnap specific species and are rarely seen? The urban legends that people claim steal body parts from unsuspecting victims in the night? The beings from beyond the infamous Omega 4 Relay that no ship has returned from? Those Collectors?"
"The exact ones," Liara assured him. "And the truth of them is stranger, and more horrifying, than any fiction."
Liara knew this wasn't good. If the Covenant were doing experiments on the Collectors, that could only mean one thing. She knew she'd have to explain it to the others now, considering that this put their mission in a whole new light. However, now was not the time, especially when more of the pods were cracking open. The shrieks and screams from the Collectors were already filling up the room, overpowering the klaxon ring.
"We need to get out of here, now!" Liara ordered.
Already the Collectors were pulling themselves out of their pods, grabbing the weapons stored in the compartments and moving to attack. Those that were in pods higher up unfurled their wings and buzzed down to the ground.
As they opened fire, Liara and her team retreated behind the cover of the various bits of medical equipment. Nel had snatched the gun from the first Collector they had killed and used it to fire back on the incoming Collectors. She managed to kill a few as they flew down, but the odds were rapidly turning against them.
"We have to get to the door and keep moving to the Codemaster," Liara ordered as she sent out a throw attack at one of the Collectors. "If we stay here we're dead!"
Kayap tossed out a plasma grenade at the voracious Collector horde, managing to stick it to one of them. The explosion blew the alien to chunks along with several others nearby. However, more Collectors were quick to replace him. One of them appeared to be slightly larger than the rest, sporting peculiar horn-like appendages on its head. It unleashed a furious barrage from its assault rifle, pelting their cover heavily.
Nel tried taking aim at the horned Collector, but its barriers absorbed the shots. It returned fire, forcing the turian to duck back down. She looked out slightly to see the horned Collector seemingly directing the other Collectors about with slight hand gestures, similar to those of the sangheili with their troops.
"That dude with the horns looks like he's in charge," She told the others. "Not to mention plagiarising our sangheili friends' tactics."
"They must've been implanting their strategies into them, like Vik suggested," Liara concluded. "But that doesn't make any sense for Collectors."
"Why wouldn't it?" Vik asked, seemingly confused.
There was a very long answer to that question. Liara intended to share it time. However, given the gunfire and the fact they had more important things to do, Liara opted for the shorter answer.
"Because as far as I know, they're not supposed to think for themselves," Liara explained frantically, as guns shots cut across the top of their table.
"Well they could just be following programming if that's the case," Vik presumed. "There was a lot of tech installed into them."
"We'll figure it out later," Liara sharply told him. "We need to get out of here first!"
Kayap pointed to the door at the other end of the room.
"The Fuel Rod Cannon can probably blow through that," he suggested.
"We'd stand a better chance of blowing the door apart if you hit the pressurised hydraulic systems for it," Vik suggested. "I'd need to overload the power systems that control the door to force the mechanism to reach critical pressure. Any explosion would then cause the door to release all pressure and literally rip itself open. But I'd need to find the power regulator... there!"
Vik pointed across from them behind another one of the slabs. There was a hatch of some kind marked with red hazard symbols.
"That must be the power regulator for this entire room," he suggested. "With this many stasis pods it must be working overtime to keep this place running. I can overload the system, but I'll need to get to it first."
"I'll cover you then," Nel volunteered.
Vik gave the turian a bit of an eye at the sudden declaration of help.
"What? It sounds like it makes a huge explosion," Nel shrugged. "I wanna see."
The quarian looked to Liara who didn't bother debating the subject. They needed out and fast.
"I'll distract the Collector Leader from here," she told them both. "Nel, get Vik to that power regulator so we can get the hell out of here!"
Liara jumped out of cover, sending a powerful warp attack straight into the horned Collector. Vik took off running, Nell right behind him. She fired off concussion shots at the Collectors as they moved. She and Liara attracted all the attention while Vik slid into cover. He blew the lock on the hatch open with his shotgun and forced the lid open. Inside, as he had hoped, was the power regulator. He quickly pulling wires and chips at a frantic pace.
Meanwhile, Liara and Nel tried thinning out the Collectors. It was a fairly big room though, and nothing they did seemed to make a dent. Liara's singularity managed to make a number of the Collectors easy targets for Kayap to shoot at with his plasma pistol, but there always seemed to be more replacements.
"Time to go back to sleep, Bug Brains!" Nel shouted at them, tossing a cluster grenade into their ranks.
The explosion ripped apart several Collectors and upturned a number of medical slabs on their side of the room. Liara in the meantime focused most of her attention on the Collector Leader, fully intending to keep it from getting a lock on Nel. The Collector Leader in turn opened fire on the the asari with reckless abandon, badly damaging her shields. She took a hit to the arm and was forced to drop back down, but she didn't intend to stay there.
"Alright then," she said to herself. "As Shepard would say, the kid gloves are off now."
That would usually lead to Wade throwing himself head first into the fight with a biotic charge. Liara had no such intentions. Plus, she had a better idea. She hit the Lead Collector with a powerful throw attack that sent him flying back into one of the pods. When the creature looked like it had recovered and began to fly out of the crashed pod, Liara hit him again with a slam attack. The Collector floated up into the air and then was sent plummeting back down to the floor. The shockwave from the biotic attack, hit two more Collectors nearby.
As that happened, Vik finished up his end of the plan. He hit the power regulator with an excessive electrical charge from his omni-tool. The regulator overheated and began to spark wildly. Moments later a number of pods suddenly, and violently, exploded from an overload energy. The blasts killed a number of Collectors and injured even more. The door itself seemed to buckle around the frame and begin to groan.
"It's going critical! Kayap, hit it now!" Vik shouted over to the unggoy.
The little alien hefted his Fuel Rod Cannon up to the door and fired the shot. The large green bolt of energy sailed through the air and slammed into the buckling doorframe hard. The subsequent explosion released the locking pressure on the door and, as Vik had promised, it violently pulled itself apart. The way to the Codemaster was open at last.
"Let's move team," Liara ordered as she got up, still firing on the remaining Collectors. "We need to get out of here before they can recover."
The team was about to disembark, only for the room to deliver one last surprise. The large pod Kayap had found suddenly fell from the ceiling, a direct cause of the explosion that had rocked the room. Moments later, a single long pointed leg burst out of the glass. Clawing its way out of the wreckage of the pod soon arose a large, heavily armoured, four eyed creature. It had a similar shape to that of the heads of the Collectors, but was more pointed than them. It stood atop four long legs that skittered across the floor.
"The fuck is this thing now?" Nel asked exasperated.
"Praetorian! Run!" Liara ordered.
The monstrous looking creature fired a sudden burst of energy from its eyes that slashed across the floor towards them. Nel grabbed Vik by the collar and threw him and herself out of the attack's path. Kayap meanwhile fired a Fuel Rod Cannon shot at the creature forcing it backwards. It gave him and Liara the chance to run to the open door where they met up with Vik and Nel.
"You okay, Bucket?" Nel asked as she picked the quarian up from the ground.
"You nearly broke my arm, but it's better than being vaporized," Vik responded. "Thanks for the save there, I guess."
Nel only nodded in appreciation of the praise as they began to run away from the room. Screeching behind them was the Praetorian. Liara looked back momentarily to see the monstrosity had recovered from Kayap's attack. Now it was up and scampering after them on all four of its legs. It rushed out of the labs, slamming into the side of the wall. Its stumble didn't even seem to faze it though. It picked itself up again and kept chasing after the four intruders.
"Keep running," Liara ordered as they ran. "We can't fight that thing in these corridors, it will kill us! We need to find more open ground!"
"For once I'm not arguing," Nel replied, firing back on the creature as she ran.
The Praetorian howled and shrieked as it chased them through the halls. It had no intention of letting its prey escape and Liara wasn't sure they had enough firepower to put it down. They needed help, and fast.
Wrex and his men had made their way towards the station's central power core. Liara had mentioned in their last update that Vik hadn't been able to turn off the guns from the security room. They would need to disrupt the power in order to effectively shut the guns down or they'd never get out of here alive.
Luckily, the core was a convenient way for them to avoid some of the bigger sangheili forces defending the station. From here, they could effectively get behind some of the barricades and get to the Codemaster quicker. The only problem was the small force of sangheili guards already present in the core. They weren't making their little detour an easy one.
The Covenant were protecting the power core with furious resolve. Wrex had to prove his resolve stronger. He forced his way past the sangheili, firing a carnage blast as he charged out of cover. As the explosive round blew one of the sangheili apart, Wrex collided into another sending him flying away. The sangheili slammed into the power node in the center of the room.
Where one Covie fell though more took its place. One of the sangheili opened fire on Wrex, hitting him with a barrage of plasma bolts. Wrex had to duck into cover before his barriers completely failed. He blind-fired his shotgun out at the offending sangheili, but the alien easily dodged the shots. As Wrex's barriers returned he moved out to fire at him more readily, but ended up getting sideswiped by the sangheili as he closed in. He wouldn't let the Covie get a shot on him though, grabbing the sangheili's gun before head butting him.
The sangheili growled at the krogan and pulled out a plasma sword. Wrex jumped back as the alien swung at him and then unleashed a shockwave to knock the Covie away from him. Not just to get the alien away from him, but to force him into a trap.
While Wrex had been engaging the sangheili, he had noticed Saya spreading some explosive gel across the side of a small terminal. Reading the salarian's plan instantly, Wrex made sure his next attack would send the sangheili flying into that very terminal. When Saya detonated the gel, the sangheili was thrown to the floor by the explosion. The salarian then wasted no time in stabbing the downed Covenant soldier in the gut and electrocuting him for good measure.
"Thanks for the assist," Wrex said gratefully as the STG Agent pulled his sword out. "You wouldn't know which wire to pull to shut those guns outside down by the way?"
Saya only shrugged. Wrex had feared that. He had originally thought about just blowing stuff in the core up, but didn't want to risk that damaging something they shouldn't. He realised they'd need some help on this. So, while his men kept fighting the sangheili, he made a call to Liara.
"T'Soni, we're in the station's power core," he began speaking into his communicator. "We think we can shut the plasma turrets outside off, but we need some help knowing what wires to pull."
"Not now, Wrex!" Liara unexpectedly shouted back, the faint sound of pistol shots audible in the background. "We have a situation up here!"
It was just his luck he caught her at a bad time.
"What kind of situation exactly?" He inquisitively asked her.
The Praetorian kept up the chase as they wound through the halls of the station. Its shrieking horrifying cries echoed in their heads as they all raced to stay ahead of it. Now and again, someone turned around to engage the creature as they ran, but it barely seemed to slow the monster down. Vik's turrets and drones peppered the beast with every energy blast and shot they could hit the Praetorian with. All the giant husk did was plough through the minor distractions and keep going.
Liara didn't know at this point if they were getting closer or father away from the Codemaster, but that was far from her top priority now. She kept a careful eye on her omni-tool as she ran, looking for corners to turn, a room to duck into, anything that would keep the Praetorian a few feet behind them. The scampering giant creature refused to give up the chase though. It bulldozed through any door and rapidly turned any corner, determined to continue its dogged pursuit.
The last thing Liara needed was to be interrupted by Wrex. As he called in, they rounded a corner to find a number of Covenant facing them. Without even thinking, Liara sent a wide powerful biotic shockwave that knocked them back. She didn't stop to finish them off, no one did, not even the Praetorian. Before the sangheili leading the small Covenant squad could get up, the massive husk monster trampled him and bashed one of the unggoy into a wall.
"We've just encountered some friends of Shepard we thought were dead," Liara quickly informed Wrex as she fired back on the Praetorian. "The Covenant have been helping the Collectors, Wrex! They're alive somehow and we're being pursued by a damn Praetorian!"
"The Collectors? But Shepard blew those bastards beyond the void" Wrex shouted back astonished by the news. "How'd they...? Never mind, where are you? We'll high tail it to your position!"
"Forget it," Liara informed him, barely turning a corner as the Praetorian fired its devastating beam attack at them. "I've already called in my ShadowNet Operatives! They'll meet us up ahead! You have to keep moving and find the Codemaster! That's all that matters!"
Liara terminated the call, just as Nelanax tossed a cluster grenade at the Praetorian. It smacked against the monster's face and exploded. However, the bestial abomination emerged from the smoke and fire, screaming louder than ever.
"Oh come on! Give us a break here!" Nel exasperatedly pleaded as she turned and ran. "How in the fuck do you kill this thing, Doc?"
"I've never actually killed one," Liara explained through pained gasps of breath as she ran. "All I know is that we need some major firepower and a lot space to keep it off balance!"
Liara checked her omni-tool again and found at least one fulfillment for that requirement.
"There's a large room up ahead," she shouted at everyone. "Follow me!"
They all pushed themselves more, desperate to keep ahead of the monstrosity still barrelling after them.
Wrex didn't like how the message ended, but there wasn't much he could do from here. He just had to hope Liara would be okay. She was tough enough to face anything by herself. That didn't mean, however, that he was about to fully abandon her.
"Liara's in major trouble, Saya," he informed the salarian. "She needs help and I got an idea. Vik gave us access to the security feeds when he hacked in. I need you to look through all the cameras for the level Liara was on last. Locate her so I can send the closest Krogan squad I got up there to her position to help her out."
Saya just nodded and began searching through his omni-tool. While he was doing that, Wrex decided to work out disrupting the power to the plasma turrets outside so they could get moving to the Codemaster. As he searched for possible clues, more problems arose. Plasma fire erupted from a level above them. A new squad of sangheili had joined the fray and now had them in their sights.
"Someone get some heavy weapons on those pyjaks before they cut us down!" Wrex ordered. "We have more important things to do right now than deal with these religious nuts!"
Liara and her team rushed inside the large room. The Praetorian was still closing in, so they had to work fast. Vik managed to get the door to lock behind them with a quick bypass on the locking mechanism, but no one expected it to hold for long.
Liara got a better look at the room they had chosen to make their stand in as they took cover. It appeared to be some sort of weapons storage area. There wasn't really any time to see if there was anything in the crates they could use, all they could do was take cover. It was only a few moments before the Praetorian started pounding on the door, the steel bending and buckling with every hit. The monstrous talons of the abominations legs sliced through to their side, making everyone tense up.
"We have to keep it off guard," Liara told everyone. "As long as it isn't able to zero in on one of us we'll be okay."
Suddenly the door exploded outward as the creature's eyebeams hit it. One of the beams sliced straight on through, topping several crates onto the floor in the center of the room. The Praetorian now forced its way inside, but it wasn't alone. A small contingent of Collectors and Covenant soldiers marched in along with it. They kept behind it of course, knowing how dangerous facing the front of the creature would be.
"Great, everyone wants in on this party now," Vik groaned.
The quarian fired a blast from his shotgun, hitting one of the unggoy dead center as it waddled up at them. Liara joined in, tossing out a singularity into the crowd and picking up one off the Collectors which she immediately filled full of holes. Kayap fired on one of the sangheili for his part, but only managed to piss the Covenant Officer off. He was forced to duck down as the sangheili fired back, perforating his little crate with fire.
Nel meanwhile fired several shots from behind her support pillar, targeting the Praetorian. The giant husk fired its devastating eyebeams again, blowing a huge chunk out of the pillar and forcing Nel to seek better cover behind one of the fallen boxes in the room. She spied a rather large box among the centre of the group. Amid a pile of plasma grenades and Fuel Rod Containers, there was one significantly large item. It pulsated with blue energy and did not look stable.
"Uh, I think I'm in a bad spot here guys," she shouted aloud very nervously.
Vik quickly dropped a turret down to keep the hostiles distracted for Nel. As the turret drone sprayed hot lead on the Praetorian, Collectors and the Covenant, the turian took off running. She plopped herself down into cover beside Kayap, who was rather surprised to see she had opted to seek out safety with him.
"Mind telling me what that big blue thing in the middle of the room is?" She frantically asked him.
Kayap took a look outside, just in time to see the Praetorian slash the turret drone apart. He spotted the crate in question and was rather mortified.
"That's a replacement plasma turret energy conduit!" He screeched. "Oh, this is bad! In the middle of all those explosives...well, it's not good."
"And we're stuck in here with the trigger happy monster with laser eyes," Nel nonchalantly observed. "Fuck us, huh?"
Nel took off running again, this time straight at Liara. She fired once more on the enemy lines, taking out another Collector. Vik in the meantime was doing his best to bring the Praetorian's shields down. All his shotgun seemed to do was annoy the giant husk though. Nel slid beside Liara and quickly gave her the bad news.
"Our gas sucking friend says we're in a volatile situation here," she rapidly explained. "That mess of explosive in there can pretty much blow us all up."
"Damn, we should get out of here then," Liara surmised. "One stray shot and-"
That was when the Praetorian fired a blast from its eyes straight at Vik. The quarian ran to better cover, only for the eyebeams to slice into the plasma conduit. The resulting explosion erupted across the room, detonating the grenades and Fuel Rods. The center of the room broke apart as central supports close to it were blown away. Something else seemed to detonate below, perhaps a power conduit or transformer. Either way, the floor suddenly gave way beneath them all.
Everyone, Praetorian included, began to slide down the collapsing floor into the room below theirs. Liara expected to land hard on whatever was below them. Then, suddenly, she felt light, halted in mid-air. She looked around and saw that everyone had stopped falling suddenly. They were floating above the room they had been dropped into, some kind of central command center for the station if the rows of terminals were any indication.
As everyone tried to figure out what had just happened, Wrex's voice cut in on comms.
"Uh, Liara, is anything weird going on up there?" He asked sheepishly.
Suddenly, the Collectors and Covenant renewed the firefight. Despite the weird circumstances, they weren't about to call the battle off. Luckily, the storage crates and debris offered some unique cover for once. Liara pushed herself off one box and grappled onto another as plasma bolts hit her position.
"Define weird," Liara grumbled to Wrex.
"One of our rockets hit some equipment in here." He worriedly explained. "I think we disrupted power to the artificial gravity conduits in the upper levels of the station. At least I think that's what this screen is telling me. I know for sure it's definitely saying the system is going to reroute power to it. We'll see if we can help it along."
Well, at least she knew she wasn't going crazy. As Liara gripped onto her little box, she fired back at the Collectors and Covenant. She managed a hit on a kig-yar in the side of his neck as he spun around after firing an overcharged bolt.
"Just work towards the Codemaster, Wrex," Liara reiterated. "We have this under control."
Liara knew that wasn't really true, but she didn't really have a choice in the matter. She would need to rally her team if they were going to get out of this in time. The Covenant were attempting to seek cover where they could find it amongst the floating debris. The Collectors were trying to use their insect wings to move about, but they were a bit sluggish without any gravity.
The biggest concern was the Praetorian, it flailing about with its massive size, roaring and growling in an attempt to right itself. When it failed to accomplish that, it fired off its eye beams and sent itself hurtling into a wall. Without gravity, the recoil from the blasts turned the weapon into a detriment. Liara wasn't sure how long that would last though.
She looked for her team. She spotted Kayap huddling inside an open crate. Nel had grabbed a broken piece of a support column and was using her assault rifle to fire back on the enemy. It forced her cover to fly backwards slightly from the recoil. Vik was trying to do what he could with a floating Covenant Weapons locker. He used his shotgun to force himself forward, pushing both him and the locker, while he fired off his less powerful pistol to engage the enemy.
"Is everyone okay?" Liara called out to the others.
"I'm breathing!" Nel called out. "I do feel a strange sense of disorientation though!"
"My head is spinning," Kayap whined.
"Don't be surprised if I throw up after this," Vik piped up, as he cover was hit by a barrage of Collector gunfire.
They didn't have much time. This was probably the weakest position the Praetorian was going to be in. Liara reasoned if they could kill it now they could get it off their backs for good. She quickly came up with a plan.
"Does anyone see any plasma grenade crates?" She asked everyone.
Vik pointed up to one crate floating high above them, near the centre of the firefight. Some of the grenades were floating outside of it and it had clearly been punctured, but it was intact. Liara nodded, they could use it.
"We need to get that crate and push it into the Praetorian," she told them all. "We blow it up and we can kill it and its friends!"
"Sounds better than floating around aimlessly," Nel declared. "Cover my ass for me!"
The turian pushed herself of her piece of debris, firing as she soared towards another floating storage crate nearby. She fired off her assault rifle in short bursts so as not to throw off her aim too much. She cut down a Collector with ease, but earned the ire of a sangheili. She grasped onto to her new cover, but the way she grabbed onto it caused to spin about. She kept firing as she spun, hitting random targets all the while.
"Now I think I'm gonna hurl," Nel moaned as plasma bolts pelted her twirling crate.
"Hold on, Vid Trailer," Vik called up. "I'll get them off your back!"
"Oh don't worry," Nel groaned. "I couldn't let go if I could."
Vik activated a turret drone to draw the fire of the enemy while he used his shotgun to propel himself and his cover upwards. Liara tried to assist further by using her warp attack to damage the Collectors' barriers and draw their attention. Vik eventually got up to Nel's level and fired off a blast to his front to get even closer to her. His shot managed to blow the head clean off one of the Collectors as it fired on Liara.
"You're clear," Vik assured Nel. "Go!"
"Wait," the turian spoke up. "I can probably move those plasma grenades better if I got a little push behind me, right?"
"I guess," Vik shrugged simply. "Objects in motion tend to stay in motion and all that."
"Okay, so why don't you grab my hand as I fly to you and you swing me in the direction of the grenade crate?" Nel asked him rapidly. "Then I can actually send it flying off to that fucking bug-eyed monster easily!"
Vik thought the idea over quickly. That tactic would leave him a little exposed, specifically his arm. It did, however, make a little sense.
"Are you sure about this?" He called up to her.
"Hey, what do we got to lose here, right?" She asked back.
Vik just sighed and positioned himself with his shotgun positioned at one end of the box.
"Do it!" He called out.
Nel readied a concussion shot as she launched herself off the box. She positioned herself towards Vik so when she fired the concussive shot, it would propel her even more. She targeted the Praetorian directly, hoping to weaken its barriers even more. The attack hit between the monster's eyes and she was propelled straight towards her quarian ally.
Vik grabbed hold of Nel's hand and, without missing a beat, fired off the shotgun several times. The way it was positioned force the box to spin around at an alarming rate. That kept Nel's momentum going at the same speed, so when Vik let go Nel was catapulted right into the grenade box.
As she flew, a number of sangheili tried to hit the box with their plasma bolts. Liara quickly engaged them with a biotic throw that sent one of the sangheili hurtling into a wall. With no gravity, the mass altering attack smacked into the alien so hard that the Covie's body actually cracked the wall on impact.
Vik did his best to keep covering Nel himself, using overload to tear down a sangheili's shields with ease. Nel fired down on the Covies, lifting her and the box further up. The Covies were completely exposed from her position now, their cover useless as she sailed over them.
"Bet you fuckers never seen a flying turian before, have ya?" She chortled from on high.
Her next burst ripped one Collector wide open, but earned the attention of the Praetorian itself. It had finally righted itself, using its mass effect field projector to properly float in the zero-g battle space. It readied its eye beams to fire on Nel, an almost certain death sentence with a bunch of grenades so close to her.
But before the Praetorian could fire it was hit square in where its mouth should've been by a large green bolt. Liara had looked to see Kayap had managed to fire off a shot from his Fuel Rod Cannon just in time. It sent him whirling backwards and tumbling out of his cover screaming, but had been an effective shot. The Praetorian tumbled over itself, its eye beams just barely missing Nel. Kayap eventually righted himself again and fired another blast. This time he was more prepared for the recoil and didn't scream, but he still scored a hit on the Praetorian regardless, further damaging it.
Vik joined in to help cover Nel, blasting away with his shotgun down on the Covenant and Collectors. He managed to blow off one Collector's arm and take out the same sangheili whose shield he disrupted. He let the turret keep its sights set on the Praetorian, pelting it with bullets incessantly.
The increased cover fire from everyone gave Nel the chance she needed. She placed a cluster grenade inside, setting it to go off on a timer. As she prepared to release it, the Praetorian rolled itself around to look at her. It shrieked with an ear piercing screech that filled the entire room.
"Yeah, fuck you too!" Nel shouted back at it.
She kicked the box as hard as she could. It sailed straight towards the Praetorian while she fired off her gun. She propelled herself backwards, up into the giant hole in the ceiling. Liara followed suit, launching herself out of cover and into the air. Vik did so as well, shooting his shotgun beneath him and forcing him further up. Kayap even used his last Fuel Rod Cannon shot in the weapon to send him flying right after them. Liara caught him as he flew past, using his momentum to force them back through the hole even faster.
As they flew through the hole they had entered through the box of plasma grenades exploded, tearing through the already weakened Praetorian's shields and ripping its body asunder. The nearby Covenant and Collectors that remained met a similar fate from the blast.
Finally out of danger, the team floated to the armoury's blown open door. At that moment, power was seemingly restored to the upper levels of the station and they all collapsed to the floor. Liara was able to stay on her feet with the help of biotics though.
"Okay, that was invigorating," Nel grumbled as she stood herself up. "Now do you mind telling us what the hell that shit was all about?"
"I will," Liara assured her. "But while we're on the way to the Codemaster. We've wasted enough time as it is with this little detour."
There was no sense in hiding it now. She had told them she was the Shadow Broker already after all. Would it really be that hard to swallow the whole naked truth now?
"So let me get this straight," Nel began, sounding rather astounded by everything. "That fucking giant ship that attacked the Citadel two years ago wasn't Geth. It was a mythical ancient machine of doom from Dark Space intending to kill us all."
"Pretty much," Liara answered as they walked through the corridor.
"And those Collector things," Nel continued, still desperately trying to absorb it all. "They're actually the last species they wiped out, the Protheans, who didn't make the Mass Relays at all. Because they're actually all part of an elaborate trap by these ancient machines of doom to make things easier for them to harvest us and use us to make more of them?"
"Exactly," Liara replied.
"So all that shit Commander Shepard went on about was real and not just him cracking under the pressure of being the first human SPECTRE then?" Nel inquired once more.
"One hundred percent real," Liara assured her.
Nel then turned to Vik.
"Well, you got anything to add Conspiracy Nut?" She asked. "This is your field after all."
"I never believed that thing that attacked the Citadel was a Geth Ship," Vik admitted. "Its structure and aesthetic was completely different from anything in our archives. They're very formulaic with their ship designs. But I didn't think it was a Reaper. I thought it was just some turian dreadnaught that Saren bosh'tet stole or something and that was why everyone was so quiet about it all."
"Well congrats anyway," Nel informed him. "You were partially right it seems. I think you can mark this as one of those few times that you're not entirely crazy."
Vik grimaced slightly, but kept his focus on the subject at hand.
"Why didn't you mention any of this before?" He asked Liara.
"I didn't think it was relevant," she simply explained. "There was no evidence that the Covenant were working with the Collectors, let alone the Reapers. This does help explain some of the confusing elements of the Covenant invasion though and why they're targeting Shepard of all people it seems."
It also made clear how dire the situation really was. Shepard needed to be informed about the Collectors and the Reapers, if he didn't know already. That meant getting the Codemaster and getting out of here quickly. Wrex had already called back to inform her they had found the power conduit for the guns and taken it offline. They were pretty much in the clear now, just one final task remained.
"My Operatives should be just up ahead now," she informed the others as they turned a corner into a new hallway. "We'll meet up with them, force our way through the barricades and get the Codemaster. Then we can get on to our real mission."
They passed by a small window looking into another section of the station, when suddenly a hand slammed onto the glass. Everyone turned, pointing their guns to find a Collector Leader staring back them. However, he didn't seem to be attack, just staring at them. It should've been peculiar, but to Liara she knew why. When the Collector's shell began to crack with yellow light shining through and its eyes glowing hot, it all but confirmed her suspicions.
"Assuming direct control of this form," the Collector declared in a bellowing, threatening voice as it stared eerily at them through the glass.
Liara's gaze narrowed.
"Harbinger, I presume?" She asked.
"One of these things has a name?" Kayap asked confused.
"No, it's not the Collector talking," Liara corrected him. "It's the power behind it, a Reaper named Harbinger."
The Possessed Collector didn't seem fazed by Liara's words, it just kept talking.
"We know of you, asari," it stated coldly. "You are allied with Shepard. You assisted him in the killing of Nazara. You struggle futilely in the face of the inevitable, just as he does."
"I guess that's one of his more contagious qualities," Liara slyly replied. "He talked a lot about you by the way. For an emotionless machine you do seem to love boasting about your superiority a lot."
"It is not pride, it is fact," Harbinger bluntly informed her. "The actions of Commander Shepard were fruitless. He only destroyed most of the Collectors who existed among you. What we have learned from their failure shall improve upon their core."
Liara quickly gauged the Reaper's words, understanding immediately what they meant.
"There are more Collectors then, coming with you to help in your invasion," she deduced. "You used the Covenant to figure out how to improve them, reassign them for special operations and not frontline combat as you intended. That's why you implanted sangheili battle tactics in their heads, to make them better fighters."
"Obedience is built in, but they possess minimal strategic capability without interference," Harbinger replied. "The data collected here shall serve us well. It has already been downloaded in its entirety. As stated, you have accomplished nothing."
Nel fired on the possessed Collector with her assault rifle, but the bullets bounced off the bullet proof glass. The turian grumbled in frustration.
"Damn it, I always wanted to shut an evil villain monologue down," she complained.
It was then that Vik suddenly spoke up with a question of his own.
"Is this why the Covenant came here?" He asked. "You want them to help you harvest this galaxy or something?"
"Organic life is but an instrument to be used for a greater purpose," Harbinger declared unashamedly. "The Covenant serve that purpose well, whether they understand it or not. They shall prepare for our return and your ascension."
"The Covenant isn't going to be here to welcome you," Liara enlightened the Reaper. "I'm making sure of that. And when Shepard gets back, we're both going after you next."
The Possessed Collector did not directly respond. It merely looked about the room slightly.
"Your threats are meaningless, we speak to you only by chance," he said as he backed away. "The surviving Collectors have served their purpose. The data has been retrieved and this location compromised. It is no longer of any use, save for accomplishing your destruction. This exchange has ended."
The Collector suddenly lifted into the air and began glowing bright before it began to disintegrate.
"Releasing control."
And with that, the Reaper was gone along with the body.
"What did he mean by that, exactly?" Kayap asked nervously.
Sudden, there was an explosion that rocked the entire station. An alarm sounded throughout the halls as a computerized voiced echoed over the intercom.
Main power core breach, meltdown in progress, energy overload imminent.
"Damn," Liara growled. "Harbinger must've hit some kind of self-destruct switch. He's going to destroy the station with us on it! We need to move, now!"
They raced down the hall, heading towards the Communications Hub and the Codemaster. They needed to get to him and get off this station before it was too late.
The ShadowNet Operatives were relentless, firing through the halls as they backed up Liara's advance. With the station set to explode, there could be no more half measures. Vik kept by the asari's side the whole time, using overload on any sangheili manning the barricades. Liara used her biotics to fling them across the hallway while the Operatives tossed out grenades to break through the barricades. A few krogan from Wrex had also joined in the assault, bulldozing through what was left of the defences themselves.
There weren't many Covenant left, save for the sangheili who seemed determined to fight to the last. Out of any of the remaining hostiles they ate up the most time. Nel had already switched to disruptor rounds, hoping they'd tear through the sangheili's shields faster. Her bullets perforated one sangheili as he rolled out of cover. Liara finished him off with powerful throw attack, sending him hurtling down the corridor.
As they fought closer and closer to the Communications Hub, the sangheili presence started to wane, but their resolve to hold did not. They refused to surrender the barricades, even with the ShadowNet Operatives hitting them on both sides of the hallway.
Liara wasn't about to come this far only to be killed by a fanatic suicidal aliens intent on dying for nothing. She hit one of the sangheili with a stasis attack, freezing him in place. His inability to fire back for awhile gave Kayap the opportunity to toss in a grenade among the barricades. The plasma grenade attached itself to the frozen sangheili and detonated. The blast killed two sangheili and blew open a hole in the barricade itself.
"Move in!" Liara ordered everyone.
Vik rushed up with the asari, firing off his shotgun at a lone sangheili who was left alive after the explosion. Between the quarian's fire and the attacks from the drone Vik had sent ahead of him, the Covenant warrior didn't really have much of a place to move.
He eventually rushed out, firing like mad at Vik. The quarian dived forward, slamming onto his stomach with a thump. He let off one more shot that pierced the alien's shields, ripping through his armour. Liara finished the Covie off with a biotic punch that sent him reeling into one of the barricades, cracking his skull on impact with a large piece of metal. The door to the communications hub was clear.
"Vik, get a breaching charge on it," she ordered, pointing to the door. "Nel, Kayap, get ready on the doorframe. Everyone else, hightail it back to the hangar. We don't want to be here when this place explodes."
"I'll inform the Clan Leader," one of the Krogan Warriors assured her. "We shall meet you back at the hangar, asari."
"We'll warm up the shuttles for ya, Doctor T'Soni," one of the ShadowNet Operatives told her. "See you back at the Lucen.
Liara watched as they all cleared out. She didn't need a small army to breach a room after all. As the last of Operatives left, Liara positioned herself against the door. Vik finished up with the charge and prepared to detonate.
"Well, here goes nothing," Vik said.
"Just blow the door already and let's book," Nel yelled impatiently. "This whole place is about to join the rest of the junk floating outside."
Vik pressed a button on his omni-tool's screen and the charge detonated. The door opened suddenly and everyone piled in, guns drawn. They didn't know what to expect when they entered, all they knew was that inside was the final piece of the puzzle they needed. They kept their guns raised as the smoke cleared. They kept their fingers off the trigger though. They didn't want to kill what they came for by accident after all.
Something soon emerged out of the smoke, a strange silhouette of some kind. It was bulbous, round and had a strange purple glowing tint to it. Eventually, the smoke from the charge cleared enough that they were able to properly what was standing in front of them.
Before them was a floating bioluminescent creature. It had several dangling tentacles and a long blue snake-like head and neck. It sported six black little eyes. Its body was spherical in shape and significantly large, like an overgrown brain for lack of a better word. It was covered in what appeared to be tiny little sacks of skin. Liara surmised they were probably filled with gas, as it was the only explanation as to how the creature kept floating.
"Okay, what the hell am I looking at right now?" Nel finally spoke up, sounding very unnerved by the sight of the creature.
She wasn't the only one taken aback by the ball of floating slime and tentacles. Both Liara and Vik gave the creature weird looks as it stared back at them and made peculiar whistling noises. Kayap, however, approached it without any sense of confusion or dread. He actually seemed pleasantly surprised to see the thing.
"It's a huragok!" He declared happily, stretching out his little hand towards the creature. "Of course, it makes so much sense now!"
The creature reciprocated Kayap's gesture and moved his head close to let the unggoy rub it. The Huragok seemed to coo warmly at Kayap, its eyes closing as if it were a pet. Realising now the creature wasn't a threat, Liara approached it. She knelt down beside Kayap as the huragok pulled its head back.
"What exactly is this thing, Kay?" She asked the unggoy.
"The only creatures in the Covenant who never treat unggoy like dirt," he explained. "Huragoks maintain the ships and technology for the entire Covenant Empire. They don't look like much, but they're amazing engineers! I've seen them repair battle damage on ships and fix slipspace drives in just a few hours. They're like living supercomputers. They can store tons of data and information on anything and everything."
Liara looked to the floating creature, the realisation hitting her instantly.
"You're the Codemaster," she said to it. "Aren't you?"
The Huragok nodded as it made its peculiar whistling sound.
"That thing can understand us?" Nel asked rather surprised.
"I told you, they're smart," Kayap reiterated. "It's probably been monitoring our communications from here since we arrived and has deciphered your language. They're fast learners, faster than even us."
Vik was next to approach the creature, looking at it curiously.
"And it's able to store data? Like a computer?" Vik asked Kayap again.
"Yeah," the unggoy repeated. "The Covenant gives them complete access to most systems. They download and store everything they learn about machines and technology. It's how they can fix and decipher things so fast."
"Which would explain why they gave it the job of distributing access codes for the dimensional array," Vik slowly reasoned, his tone of voice growing more astonished by the second. "He should have everything we need to get into the array's systems!"
All well and good, but Liara had a single concern left. Would it help them willingly? It was Covenant after all.
"Will he give us the codes?" Liara asked Kayap.
"Huragok are very helpful, I don't see why he wouldn't," the unggoy replied simply. "Plus it's not like the Covenant treat them all that well either."
Kayap turned to the Huragok proper.
"We need your help getting into that array they've given you codes to," he began. "Can you get us access?"
The Huragok nodded and whistled slightly. It then started floating towards Liara, chirping at the asari as it did.
"I think he says he wants to come with us," Kayap informed her. "It'll be easier for us I think. He could access the system himself."
"Well, welcome aboard then," Liara immediately told the Huragok, holding out her hand. "Liara T'Soni."
The Huragok took the asari's hand in one of its tentacles and lightly shook it.
"Just so long as I don't have to share my bed with it, I'm cool," Nel noted hurriedly. "Now can we get a move on? This place is still going to blow!"
Huragok whistled and chirped before floating out the door. The rest of the team followed briskly while Liara contacted Wrex.
"Wrex, we have the Codemaster! We're heading back now! We'll see you at the shuttle!"
The station warning lights and alarms were deafening now. Worse still was that explosions were erupting all over the station, rocking the whole facility. The core was going critical. They didn't have much time left. Even after being chased by the Praetorian, Liara's team somehow found the extra boost of adrenaline that allowed them to keep running. The Huragok was also a lot faster than he looked, able to keep pace with the group, or manage to float at a similar speed as it were.
After passing numerous bodies and battle torn halls, they finally made it back to the Hangar. Wrex and Saya were already waiting near his shuttles. They probably saw the Huragok and were confused by its presence, but Liara had no time to explain.
"Everyone take off now!" She ordered.
Liara piled into the Truth with the others, the Huragok squeezing itself between the others. Vik took the controls and lifted off. The other shuttles were already moving through the mass effect field and out into the void itself. That didn't mean they were out of danger though, they needed to get to a safe distance away before the station exploded. Liara's main shuttles managed to speed away, but the Truth was a lot more sluggish. Liara looked at the rear view camera and saw the station was already tearing itself apart.
"Faster, Vik!" She pleaded.
"I'm giving her everything she has! I swear!" He shouted back.
Liara suddenly felt the Huragok push past her, looking about the shuttle's interior. It eventually located a hatch and pried it open. Its tentacles stretched into the machinery and began twiddling about. Nel eyed it rather suspiciously as it worked.
"The hell is it-"
The turian never got to ask her question as the shuttle suddenly picked up speed rapidly. The Truth's inferior shock absorbers nearly sent them all flying as the shuttle boosted away from the exploding space station. Liara did her best to keep her eyes on the rear view camera feed and watched as the facility exploded in a silent, but brief, ball of fire. They had easily cleared the potential debris field, reaching minimum safe distance just in time.
As the shuttle slowed, Vik collapsed back into his seat.
"The hell just happened?" He asked, still winded from the sudden boost.
"Our new friend gave you a tune up, Bucket," Nel laughed. "He just about saved our asses!"
"I told you," Kayap chuckled. "They're very helpful. It's just in their nature."
The Huragok cooed loudly, seemingly in delight. Liara couldn't exactly tell, but she doubted it was anything else. She couldn't help but share in the jubilation. Despite all the odds, they had pulled this off. At the skin of teeth, perhaps, but they had won. Unlike Rakavekyon though, this time it felt like a real victory to Liara.
"Great work," she informed the bulbous alien solemnly. "Spectacular even. And I mean that for all of you. We pulled this one off together, all of us."
The team smile at each other as they pulled into formation with the other shuttles. And they were a team now, Liara could see that. For once, a mission had gone off with everyone playing their part. Liara could scarcely believe it herself, but it was true. They had acquired the Codemaster, successfully assaulted a major enemy assets and come out the other side alive.
For once, in a long time, Liara felt like a real leader. However, she knew better than to think this was over. Her smile soon faded to a more stoic look, she coughed once to get everyone's attention, ending their laughter rather abruptly.
"Let's not be too quick to celebrate here," she informed them gravely. "Our mission just got a new sense of urgency. We need to inform Shepard about what we saw, the Collectors, everything. He needs to know there are more out there, coming with the Reapers. And then there's everything else we learned back on Khar'shan as well. When we get back to the ship, take whatever rest you can get. It won't last long. We're headed to the array next."
"Looking forward to it, Doc," Nel assured her.
"Yeah, same here," Vik added. "Let's take those bosh'tets off the air!"
Liara nodded at them both in compliance. For once, she felt confident about their chances. Only one obstacle remained to reaching Wade now. They had to take the inter-dimensional communication array, at any cost. Shepard, if not the galaxy itself, was counting on her and her team. She wasn't about to fail them now.
AN: Well, that was invigorating. A nice concise combat oriented chapter. More or less, I think it came out well. Not overly complicated, no scenes that dragged on for too long. It went pretty good I think. And we have a new cast member to boot. Hooray for Engineers!
Anyway, next chapter is the doozy, the climax more or less of the Liara storyline. Hold onto your butts, kids. This party is about to get crazy! Look in my profile for more notes on this and other chapters and check out the TV Tropes page if you can. Till next time dear readers.
