Brothers in Steel Part 43

Reclaimer Part 2


The Flood horde gave chase, pushing them back into the dome, and forcing them to scurry up back to the top level. The Flood, no longer impeded by the lake, were able to use their impressive physical abilities to jump quite high and threatened to overtake the team. John kept facing backwards every now and then to lay down some shots over his shoulder, but there were too many for him to take on.

They went back out to the main processing center and jumped over the railing into the docking port. John spotted a door over on the right side of the wall and quickly motioned his team to rush for it. The Flood were so close he could almost feel them breathing, could hear their mangled legs slopping together messily on the floor. The team scrambled over the wrecked shuttles and to the door. John led them in and yelled at Legion, "Lock that door now!"

"I don't have the override codes!"

Quickly John tried to force the door shut by hand, and he almost succeeded when a Flood came up and forced its hand between the door and the wall, snarling. John popped out his omni-blade in response and severed the ugly arm, watching it collapse to the ground. Then he quickly slammed the door shut, listening to the sound of the Flood outside clamoring to force it open.

"That won't keep them out forever," said John grimly, "They'll know how to use tools, and weapons. Lets keep moving, we need to get somewhere safe so we can plan on how we're going to get that information and then level the place."

They found themselves in a dark corridor with no lights. John took out his omni-tool and so did Legion, and they slowly crept through the hall.

John felt himself getting increasingly colder, and realized that the corridor was starting to slant, and that they were heading down, deep into the underground.

"We must be getting towards the basement," suggested Garrus.

"Agreed."

They continued until they entered a wide, circular room, with a door on the north side, and a metal grating on the floor, revealing a dark, deep hole underneath, where streams of water, presumably sewage material from the facility, was trickling down below.

"Legion, see if you can open that door."

"Affirmative, Spartan-Commander."

John went over to the grating and took a look down. Then Garrus asked, "Did you consider its deal at all?"

"No."

"Why not?" asked Garrus, puzzled.

"They can't be trusted."

"Are you completely sure?"

"Completely."

Garrus said nothing, but John could tell he was at least a little skeptical.

Legion interrupted their silence by saying, "I have opened the door."

"Lets get inside."

"Communication with the Normandy is being blocked down here, even if we wanted an Evac, we couldn't get it," said Garrus regretfully.

"Well we can't leave anyway not without destroying..." began John as heard the click of a dozen safeties going off and the appearance of several malevolent shadows forming all around him. Each one of them was holding a rifle pointed straight at John and his teammates.

"Don't move a muscle," whispered John.

"Put your weapons down and your hands up!" said a demanding voice. It sounded familiar, it was female...and had an Australian accent.

John nodded to his team to do as they were told, realizing that these were the survivors from the upstairs. He put his gun down and said, "Look, we're not here to harm you."

"Yeah, you're not one of those things," a male voice spoke now, "But who the hell are you?"

John realized that these could be Cerberus personel, so he asked them, "You tell us who you are first."

A silence followed. Then the australian woman answered back, "We're survivors. That's all you need to know. Only one of us worked for Cerberus, if that's what you're asking."

"Alright," said John, "We're with the Alliance. We came to investigate this place, and look for information."

"What kind of information?"

"Classified information."

There was another pause; then the woman said, "Hit the lights."

A few dim, blue lights appeared, slightly illuminating the darkness, good enough to see what John was looking at. The Australian woman was a female about the same height as Garrus, so quite tall, with an athletic figure. She wore a kind of white jumpsuit with black patches on the shoulders and arms, and all over there was a kind of hexagon pattern. Her face looked like a super-models, free from imperfections, and her hair was of medium length, and raven black.

Most of the other people were nothing more than civilians still in casual wear, most of them men and women of middle age, but John saw a few children as well, boys and girls who were covered head to toe in a layer of grime. There was also a man with a close-cropped haircut and a flat, emotionless face, wearing the yellow and white armor of a Cerberus trooper. John decided to keep an eye on that one.

"Vakarian!" the woman said in surprise.

"Miranda!" replied Garrus in astonishment.

"Lawson-Operative," said Legion.

"Legion!"

"What's going on here?" John asked, puzzled.

"Miranda helped us defeat the Collectors with Shepard," explained Garrus, "I recognized her voice on the message."

"You didn't think to share that information?"

"Well, I thought she might be working with Cerberus..."

"No," said Miranda firmly, "I am not with them, anymore. I can't believe Shepard didn't tell any of you that. Where is Shepard anyway?"

Garrus looked awkwardly at John who said matter-of-factly, "Commander Shepard is MIA, I am in command of the Normandy for the moment."

Miranda looked John up and down and said, "Don't be offended when I say my confidence is not of the same elevation without Shepard."

"Its fine, I'm getting that a lot lately. But I got a job to do."

"Yeah I'm sure, alright everybody," she said to the crowd, "Disperse, there's nothing to see here."

The other survivors left, and then Miranda bade them follow her to an empty storage garage, where a bunch of cleaning machines had been stored. "Alright," asked Miranda, "what's your plan for getting out of here?"

"Do you have any idea what those things upstairs are?"

"No," Miranda shook her head, "I have no idea."

"Well I do," answered John, "And they have to be destroyed. We can't leave until we do. But still, we do need to plan an Evac for these civilians."

"Indeed," said Miranda.

"Do you know if there are any explosives in this facility?"

Miranda replied, "None large enough to destroy the entire facility. I can show you the blueprints," she took out her omni-tool, "I'm transferring them to you now."

Garrus took a look, "Where are these flood concentrated the most? Do you know?"

"They have a sort of lead intelligence, I'm not sure how to describe it..."

"Its called a Gravemind," interrupted John.

"Excuse me, but how do you know all this?"

"I've fought these things before."

"Where?"

"Its a long story, I'll tell you it when we get out of here."

Miranda shrugged, "Well, whatever. The Gravemind as you call it, has taken up residence in the Comms tower."

"Damn it," cursed Garrus, "That's where our information would be."

"What information are you looking for?"

Garrus took a look at John, who considered sharing the information, then nodded.

"We're looking for the location of the Cerberus headquarters."

"Oh," said Miranda, "Well that's easy, its in the Anadius system of the Horsehead Nebula."

"So the Gravemind was actually telling us the truth," said Legion.

"Apparently it was."

John looked again through the blueprints, then noticed something, "Hey, hold on a second. It says here, that's there a nuclear reactor on the north side of the complex."

"Yeah," said Miranda, "The power requirements on this place are enormous. They wanted to be self-sufficient. Probably so they wouldn't be noticed by the locals."

"What was this place originally built for?"

"My father was luring refugees with food and shelter, to turn them into husks, so he could study indoctrination. From the best of my knowledge, he was mostly killed by those...things."

John shook his head, "The Illusive Man is twisted."

"Yes, he is."

"But anyways, is the Nuclear Reactor still online?"

"Obviously, or otherwise these lights wouldn't be working."

"You never considered that there would be backups?"

"There are, but they need to be activated manually from a control terminal, which the Flood have overtaken."

"Maybe then, if we can fight our way to the Nuclear Reactor, we can figure a way to make it explode. The blast might be able to kill the Flood. We'll have to make a mad dash for an Evac though, but our pilot can meet us up at the north side, once we can get into contact with him."

Miranda nodded, "That might be a good plan, if we can figure out how to get there."

"Look," said Garrus, "We can use the ventilation tunnesl to travel underneath the Comm tower. We'll have to be silent though, otherwise those things might hear us."

"That might be hard to do with civilians though," said John, "Are there any other options?"

"It might be dirty, but there are sewage pipes large enough for people to walk through."

"Hmmm..." thought John, "Alright, Miranda, will you allow your people to walk through."

"Of course, they might not like it, but they understand its the only way out alive. With you here, we might have enough firepower to do it, and we'll have evac, which is something we didn't have before, since Cerberus destroyed all the shuttles. Being so good at quarantines, they realized the threat of this thing getting off-world."

"Good, how many you of you can fight?"

"I can, the Cerberus defector Shay can, and three of our men and two of our women can. Everybody else is injured, or is a child, so they'll have to stay back."

"Garrus and two of them can watch the non-combatants, and stay behind in the pipes, while we clear a path outside after we exit the pipes. The Flood will be bound to see our presence once we leave."

"Sounds like a good plan, so far we've noticed that they take quite a bit of hits to take down."

"Yes," agreed John, "And melee attacks are next to useless. So we need more ammo too."

"We have a little left, but we can stop by this armory," Miranda pointed to a building on the way to the nuclear power plant, "And pick up some there. Shay should have a keycard that grants access."

"Well," said John, "Lets get it done."


Author's Note: The Next Installment will most likely be around four thousand words long, maybe more, so it will probably not come out for a while, maybe two, three weeks. At the same time, I'm looking for Beta-readers to read an original piece by me called "Arcturus" and to give critique. If you are interested, PM me. Thank you ~ Gehenna.