Chapter Thirty-Six: Up the Mountainside
Li, the turian mechanic, knew how to get things done. Shepard liked that.
They arrived at the garage as soon as the sun was high enough to stare down between the jagged teeth of the mountains and shine on their road. It wasn't more than a trickle of light; the storm was far from blown out. A long drive lay ahead. Six hours was an optimistic estimate for perfect weather, perfect roads. Even with a blazing blue sky there would still be snow and rock falls blocking portions of the road, crumbled patches of perma-ice… Makos were built for rugged terrain but the path was narrow and the ravines were deep.
Li shouted to one of his workers, who nodded and crawled under the nearest Mako, and ambled towards Shepard's squad. "Spectre. Got your message. Got two of my best tanks warming up for you."
"Thanks." She felt around the cuff of her glove, adjusting the fit. No doubt the suit could keep up with the bitter cold, at least enough to keep her from freezing to death, but jouncing around in it for hours on end was not an experience she anticipated with relish. It was called a hard suit for a reason. She gave half a thought to grabbing one of the cozy orange parkas out of the utility room- wishful thinking.
Shepard turned towards her crew, hands on her hips. "Alright. You all remember the plan. Alenko, Liara, Garrus, and I take the first Mako. Wrex, Tali, and Williams, you'll follow in the second. Williams and I have first shift driving."
She took a breath, but before she could continue her summary, the door with its thick plates of bottle-green glass slid open to admit Maeko Kimura into the garage, flanked by two ERCS personnel. Her canted eyes swept the scene automatically, years of police work enforcing an unconscious check for hazards. "Commander."
"Captain." Shepard put folded her hands behind her back. Her stomach twisted a little and she bounced on the balls of her feet, a touch of wariness after what occurred at the Synthetic Insights office, but she wasn't about to bring it up first. The security chief didn't look like she'd come to arrest anyone.
Kimura's pink bow mouth turned up slightly, lending her an almost girlish expression at odds with her serious demeanor. "I trust there are no hard feelings. It is unfortunate that Sergeant Stirling's extracurricular activities generated so much trouble."
The memory of Kira Stirling's sightless eyes staring up from a blood-spattered face flashed through her mind. Unfortunate. Shepard had seen some real horrors in her years, but the cool bureaucratic sterility of this place made her skin crawl. When this was over, she was going to spend a good hour between decontam and scrubbing her skin raw in the showers just to wipe off Port Hanshan's slime.
But they were ten minutes away from departure and the events to come at Peak 15 would be firmly in Shepard's world, not this one. She answered lightly. "You brought my garage pass?"
"Courtesy of Ms. Parasini." She held out a plastic ident card with an imbedded microchip. "She thanks you for your assistance and regrets you could not be present for the arrest. Parasini says she… owes you a beer?"
"You have no idea." Shepard took the card and spent a half a moment examining it. She was surprised to note that it had been made up fresh, in her name, rather than loaned out. That kind of small courtesy that made Parasini such a successful secretary, and that attention to detail likely made her a good cop. She tucked it away in her utility belt. "Can you tell me what happened up on Peak 15? My intel is still sketchy."
Kimura nodded. Apparently, Parasini's goodwill came with more than a garage pass. "Matriarch Benezia arrived shortly after Peak 15 sent up a Code Omega. It's a high-level warning indicating a catastrophic containment failure. All of our labs dealing with biological or other hazardous substances run a version of the protocol. The entire facility is placed in lockdown until the situation is rectified."
"What does the lockdown accomplish? I mean, we're talking about viruses, or radiation, or things like that. I don't think they respect a sealed hatch."
"It does more than prevent entry or exit. Power is shut off in hopes that the cold will kill off the contaminants. Obviously, this also terminates any dangerous electricity-dependent experiments that may be running."
Something about the smooth, too-practiced answer put her instincts on high alert. "Wait- no entry or exit? What about the staff at the labs when this happened? It's way too cold out there to survive without power."
"It's a big building. The cold takes time-"
"What happens if the situation isn't resolved?"
"In the event that a lab is declared a total loss, the Executive Board takes an accounting of the risk and votes whether to destroy the facility." Kimura said this with the same care and inflection as if she were discussing what she ate for breakfast.
"Destroy-"
"Orbital strike with an antimatter warhead," she supplied smoothly.
Everyone stared a moment, shocked. Then her crew descended on Kimura in an instant.
"Antimatter? How does a private facility even get a freaking antimatter warhead?!"
"There are people up there! You can't just leave them-"
"What about communications? How can you possibly know what's going on well enough to make that kind of call without real time data?"
"What the hell are you letting them do up there?"
Shepard rubbed her eyes and asked the only question that mattered. "When?"
It wasn't particularly loud but it cut across the angry ranting like an ink stain on a white tablecloth. Her crew fell silent. Kimura swallowed, delicately. "Not for a few more days."
Shepard glanced at her squad. "We need to move. Get to your vehicles."
There was a flurry of salutes, nods, and "yes, ma'ams". She looked at the mechanic. "Li? Are we set?"
He waved his crew clear. "You're set. Spirits go with you."
She squeezed his shoulder in thanks, and headed for her Mako.
Her foot was on the step, ready to boost her into the cabin, when a flicker of motion caught her eye at the far end of the garage. She squinted against the fluorescent lighting. There it was again. It… shimmered? Like liquid metal…
The thought was barely half-formed before she remembered the geth stealth unit hanging from the wall on Therum and found her gun in her hand. "Hostiles inbound! Twelve o'clock!"
The maintenance staff wore identical looks of confusion bordering on concern, certain she'd lost her mind, but she sank behind a rolling toolbox, drew her rifle, and shot at the glint without a shred of hesitation. There was a screech of rent metal, and the geth unit leaped into view, clinging momentarily to a pillar before once again vanishing from sight.
"Two more, starboard!" Williams called out.
Garrus let off several rounds of his own. "Three on the left!"
Kimura and her agents came out of their shock and took cover, their fire joining the rest. Shepard grabbed the turian ERCS officer's arm. "Get the civilians to safety. Go!"
He nodded and scrabbled back towards the mechanics, shouting. By now the geth were returning fire and advancing steadily down the length of the garage. Shepard's assault rifle proved insufficient to deter them. "Liara-"
"On it." The asari threw out her hand like she was tossing a ball, and an orb of light fixed itself in the air amidst the geth, exploding outwards into a spiky ball of wavering rays maybe two meters across. The machines were lifted from their feet and drifted aimlessly under Liara's gravitational tweak.
Wrex's shotgun pumped. "Got a heavy." Again. "Might take something with a bigger bang."
Tali was crouched nearby. She sent orders to her omni-tool, her three fingers flying over the haptic keys. "Try now!"
His next shot took off the heavy's arm. He grinned. "Hah!"
On the far side of Shepard's Mako, Alenko dangled one of the hostiles in midair and shot it methodically through the chest. After about the fourth round, the flashlight dimmed and winked out.
Shepard continued to scout for the stealth unit. She abandoned her cover and rushed ahead, crouching behind a pillar midway across the garage and hoped it was enough to the side to avoid friendly fire. Her eyes scanned the battlefield. The oily geth with its huge sticky feet left no trace. Walls, clear. Ceiling… large I-beams concealed portions. Shepard bit her lip. Where-
Before the thought was more than half-formed, there was a quiet thump directly behind her, almost too soft to hear over the gunfire, and a cool rush of air ruffled her hair.
She turned on pure instinct, already throwing her leg out, as the stealth unit straightened and began to raise its weapon to blow her brains out through her face. Her heel connected solidly with its center of mass. The geth might be thrice her weight, but the blow knocked it off balance, enough for her follow-up- the butt of her rifle to its shoulder in a double-handed slam- to send it to the floor. Shepard leapt over it lightly before it could recover, knowing that without the advantage of surprise she was dead at close range.
The geth hopper got its bearings sooner than anticipated. Her bias, she supposed, used to fighting organic opponents who could not so easily shake off getting the wind knocked out of them. It stared at her intently for several infinite seconds and Shepard felt her shield blow out as whatever silent electronic command it issued overloaded her generator. There wasn't even time to curse it for using her team's tactics against her before the first round struck her back.
In one regard, she was lucky, having just started to vault a chest full of spare parts when it hit. The momentum of the high-caliber round sent her sailing forward over the box. The ground still hurt like hell when she found it with her face. The chest shuddered with the geth's next five shots but none were able to penetrate the far side of the container. Shepard licked her upper lip and tasted blood. Probably her nose. It didn't feel broken, but good and well dented.
A snarl escaped her mouth. She'd just healed up the last of her bruises. That son-of-a-bitch was hers.
The second Mako was parked beside her, with her crew firing steadily from the opposite side. A quick glance showed pockets of geth still advancing on their position, and their defensive wasn't enough to hold them back. They'd be in melee range in less than a minute. The stealth unit was only one of her immediate concerns. Without a second thought she climbed into the cab and crawled to the rear, swinging herself up behind the artillery cannon.
Makos had no periscopes. The image constructed in her viewfinder was consisted of collated data feeds from cameras mounted on the exterior, in several wavelength regimes. She could even filter in sonar if she cared to do so. From time to time she'd considered ocular implants that allowed the same superhuman vision, but it was just a little too cyborg for her comfort. As it was, the scope's imaging was crystal clear, and she swiveled the gun easily until the reticle circled the stealth hopper, which had taken cover on the ceiling.
She flicked the switch to the 155mm mass accelerator rounds and hit the trigger. The hopper vanished in a satisfying burst of saturated light, though a good chunk of the ceiling accompanied its remains to the ground in a tremendous crash, flooding the garage with clouds of powdered fiberboard. Smoothly, she flipped back to machine gun and swiveled the turret to the cluster of three geth troopers forcing her squad into cover and let loose.
It didn't take long to mop up after that. Her crew's efforts combined with heavy fire from the Mako made scrap of the last of the geth resistance. When the noise died, Shepard reset the gun and hopped down from the cabin, to the startled stares of half her team. She looked from one dusty face to the next, wiping at the blood from her nose. "What?"
Tali recovered first. "What happened to your face? Are you hurt?"
Shepard glanced down at her hand, smeared bright red, and tried again to tidy up. She succeeded only in spreading the blood further. Shepard gave her a sour look. "It's just one of those enthusiastic ones."
Alenko and Liara, who hadn't seen it, came running from behind the other Mako. They didn't look any worse for wear. Liara's armor was scraped down the arm, as if she'd crushed herself against a concrete pillar.
"Is everyone alright?" Liara asked. She looked at Shepard, did a double-take, and fished around her utility belt for a tissue. "Here."
"We're fine," Wrex rumbled, and checked his heat sink. "Shepard tried to fight the geth with her face."
Shepard took the proffered tissue and pinched her wounded nose shut, ignoring the slight sting, and glanced towards the rear of the garage. The turian security guard had corralled the mechanics into a small office where they did paperwork and was standing watch at the door. Kimura and the other agent were only now crawling from their cover, staring wide-eyed and disbelieving at the scene. Shepard looked from the dead geth to the captain.
Kimura put her hand to her mouth. "Geth! On Noveria?!"
There wasn't a trace of cockiness or gloating as she replied. "Captain, I get that spectres and Alliance aren't the most popular people on this rock, but I don't mess around. I knock on your door when it's important. Benezia is actively aiding Saren Arterius and his geth army."
"The geth probably came in those crates she brought," Alenko reasoned. "They fold up small."
"This isn't possible. We subjected those crates to every kind of scan…" Kimura's voice faltered. She dropped her hand and licked her lips, drawing a shaky breath.
Shepard cautiously pushed a breath out her nose. No new blood trickled down her face. She set to scrubbing away the old with the remains of the tissue and a little spit. "The odds are slim she left any at this station other than the ones here. Benezia wants to keep me from following her, not overrun Noveria. Whatever happened at Peak 15- she's here to remedy or salvage what she can. She'll need the remaining geth units up at the lab."
"Then it's true. Saren is trying to eradicate human colonies."
It was her turn to pause. It was dangerous to even hint at the reapers, because in a world where people needed to see geth with their own eyes to believe in a war, ancient machines bent on genocide lacked the ring of sanity, but Wrex was right. The Council wasn't open to this idea and she had to start somewhere. "It's more than that. The geth are only a means to an end. When he finds that end, this war will touch every corner of the galaxy."
"Unless you stop him."
She didn't answer that, but merely checked her weapons and looked back at her team. "Get to your Makos. We're losing daylight." Then, to Kimura, "Thank you. I'd take it as a favor if you could do what you can to delay the destruction of the facility."
Without waiting for a reply, she turned on her heel and got back to doing her job. The paired Makos soon disappeared into the whirling snow.
Driving through the blizzard was like being walled off in a snow globe. Visibility wasn't better than twenty meters in any direction and Port Hanshan was soon lost. The narrow strip of road wound up and down the mountainside at a sedate ten to twenty degree slope, the bulk of the mountain leering down their starboard side while to port a sheer crevasse threatened disaster with every jar and jounce. It took all of Shepard's attention to keep the Mako on the path. Blue-tinged ice coated every surface, thick and ancient, crunching beneath their six wheels. Their ears soon wearied of cracking ice and howling wind.
Red flashing beacons stood as lonely sentinels every hundred meters or so, hoisted into the gray skies by concrete bulwarks clinging to the cliffs. In theory, they marked the sharp edge of the crevasse for travelers. In a storm like this, muting their light with torrents of snow, their warnings were less than useless. Shepard's eyes grew gritty and sore from staring through the gusts. It was as though their meager convoy were utterly alone in the world. At times, it was hard to tell whether they were even moving against the monotonous landscape- until suddenly the Mako would slip sideways along a particularly smooth patch of ice and send their hearts flying into their throats.
Garrus and Alenko chatted aimlessly the first hour, for want of any other entertainment, while Liara sat in the middle of the bench with her knees drawn up to her chin. On the best of days she wasn't much of a talker. Today- well, Shepard had met corpses less silent. Her blue eyes stared into the storm and veiled her thoughts.
Shepard checked the map. "Should be coming up on the bridge. Alert Bravo Team."
"Aye aye, ma'am." On the far side of Liara, Alenko made the transmission. "Bravo Team on high alert."
"Copy." Shepard didn't know why she bothered. This entire road was nothing but one giant choke point. But if Benezia left resistance, the bridge was at least strategically traditional.
Alenko frowned. "Got something on the scanners at thirty meters out. Doesn't match any known geth signatures."
"Do we have a visual?"
Behind them, Garrus pivoted the main gun, making use of the cameras. "Some kind of vehicle- human. It's generating a lot of heat."
As they rolled closer, an overturned truck appeared through the snow. It was burning in multiple places. NDC's corporate logo was just barely legible in the flame-peeled paint. Shepard brought her Mako up alongside. "I'm ordering a full halt. I want to check this out."
"Could be bait," Alenko said doubtfully.
"That's why I'm the only one getting out." She cracked open her door and slid lightly to the ground.
The cold bit at her almost like a fire itself. Even with the suit, Shepard was soon shivering. Space turned the suit into a kind of human thermos, sealing in heat easily to the point where dumping it was more challenging than keeping it; on the surface of Noveria there was no convenient vacuum to enhance its efficiency. The flames crackled above the wind. Shielding her face from the blaze, she approached the cab and peered inside. A badly burned man slumped over the inactive controls. His forehead was decorated with a swath of dried blood from where it struck the dashboard. She'd seen enough dead men in her time to know the truth before her omni-tool scan confirmed it.
"No survivors," she radioed, for appearance's sake, and continued to circle around the truck looking for a cause. It was a vehicle designed for the ice, eight-wheeled and built low and broad. The rear hatch to the storage compartment was busted open, spilling crates of supplies onto the road, a mix of food and laboratory consumables. They were addressed to Peak 13. "Looks like a delivery to one of the other facilities."
Her excellent memory recalled the map. This road drove by Peaks 13 and 14, and dead-ended with Binary Helix's labs. She found the source of ignition. "There's a rocket lodged in the side of the truck. It got lucky and hit the power source."
Shepard snapped a picture. The rocket was in pieces, making it hard to confidently identify it as a geth munition, but that remained the smart money gamble. Wiping the hair out of her face and shielding her eyes against the wind, Shepard scanned the road forward, seeking any clue as to where it came from. She could just make out the gray bulk of the bridge with its gaping entry and sloped roof. Here, the crevasse nibbled into the road and necessitated the structure. There was no other way forward that did not involve flight.
Alenko radioed in. "Picking up electrical signatures that look like shields, ma'am."
"Blockade?" Damn it.
He affirmed the assessment, and Shepard hurried back to the Mako. Williams came on the comm. "Awaiting orders, ma'am. We're locked and loaded."
"Redirect shield power forward. We've got no room to maneuver. Any chance we can run interference on those shields?"
Tali's voice joined the rest. "We can try. Syncing to Alpha Team Mako now."
Shepard glanced aft, towards Garrus at the gun controls. "We come in fast and hard. As soon as the shields are gone, I'm running into the bridge to give Bravo Team room to fire."
He nodded. "I'll be ready."
She gunned the engine without further comment. They flew towards the bridge as fast as she dared on the treacherous ground. The barricade swam into view, the snow parting like a veil with their forward motion; ten or more geth arrayed behind hexagonal grids of dark energy, just barely betrayed by shimmering arcs of blue where the byproducts of their generation sizzled in a froth of ordinary matter.
The shields went down seconds before her Mako collided with the line. Tali was good.
The tank lurched as it rode over a pair of geth and listed towards the port wall. NDC lined the open side of the bridge with rectangular plates of translucent plastic affixed to metal rods, keeping out the snow but rotating with the wind to keep from shattering. Shepard didn't give good odds the flimsy arrangement would hold if the tank crashed against it. Concrete pillars spaced regularly held up the poles and the roof. Starboard, partially carved into the mountain, was a small waystation not large enough to drive through. What commanded her attention most, however, was the second line of geth some ten meters ahead.
In the fraction of a second it took for her to scan the terrain, a succession of shots hit the Mako, mostly heavy gunfire but at least one artillery shell rocked the vehicle. Garrus answered with a salvo of his own before switching to the machine gun while the cannon cooled. "Shepard! Forward!"
"I see them," she growled, turning the tank hard left. "Shields!"
Alenko, linked with Tali's algorithm, flailed at the instruments. It wasn't quite enough time; they were thrown forward as the vehicle impact absorbed the last of the shielding. Liara, blank-faced, simply reached above her for one of the handholds.
Shepard threw the Mako into reverse and executed a ninety-degree turn. Their rear smacked squarely against one of the support pillars. There was an audible gasp over the comm from Bravo Team, but Shepard put the tank exactly where she intended. They were now facing down the line of geth defenders.
She stomped the accelerator.
Some of them managed to scramble out of the way before the tank ran them down, but the maneuver was so unexpected, most simply turned and shot at them. That was satisfying. Apparently, even geth programming had a discernable reaction time to adapt to a new situation. The machines crumpled beneath her wheels. Garrus gave up firing at their line and turned his attention towards the aft bridge, assisting Bravo Team with the first line as Shepard chased down the stragglers with her vehicular assault. Stray shots exploded against the windows, concrete, and mountain, leaving craters and sprays of debris scattered across the bridge. Someone was going to have a hell of a time cleaning up.
When at last the shot faded, only the two Makos remained functional. Shepard calmly spoke into the comm. "Status report."
"Shields holding at 93%. Rear Cameras 3 and 4 not responding," Alenko relayed. His look was reproachful. "I think they were crushed when you rammed the support."
Tali also responded. "Shields at 97%. No structural damage."
"Roger. Tali, is it worth hopping out to examine these geth units?"
"Negative, Shepard. They'll have been wiped by now."
Shepard was tempted to take a look around anyway. Maybe it was that the bridge was sheltered from the storm and her eyes were getting the first rest they'd had in hours. But now that Benezia almost certainly knew they were coming, they were working with borrowed time. She resumed rolling forward. "Copy that. Move out."
Shortly after the bridge, they entered a series of treacherous switchbacks that left barely enough room for a single vehicle on the road. At times, several centimeters of their portside wheels were left dangling over the edge. The caravan slowed to a crawl. The dangerous confines lent special charm to the discovery that Benezia had dropped mobile turrets onto the cliffs above them. Luckily, those same circumstances prevented the guns from establishing good line of sight, and Garrus' superior aim managed to disable the turret before it could do any real damage.
The turret did manage to mangle a section of the road. Shepard didn't trust the broken, slushy churn of ice to hold their weight, and was left with the unfortunate choice of using the retrorocket to sail over the gap. It wreaked similar havoc on the ice beneath them, and though she cut it off before they landed, the Mako still skidded alarmingly on contact. Two of the wheels revolved on air before she managed to steady it.
She let out a slow breath and rolled forward to give the second Mako plenty of clearance. They now had a longer jump, and the snow was picking up. "In your own time, Bravo Team. Don't rush it."
Liara turned her head towards Alenko and spoke for the first time in hours. "Let me out."
The look he gave her in return was dubious, and concerned. "It won't work. It's too heavy."
"It's worth a try." What her voice lacked in intonation it made up for with implacability.
He let out a breath and budged open the hatch, shaking his head. They tumbled onto the ice. Shepard scooted along the bench after them. "Does someone want to tell me-"
Bravo Team activated their retrorocket. The words died on her lips.
It was clear from the start that the trajectory was flawed. An unfortunate gust of wind pushed the Mako further sideways, while shoving Alpha Team into the side of their vehicle, between them and the crevasse. The airborne tank had no thrusters to correct for the drift. Shepard felt her stomach contract into a hard ball. "They're not going to make it."
Several things happened very quickly. Liara grabbed Alenko's hand. The Mako hit the ice with a heavy thud, leftmost half almost entirely off the path, and began to list over the side. The asari flung out her remaining arm, fingers spread to their full span, and with tenuous, aching slowness, the fall was arrested.
Half the tank sat on empty air limned in blue light. Liara's lips were pressed so thin they were shuddering, and her large eyes didn't blink. Thought it couldn't have lasted more than a second in real time the instant seemed to stretch thin into eternity.
Then the Mako's wheels roared as they tried to find purchase on the blue-shot ground, throwing up chips of ice as they bit into the road with desperation and hauled the vehicle forward. Once it found its grip its speed became prodigious; Shepard scrambled back as it rammed the rear of the first Mako and nearly ran over her toes.
The instant the sixth wheel was on firm ground Liara dropped her hand and fell to her knees, gasping in great gulps of air. Alenko staggered back, massaging his forehead and cursing. "Owww. Holy crap. You could have warned me."
Liara was lost to a coughing fit. When she recovered, she wiped her mouth. "I'm sorry. I thought I did."
He leaned back against the side of the tank and shut his eyes, groaning. "Shit."
Shepard looked between them. "What just happened?"
"A Mako possesses extraordinary mass." Liara managed to straighten. "I couldn't hold it unassisted."
Shepard hadn't realized biotics could combine strength like that. Maybe Alenko hadn't either, judging by his surprise and assertion that her attempt was doomed to failure, though clearly that hadn't inhibited Liara's ability to form whatever connection she required. Shepard hated not having strategically relevant information; hated that when it came to biotics she didn't even know which questions to ask. Instead, she activated her comm link. "Is everyone ok in there?"
Williams was shaken, but coherent. "Yes, ma'am. We're in one piece."
"Good." For once, Shepard didn't bother to hide her relief beneath professionalism. If Ash and Tali and Wrex went over that cliff- she wasn't entirely sure of her reaction, but it would have been severe. She let out a breath. "This is a hell of a long road. Switch out drivers and keep going. We need to make Peak 15 by nightfall."
Shepard gave her Mako to Garrus and took over the gun, while Liara slid into the navigator's seat to allow Alenko some time to try to clear the stars from his eyes. Her draw on his ability sent him straight into the throes of a savage headache. Slowly, gaining traction against the incline, they rolled out.
They were climbing now, winding their way across the face of the mountain. Shepard never understood the custom of naming mountains; with the exception of certain kinds of volcano, mountains were not distinct, not individual. Every so-called mountain was nothing more than a particularly high ridge or peak. She rather liked the NDC convention of naming the range and numbering the features. The road they traveled was carved out by explosives and hard labor when Port Hanshan was founded, barely more than a scrape along the granite monstrosity of Skadi, but it gave some meager shelter from the winds Shepard saw high above the port a day prior. She was certain they never could have made it subject to those gusts.
They passed more turrets along the way, and more burnt-out vehicles. Clearly Benezia had no intention of being followed. They found additional geth as well, and dispatched them with more accumulated wear on their vehicles. NDC had not scrimped on their equipment, for which Shepard was grateful, but her team had to be lucky every time. Benezia's only needed to find a weak point in their multi-layered shielding once. Shepard wasn't about to give her the opportunity.
It concerned her that she was framing the coming conflict in such personal terms. It was Saren's army they fought, not Benezia personally, but it was hard not to hold her accountable for this pocket portion of the war. It was hard not to lust after a solid, identifiable, flesh-and-blood target even with Liara sitting not two meters from her. There was a strong thirst for retribution, to make some pay for what had occurred these last months in the Traverse, and it didn't matter whose mother she was.
And it should. It should matter that Benezia was bewitched, or indoctrinated, or whatever you cared to call it; it should matter that she undoubtedly knew things that could help turn the tide; hell, it should matter that she was influential in the asari government and her unsubstantiated demise could be painful for the Systems Alliance. But none of it did. The impulse belonged to the darker thoughts of that same part of her that found intimidating guards quality entertainment. That part knew geth couldn't pay tribute for their crimes in blood, that silicon didn't splinter and machinery couldn't scream.
Shepard was deeply discomfited knowing that was inside her, at the same time knowing that it was also what moved her hand when everyone else around her was struck with horror or burdened with fear. This ability to step outside empathy and see the whole gory thing as just another score-keeping exercise defended her every bit as much as her armor and her training. Another reason she'd wanted out. It was easier when she could still believe the terrible things she did were to protect her people, but as the years dragged on and not a damn thing seemed to change for more than five minutes, faith that it meant anything was in short supply.
It was quite cold inside the Mako despite environmental controls. The chill of this planet seeped through every seam. Shepard licked at her chafed lips. "How much farther?"
"We're coming up on the second bridge," Liara reported. "From there, the road should widen and give us a clear path to Peak 15. A few hours, perhaps."
Shepard checked the time. They would be cutting it close to sundown. Garrus said, "Maybe we should bivouac in the waystation, wait until morning."
"No. We're not giving them another night to finish what they started."
"We may not have a choice. Geth are hard to fight in the dark." They all knew that out here, it would be an absolute dark. The only lights were the dull red beacons lining the road.
"We keep moving," Shepard said firmly. "That's an order."
Garrus snorted, his disagreement plain. "We're not going to be much good for anything when we get there."
"Pull over at the bridge. We'll switch out again. I'll take us in."
Alenko, whose headache had faded from stabbing to a dull ache, spoke up. "I can take a shift, if you want."
Shepard chuckled in spite of the awful weariness that came from traveling in a bumpy tank all day. "No. I've seen you drive. You can have the gun or relieve Liara on nav, your pick."
Though another ambush at the bridge was expected, either Benezia was running out of troops or was confident in her earlier measures, because there was nothing but empty road. Each tank rotated its personnel, but Shepard felt the need to stretch her legs a few minutes, and called a brief rest. Several of her team went to explore the waystation- or at least enjoy its brief warmth. The commander instead elected to wander ahead of the caravan, to the end of the bridge where snow gathered in deep drifts, caught against the supports.
She leaned against one and folded her arms, staring out into the mountains, taking a deep breath of the cold clean air. They were at significant altitude and breath got thinner with every mile, or so it felt. Then something caught her eye, a smudge of gray and orange at the limits of her sight. Curious, she walked a bit down the road.
Two Makos lay there, tumbled over each other like broken toys, one lying on its roof. Both were ablaze. Unlike the truck and other vehicles they'd passed, it was a trickle of flame, as there was only fuel from the retrorocket to burn. It wavered above the overturned tank, a sad banner of defeat.
Scattered about them were geth chassis, maybe ten or fifteen in all, interspersed with several very human looking corpses, burnt as they fled. Shepard knelt by the nearest and rolled the body over. The remains of his eyes stared up into the sky framed by an ERCS headset. She sat back on her heels and draped her arms over her legs, thoughtful. So. Anoleis did send a team to investigate. He wasn't covering for Saren, or Binary Helix. He was covering his own inability to contain the situation. Shepard shook her head. What a bloody waste.
Li hadn't mentioned it. Oddly enough she was more bothered by that than all the rest. She'd thought him the only honest one in the lot.
Static burst at her ear, the storm playing merry hell with their comm system. Alenko. "Commander, we're ready to move, on your order."
Polite way of saying they were waiting for her to return. She squinted at the cliffs rising to the right, searching for the turret. "I'm just past the bridge. Move up. We've got some business to address."
Then, as she found it, she added, "Carefully. There's a turret about fifteen meters ahead and ten up."
She wasn't large enough to trip its sensors into action. Prudently, before her Makos could come into view, she moved back against the cliff and out of the line of fire.
The first tank emerged with its gun already sniffing at the wind. The turret spun in its moorings instantly. They fired simultaneously as their instruments found each other and established a hard lock.
The turret's salvo was first to arrive, going wide of its target and blowing a crater into the miniature battlefield at Shepard's feet. The pressure front, somewhat greater than the wind but less than required to do injury, felt incredible as it knocked her back like the shove of a giant hand. Her back smacked against the mountain and knocked her to her knees. Some of the disabled geth were mangled by the plasma shot, while others were tossed into the air. One struck the mountain not far from Shepard's position. Bits of dirt and chips of ice from the blast sprayed over her in a tide, stinging cheeks numbed by cold and forcing her to shield her eyes with her arm.
Shepard found the turret again just in time to watch it crumble on itself, shedding shrapnel all the way down the cliff and onto the road. The sight made her smile. It was a clever strategy, sending disposable synthetics against irreplaceable flesh-and-blood, but it wasn't working.
She swung up into the Mako, Garrus scooting over to make room, and adjusted the controls to suit her. "It's not long now."
Alenko shifted at the gun behind her. "What's the plan when we arrive?"
"We assess the situation, and then…" She let out a breath. "And then we find Benezia and get some answers."
Liara checked her display, her mouth thin and tight. "My mother has great strength. Shiala shook off Saren's control. We don't know what she is doing at the labs."
Garrus glanced at her. "Saren let Shiala go. It's not the same."
"Let her be," Shepard said before it could go any further. Who cared if she was trying to protect Liara for as long as that remained possible? What was wrong with that? None of this was Liara's fault. She'd asked for none of it, no more than the colonists of Feros or Eden Prime.
Shepard cleared her throat and modulated her tone to something less sharp. "We have no way of knowing the tenor of Benezia's present relationship with Saren. I won't entertain speculation. It wastes time."
Liara looked up. "There it is."
A break in the snow allowed them a glimpse of Peak 15 across the crevasse, though they'd have to wind around its small end before they could reach it. The road dead-ended in a steel trap of a door where shuttles would deliver people and supplies on less stormy days. Above the door, peeking between the sheets of blue-gray ice, were thick paned windows, an expensive extravagance. There was not the slightest sign of activity through any of it.
After miles of climbing, the path actually began to descend, at a gentle pace, towards the entrance to Binary Helix's laboratory. While Peak 15 sat well above them, plucking at the passing clouds, the facility built into the mountain had its garage at road level. The last rays of sunlight disappeared behind the peak about thirty minutes before they reached it, and there were precious few half-hours of Shepard's life she wanted to relive less. The Mako's lights were damn near useless in these conditions and they were forced to drive by ladar scan alone. It was a relief to finally kill the engine and step out into the dark, rifle in hand.
The huge steel bay door was firmly shut. There was no exterior terminal evident. Shepard looked at her squad. "Spread out. Find a way in."
Their flashlights formed small islands in the night as they examined the mountainside and the small circle that was the last of the road. There were no signs of geth. It wasn't more than a few minutes before Williams called out. "Ma'am, you need to see this."
Shepard headed towards her voice, trailed by much of the remainder of the team. Wavering in the cold light were three corpses, all human, wearing tattered uniforms identifying them as members of the laboratory staff, probably assigned to the garage. They were tumbled over each other, as though they'd fled together and been caught together. She wondered what could make people run to certain death by freezing. What was worse?
She knelt beside the nearest of the bodies and touched its clothes, carefully. "These tears… I don't recognize them. It's not knife work."
Wrex sniffed at the air. "Looks almost like some kind of animal."
Alenko glanced at her. "That mechanic did say Noveria has savage wildlife."
"Wildlife we've seen no sign of all day." Shepard brushed her fingers over the ground. "Fresh snow, and no marks that aren't ours. No pieces missing from the bodies. What kind of creature ignores fresh meat sitting free for the taking?"
"These were people, ma'am," Williams corrected harshly.
"All flesh is the same to an animal," Shepard replied mildly and glanced at the door. "The garage was shut behind them. Someone's still alive in there."
Garrus' mandibles flared. "Under Benezia's control."
"Maybe." She straightened. "Someone scan the usual frequencies. See if we can pick up anything."
"On it," Tali said, fiddling with her omni-tool. "Most of the computer systems are off-line."
Alenko squatted next to the third corpse and lifted something off its neck. "Ident badge. Could be useful."
He passed it to her. Shepard weighed it in her hand. The young woman pictured was dark-haired and smiling. The young woman in the snow had a face too savaged by claws to tell any expression.
Wrex rose and wandered towards the far end of the bay door. "Over here. There's a smaller hatch."
Shepard reached the door and slid the badge through the scanner. "At least the security systems are still online."
The interior of the garage was a velvety black, and nearly as cold as the air outside. Shepard raised her light but it lacked the strength to illuminate much of the room. The floor was bare concrete and crates of all manner lay scattered about it, abandoned in place when the… whatever it was hit the facility.
Liara followed her through the door. "Logically, if you're trying to contain a loose experiment, security is the very last system that would be shut off. It will stay online until they run out of power completely."
"And how long will that take?"
"Each facility on Noveria will have its own reactor. So, years to decades depending on how much maintenance it requires to avoid tripping the fail safes."
"Alright. So the power didn't go out. Somebody shut it down. From Port Hanshan or here?"
Alenko tried a light switch. Nothing happened. "Did NDC look like the kind of place that exercises a lot of oversight?"
Shepard acknowledged the point. "So from inside Peak 15. That means we can turn it back on. That's our first priority. Once the computers are online, they can tell us where in this maze Benezia is hiding."
Liara began to make some response, but a distant screech, high-pitched and not like anything from any human throat, sang through the garage. The echoes took half an eternity to die. The asari glanced around, eyes wide, her voice a harsh whisper. "What was that?"
There was a second screech, shorter, less a cry and more a call, raising the hair on the back of her neck. Shepard's finger twitched against her trigger, not enough to fire.
Williams spun slowly, pointing her rifle at shadows. "Think it's what got them outside?"
"Yes," said Wrex, settling his shotgun in his hands. "They're hunting."
Shepard refused to be unnerved. "Tali, can we record a sample and try to match it to something? I want to know what the hell these creatures are."
The quarian nodded. She snapped her attention to Liara. "Where's the power junction?"
Liara pulled open a map she'd downloaded before leaving the port. "Binary Helix built the lab in several parts. The main systems are all on this side, along with a few light-duty labs. The primary scientific facilities as well as security are located in auxiliary sites, accessed via tramway."
"Power is on this side?"
"Yes. Here." Liara placed a waypoint on her map. "Next to the server room for all the station-wide computer systems."
Another screech, and another answering, high-pitched hisses in the night. Their breath was loud, harsh, in the following silence, and they crowded a bit closer together in the meager flashlight. Shepard shot Alenko a glance, who jerked his head at Garrus, the two began a slow patrol around the front of the garage, searching for the source. Wrex calmly continued looking over his weapon. Liara crowded closer to Williams, who kept her rifle held high, searching for a target.
Shepard's eyes flicked from the direction of the noise to Tali. "Anything?"
"Nothing in the databases I can access."
Garrus and Alenko finished their circuit and reported in. "Nothing but dust and snow, ma'am."
"Alright." Shepard grew tired of waiting in the dark like nervous children. "We make for the power junction. If anything moves, shoot it. We can solve this mystery with dead animals just as easily as live."
They found a stairwell at the far end of the garage. A placard above the hatch read "Central Station". Shepard advanced steadily, more determined than cautious. A few rogue nightmares conjured by Binary Helix's experiments weren't about to frighten her off. The stairs gave way to a glass tube of an airlock, to allow the attached security station to verify all visitors as well as prevent contaminants from entering the lab space. Within the tube were two portable turrets, thankfully not geth technology, pointed towards the inner hatch.
The sight gave Liara pause. "Why are the turrets pointed the wrong way?"
Nobody wanted to answer. They stared at walls while Shepard swiped the stolen card and worked to override the permissions from within the tube. Liara glanced around in growing confusion. At last Alenko licked his lips and stated, simply, "They want to keep their own people in as much as others out."
Her blue eyes grew very round. "That's horrifying."
The hatch opened at last. Shepard consulted the map on the wall and turned towards the elevator, grimly. "It's going to get worse from here."
They piled into the carriage, a bit cramped, and as they ascended the lights began to flicker. Emergency power was failing. The thought sat like a stone in Shepard's stomach. This wasn't a space station with their ship docked right outside, or a facility on a broad open plain; this was a mountain with hard-locked hatches. If the power died completely, they'd be stuck a long time, unless NDC's antimatter warhead obliterated them sooner.
Nothing to be done about it. What was that stupid saying of her mother's, when she had some unpleasant task or other- no way out but forward. No point in dwelling on it. The power would hold until they reached the power junction because there was no other option.
The elevator poured them out into a hallway curving around the mountain face, high above the road, the outer wall made of a glass so thick it distorted the view. The floor, ceiling, and inner wall were all bare rock swathed in a rich frosting of snow, ice, and furry frost. A bit of a draft swept the ground clean and caused whispers of snow to play about her ankles. Her breath fogged out before her. In the distance ahead there was a trickle of water, the only sound.
Shepard paused at the next hatch, listening a moment, the water growing louder, echoing as though from a much larger chamber. She motioned for her squad to be ready, and tagged open the door, jogging forward several steps quite quickly and sweeping her eyes over the room.
They were in an office, split in two levels, with a multi-story spacious meeting area to the front and small conference rooms upstairs and down lining the back wall, hidden behind a partition. Heavy windows looked out over the valley. With night fallen outside, they seemed to merely add depth to the darkness. Snow lay here and there in the corners and where the walls met the floor, and icicles dangled, dripping, from heating ducts. With the power outage there wasn't much air moving through the system. A single strip of emergency lighting glowed faintly up the ramp to the second story.
The place was in chaos.
Tables and chairs lay in tumbled piles, tops gouged and cushions slashed. Datapads, terminals, and paperwork covered the floor like large bits of confetti with darkened screens. But the worst part was the bodies. There were no Binary Helix staff, at least not in the area nearest the hatch, but there were several krogan bearing expressions of frozen surprise and the same coloring as all the others Shepard had seen in Saren's employ. Blood pooled at the seams of their armor and gathered on the floor. There were also several varieties of geth chassis, the framework rent and scratched.
Shepard stared at the scene with disbelief and not a little surprise. Saren sent his people to contain the situation, not be slaughtered by it. These weren't untrained staffers. "What the hell happened here?"
Wrex turned over a krogan corpse with his boot. The visible flesh was covered in slashes and puckered puncture wounds, but that wasn't what immediately attracted Shepard's attention. All down the right half of the body, seamless between flesh and armor, was a large mottled burn. In the worst places the flesh ran like candlewax; in others it exposed the lines of bone and muscle in stark relief. The armor it touched was a mushy mess of fused nylon webbing tangled about scarred ceramic plates.
A hush came over the squad. Liara turned away, in the quiet but almost inexpressibly horrified way she had, while the others by turn swallowed or cursed beneath their breath. For her part, Shepard merely looked from the corpse to Wrex. He shook his head. "I don't know. These are natural wounds, save for the burn."
"Acid, maybe." She sat back on her heels. "Hard to believe it'd be flame in a place this cold."
A hiss came out of the darkness beyond their pool of flashlight. It was followed by a soft, querying cry and the scrabbling of something sharp on the stone floor. As she listened, soft chittering, closer at hand, whispered through the room. Whatever the escaped experiments were, they sounded quite large. One of the high-octave hisses sounded almost like alien laughter.
Williams swallowed, audibly. "Orders, ma'am?"
It was so cold frost was forming on her hard suit. Shepard gave up wondering over the dead krogan. "We need the power back, but I won't be flanked by these… creatures." That word she almost spat, with utter disdain. "We go room by room until we find our way. Spread out, stay in pairs."
Her team forged ahead through the blackout. Wrex lingered over the strange wounds a few moments further. "These are precise, the mark of a strong predator. So were the ones outside. This thing knows what it's doing."
"Things," Shepard corrected. "There's at least two hiding here, maybe more."
"Pack hunter," Wrex speculated. "I don't know anything could take out a squad of krogan alone and still fit in this room."
Shepard didn't want to admit he was likely correct. "No ideas?"
"I've never seen anything like this." He rolled his shoulder, confused and irritated. "But it feels familiar. Like maybe something I saw in a vid. I don't know, Shepard."
A yell interrupted them, edged with familiar turian flanging. Then she heard Alenko curse, reflexively, and the steady rat-tat-tat of rifle fire.
Shepard sprinted up the ramp. They were at significant altitude, it was colder than the void's own vastness, and she was easily carrying thirty kilos of gear between her armor and armaments. But she'd trained in worse, and she could haul some serious ass when it was required. She skidded around the corner and slid into the small meeting room that was the source of all the commotion.
Her first impression was of a giant shrimp, but far more menacing. The dull red creature's segmented body rose perhaps as high as her waist but twice as long. It stood on four legs and waved another, stunted pair at its assailants. Two miniscule eyes graced its curved head ending in a mess of feelers, and a twin pair of long, pincered tentacles whipped about it, defending its airspace.
Green acid dripped from its hissing maw and made tiny impact craters on the floor. The hail of bullets was keeping it at bay, but not driving it back. They seemed to do the thick carapace little damage. As soon as Alenko overloaded his heat sink it was all over.
So Shepard did the first thing that came to mind, and charged the animal with a wild yell of her own.
She ducked between the tentacles and shoved the heel of her boot hard into its face. Something crunched beneath it. The shrimp-like insect let out a hideous shriek and tried to draw back, but she kept pace. The kick was followed by a stout punch to the side of its head. It reared in anger and agony and tried to spit acid into her face, and she fought to keep its mouth away while its legs scrabbled against her armor and the pincers sought a place to wound, winding about her.
Her rifle clattered to the ground. Her gloved hands pressed against its neck, straining, her face turned away from that gaping mouth. "Little help here?"
Alenko was trying to shoot at it without hitting her. "It doesn't seem to care!"
Footsteps in the hall, Wrex catching up and the rest attracted to the commotion. Shepard twisted desperately to put the creature between herself and them. "Fire!"
Nobody needed to be told twice. She felt the impact of their various attacks through the body of her assailant. It thrashed its death, scoring her armor with long scrapes and dressing the wall over her shoulder in its corrosive saliva. It was all she could do to hold on- but she knew letting go would mean almost certain injury.
At last it slumped against her, all the life gone from it, and she staggered beneath its weight. With a great heave she shoved it off onto the floor.
Williams' eyes were so wide she could see the whites all the way around. "What the FUCK is that thing?!"
Shepard didn't have the faintest idea. She reclaimed her rifle from where it fell to the floor, the sweat already freezing on her brow. "Something new." Her eyes swept the squad. "Where's Garrus? I heard him yell."
Alenko gulped a breath, let it out, and leaned against the wall shaking his head. "I don't know. He was here, and then it was here, and then… I don't know."
There was a pile of refuse in the corner, half-hidden beneath a fallen display terminal. She kicked it aside and saw the hole. "They've burrowed through the floor. Move!"
The team made for the ramp. Shepard didn't bother, but vaulted over the railing directly, rolling out of the fall. Liara followed her rather more delicately, shrouded in a pale blue glow until her feet lightly touched the ground. They were first to reach the conference room directly below.
Garrus was barricaded behind an overturned table while another of the creatures lashed at him. It was so fierce in its assault that he could hardly poke his eyes over the lip, much less get off a round.
"Liara," Shepard said, raising her rifle.
The asari threw out a singularity, pulling the creature from its feet to leave it dangling helpless in midair. Shepard took her time in placing the shot, waiting for its writhing to expose the softer underbelly she'd noticed while grappling its friend. The barrage ripped it open from throat to bottom, and the resulting deluge of gore put pale to most of Shepard's memories. The stench alone did not bear description.
"Goddess," Liara gasped, covering her mouth and nose, gagging.
Shepard's eyes were watering. "If this is what Saren wanted, I can believe he means to take over the galaxy."
Garrus rose slowly, similarly disgusted but unwilling to pay it any attention. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it." She shook her head and stalked from the room. "I like this place less and less-"
Not two meters from the doorway, Wrex's giant boot came down on something blackish green, the size of a cat but with far more legs. It splat. Bits of slime dotted Shepard's lower legs. "What the hell?"
"Dunno." He lifted his foot and peered at the remains, what little there was. "Makes my nose itch."
"It's acid," Garrus clarified, coming up behind Shepard. "Better wipe your shoe."
Liara speculated, "A larval stage, perhaps."
Shepard scowled. "With a few dozen of these things, Saren could lay waste to most colonies. God knows how many are here."
"That's not going to happen," Garrus said firmly.
"No," she said, with real rancor. "It's not."
Shepard turned on her heel and swept by her team as she headed deeper into the labs, leaving them to scramble in her wake.
They traveled down long hallways, some brushing the night sky with windows, others buried within the mountain. The occasional echoed hiss or screech kept them sharp, though they encountered no more of the strange creatures along their way. Liara kept a watchful eye on her map and offered direction when necessary. Eventually, they emerged into a larger room, if anything colder than the halls but free of ice and snow. Enormous, and silent, power junctions lined its walls. Thin strips of emergency lighting, dimmed as the reserves ran low, lit a central path towards the back of the room and flickered against the shadows.
Shepard glanced around for the switch but found nothing. "Where do we start?"
Tali'Zorah was looking over Liara's shoulder, pointing. "The main reactor should be here. However, we'll never be able to bring it back online without the system VI. The security protocols alone would take days to crack."
"Is there enough power left in the labs for a VI?"
Alenko held up his omni-tool to a power junction and took a reading. He frowned. "There's no residual power left in any of these. They've been down a long time, a week at least. But the VI should have an auxiliary power source, if it was designed correctly. We just need to find it."
"Shepard," Garrus said, drawing her attention to the rear hatch. Beyond it was a circular room enclosing a ring of dead server banks.
"That looks like a VI to me," she said. "Let's get it back."
They hurried into the room, which was somewhat cramped with all seven of them crowded around the servers. A small platform elevator waited in the middle of the cluster. Tali stepped onto it. "I need somebody to find that power supply."
"On it," Alenko said, beginning an examination of the room's perimeter. Tali descended into the VI hardware. The tube filled with faint orange light as she interfaced her omni-tool with the server access terminal.
"You need to bypass automatic safety protocols," she called up. "This shutdown wasn't due to lack of electricity. Somebody wanted this to happen."
Shepard grimaced. "Probably went with the Code Omega. Binary Helix wouldn't want any of their data to survive to be picked up by NDC or a competitor."
"They haven't wiped the drives," Tali reported.
That was a piece of luck. Shepard shot a glance to Alenko, crouched beside a unit affixed to the wall. "Faster would be better."
"Giving it all I got, ma'am. They hardwired the response with an FPGA and locked it down afterwards. I've never seen a setup like this." He sounded torn between aggravation and admiration of their cleverness.
Shepard was merely aggravated. "The hell is an FP-"
"Programmable hardware," Tali supplied from her cave. "Don't ask. Kaidan, can you isolate the chip physically?"
"Yeah, just let me pull out my portable soldering kit," he replied sarcastically.
"You know what I mean."
"It'll be faster to crack the lock. Just give me another minute."
The requested sixty seconds passed impatiently, Shepard tapping her foot all the while and trying not to pace. Just as she was about to prod things along, the server indicator lights lit up in a blue-and-orange constellation of LEDs and the computers came to life with a great whoosh of intake air.
Tali made a pained sound. "The shutdown corrupted some of the essential files. I need to make repairs from backups."
Garrus had wandered nearer to Alenko. "I'm not reading a lot of power here. We don't have much time."
"Damn it, I need this VI online." Shepard pushed past him, assessing the meter. "Can we feed it power from something else? One of the suits, maybe?"
Each hard suit had a small eezo-based generator mounted on the back that supplied shielding as well as power for recording biometric information, and circulating oxygen when required. Alenko clearly thought her mad. "Sure, the cabling ports are all the same, but it doesn't have that kind of juice. The transfer would drain it completely. It would have to be replaced later."
Shepard sat down next to the power unit. "Do it."
He gave her a look of utter disbelief. "Commander, your shielding will not function. It's too big a risk."
She shook her head. "If we don't get that reactor started, it's all over. There's no other way to reach Benezia."
"Ma'am-"
"I gave you an order," she interrupted smoothly with more than a touch of frost.
He couldn't hold her tempered glare, but instead gave an exasperated sigh and snagged an appropriate cable, and muttered too low for anyone else to hear. "If you die, I'm leaving your body here for those things to eat."
"No you won't," she said without a trace of worry, whispering back. A smile tugged at her mouth.
Alenko plugged her in and tapped a few commands into the console. "How do you know?"
"Because between the two of us, I'm the one with the reputation for leaving people behind." The joke came out before she knew she was going to say it. It left her somewhat startled. She didn't know that she'd ever cracked a joke about Akuze before, at least not one like that, but she wasn't sorry for it.
A spot the size of her palm heated on her back as the power draw rose to maximum. Alenko spared her a very dry glance. "And I'm the one who stupidly stands between girls and their mistakes."
"Please. You stand at the back and throw blue shit around." But she was smiling as she spoke. "Who's the one who saved your ass from the giant acid-breathing lobster?"
Tali, working furiously down in the pit, yelled up. "I've almost got it- there!"
A projection pad a quarter of the way round the room hummed to life, bearing the image of a pink-gridded, animated woman with blank eyes and a pleasant smile. "Greetings. I am Mira. It looks like you are trying to restore this facility. Would you like help?"