Chapter 51
Zakera Ward Docks, The Citadel, June 2182
Garrus approached the terrible looking Alliance shuttle from the elevators, watching as some of the Alliance soldiers at the dock give him looks. The C-sec officers, on the other hand, gave him nods of respect. He jaunted past all of them, coming up to the shuttle that had one of the Human soldiers standing outside of it. He was one of the Warp ball players that had joined onto the Normandy.
The male gave him a single glance before tapping the side of the shuttle. Garrus got in, seeing that the shuttle only had Humans in it. Sitting in the nearest row was Julia Constantine. His newest project. His newest headache. "I don't see Desolous here." Garrus stated. "Or Lt. Jenkins."
"The Alliance has decided to have Lt. Jenkins receive training on commanding a vessel. Along with a promotion if he can prove his worth."
Garrus did not like that one bit. Splitting up all of the candidates. One was still in the hospital, Jenkins had apparently been reassigned, and now all he had left was Jack Harper's daughter. No, everything about that sounded like bad news. "I don't like this, Commander." He almost loosed a racial epithet. Though the 'scale itch' comment had him slightly rankled. "Nor have I gotten any indication that Desolous is prepared to move."
"I have a lead on the Rachni. I would like to have your help." She offered as an explanation.
"Isn't your ship due for repairs?"
"We are deploying on board a private craft for the time being. The ship will continue with its refitting."
Lt. Alenko turned at that. "We aren't taking the ship?"
"The Normandy is not capable of direct combat at this time." Garrus had to think about that. "I've commissioned a vessel to take us to the X-19 listening post, and from there to the old Rachni world of Suen."
Garrus sighed. "You're investigating this, no matter what. Aren't you."
"The Alliance needs an advantage. Everyone does. The Rachni are not being repelled like they could be during the Rachni Wars. Their weapons and armor have advanced to the point that they can challenge our armored vehicles without trouble, while Hierarchy and Alliance technology is roughly at the same level as the technology that was used against the Rachni last time."
"Call off your civilian craft." Garrus muttered. Spirits, this Human was going to get herself killed. Too bad she was the best of the lot. "I have a few favors I can call in for a Turian craft to take us. If you really do have a lead, then we should at least use our collective government's resources to get the job done." He shook his head. Humans and their impatience. One day they would have to thank him for keeping them alive. "Yes, this is Spectre Garrus Vakarian. I would like to request a frigate for myself and a small strike crew."
The Hierarchy were not pleased with the idea, but the PR potential was certainly something they liked. So the 'combined' mission was going to take place onboard the Turian cruiser Averro Dominus. Garrus sighed at the thought of bringing all of these people onboard one of the Hierarchy's best.
He glanced towards the aft of the shuttle, seeing the glimmer in the air that signified a cloaked person. Looks like the Alliance didn't fully trust them. He wouldn't, to be fair. Once they were en route he would let Julia know that her Alliance Infiltrators would not be as welcome on board a Turian Cruiser.
Arcturus Station, June 2182
Jenkins slung his bag over his shoulder, stepping off the shuttle and onto Arcturus Station. The gigantic capital of the Alliance was mostly just ugly, in his opinion. The station was in a constant state or repair or expansion, and scaffolding was always in the way of the view. The station had a circular section in the middle, where people were housed and such, and two long wings that housed ships.
His shuttle had dropped him and thirty other sweaty guys bound for leave somewhere at the station, and the pilot had gruffly told them all to get off as soon as possible. Jenkins was off of the shuttle, but found a pretty young lady with blonde hair and a Naval officer's uniform there to greet him.
"Lt. L Jenkins?" She asked, her voice perky. That was odd for a military officer. When he approached, she grinned. Her uniform was one of the docking bay uniforms that covered the hands and the feet. But in between the seals he noticed a particular type of armor.
"Yes, Agent?" Infiltrators wore the kind of armor that hugged a figure like that. The bits he could see in between her wrists and elbows allowed him to recognize that. The designs almost perfectly matched what Commander Constantine wore. Knowing that he was in front of an agent, he stood a bit more stiffly.
"I'm here to brief you." She stated. She didn't introduce herself. But sending a pretty face to greet him just made him even more uncomfortable. "You will not be attending the flag officer academy. Your orders are enclosed here." She handed him a datapad, which required his signature, eye scan, and thumb print. She followed him out of the hangar bay where he could safely remove his gloves to be able to do all of this.
The datapad activated, showing orders coming from Admiral Steven Hackett having him moved into the custody of the Russian Naval Command. What the in the hell.
"This order comes straight from the top." The agent reported. He must have actually voiced his complaint, considering her giving him an unhappy look. "Your training will be starting as of now, in docking bay 41. Please report to the shuttle Romeo-5129. Failure to do this will result in your demotion."
Well, if they put it that way. "Aye, Ma'am." She followed him all the way to the hangar bay, where the crappiest shuttle he had ever seen sat. It even looked pre-element zero in technology. An old Russian flag mark was on the door to the shuttle, which was open. The agent stood at the doorway of the hangar, watching and observing him. She wasn't cloaked, so that meant it was as much intimidation as well as everything else.
The inside of the shuttle was decrepit. Only a couple of seats looked functional, and most of the seatbelts were taken apart or missing entirely. The only seats that worked were the ones furthest in front of the shuttle, where the cockpit was. He sighed, hoping that all of this was just one giant practical joke. "Hello?"
"Jess, I am here." A voice with a thick accent called. "Come, come. Much to do." Jenkins walked forward, seeing that the pilot's seat was filled by a man covered in the marks of old age. "Yes, you, you be like limpet on ass. Come and learn." He didn't have a beard, but his skin had that leathery look of someone who had spent their days outside. His marks of age were set by his scowl, the lines on his face indicating that it was the only emotion the old man showed. His English was thick.
He sat down in the chair next to the old man, now noticing the thick calluses built up on his hands, and the lack of Omni-tool on his wrist. "My name is Lt. Jenkins." He introduced himself, offering his hand for a handshake.
"Velcome to Russian Navy, Jeenkins." The old man said. "Alliance wanted you to have the best. So the best you shall receive."
"Uh, isn't the Russian Navy absorbed into the Alliance?" The Russian Space going Navy had been part of the Alliance since its founding. No one really wanted to form the Alliance without them, not after they had beaten back the massive forces arrayed against Europe during the Islamic wars.
"Space crews, jess." He grunted. "Submarine crews, niet."
"Submarine?" Jenkins said, bewildered. "What the hell?"
"My name is Nikolai Arkhipov. Rear Admiral Nikolai Arkhipov." He wasn't wearing a uniform. "Last commander of water going Naval forces before we were disbanded." He pressed a button, closing the shuttle door. "You are going to learn how to command submarine, not some tugboat."
"Tugboat?"
The old Russian waved at all of the military vessels around them, most of the Alliance Fifth Fleet. "These are all tugboats. They shoot like infantry and fly like fat dogs. Niet, no, you vill learn how to command Submarine. Not Tugboat."
"How old are you, Sir?"
"Ninety Four. Fought in Late Islamic wars when I was 12. Then joined Navy. But that is irrelevant. You are Jenkins. You are to be limpet on my ass. You will learn everything I can teach you." The man had leaned towards him, his cold brown eyes boring into him. The old man still had a full head of gray hair, with darker bits near the ears. "Because Alliance told me you are going to command submarine in space. You get best education possible."
"That's uh, classified."
"So is half of career. Maybe if you impress me I tell you." Arkhipov waved him off. "But first, we must honor your career." The old man reached into his coat pocket, bringing out two yellowed scotch glasses and a tiny bottle of vodka. Jenkins straightened up. Russians were crazy serious about their vodka. "It was these glasses that my grandfather and great great grandfather drank from when they had nuclear missile aimed at rest of the world. First rule of submarine warfare, you are only as strong as your ability to hide allows you to be."
The two yellowed glasses didn't look like much, Jenkins could admit. But one of them had been repaired, glued back together. Vodka was poured into both, barely a shot. But the air above the small glasses rippled for a moment, making Jenkins realize that this was not going to be the weak stuff. Arkhipov took the repaired glass, and held it up to his mouth. Jenkins decided that if anything he was going to keep pace with some old Russian. He was a freaking Marine. "I'm gonna pass this in three weeks!" He said loudly, downing the shot glass.
His vision swam as the entire shot glass went down his throat, the burning mess hitting his stomach and his body trying to cough. He held down the impulse, slowly breathing out through his nose. Arkhipov looked the same, with no reaction to the strong drink. "Good." He declared. "They sent me man with stomach for difficulty. That was strongest vodka I could find."
"I feel it." Jenkins nearly coughed. His eyes could focus again, but it was a near thing. "I'm a marine, though. I can take whatever happens."
"You are limpet." The old man told him. "No longer just man that can shoot gun and drink much. You will learn of many things. First, simple test. Get us to relay."
Jenkins nodded, sitting down and plugging in a flight plan like he had been taught. Just before he would have entered the command into the shuttle to launch, his navigation command was overruled and the shuttle went back into standby mode.
"Niet. Be as limpet. Get us to relay without being seen."
"Uh, just so that you know, I am terrible at flying shuttles."
"You won't fly shuttle. Like in real situation, you will not be at helm. You will be commanding. When I am not teaching, consider me your crew." He patted the instruments. "I will fly, and you will tell me what to do. If I think it won't work, I will tell you. Also, this shuttle cannot go through relay on its own."
"What?" Jenkins skewed his face. "How the hell did you get here, then?"
"Submarine in water is much like ship in space. Simply more room to maneuver. Less things to hide behind." He pointed to the open hangar bay doors. "Now, get us to relay, and this time, do not get us detected." The old man pointed at the parts of this shuttle that were working. "Comms on this shuttle do not work. If you are detected, they will board us and take us in as criminal. Good incentive, yes?"
Jenkins gulped. This was not what he thought would happen. This was going to be insane. "Uh, I think I have an idea."
"It had better work, limpet. I don't have pilot license."
Averro Dominus, Maskim Xul System, June 2182
Captain Pallus was not pleased that he had to share his bridge with a Spectre. Even less so that he had to allow a Human onto the bridge with them. "Turian Spectres have a habit of dying around Humans, Vakarian." He had warned him. Well, this Turian Spectre was prepared for that. At least he thought he was.
Then they had seen what Julia could do when she decided to spar with Kaidan Alenko. She took down the man who was supposed to have the highest reflexes in Humanity's biotic pool like he was standing still. She had used a small wooden pole, roughly ten inches long, and then proceeded to beat Alenko out of the ring and into a wall, all without her biotics. Of course, that got all of the Turian blood flowing, adrenaline rising. Most of the crew started looking over at the Captain, who was the highest rated hand to hand specialist on the ship.
Pallus had lasted less than fifteen seconds, getting put into a headlock and forced to tap out. The hushed trilling of the crew had been all that responded at the end of that match, Captain Pallus retreating to his quarters. So that left Garrus to put the obnoxious Human in her place. She was fast, yes, but she didn't have experience wrestling Krogan. She was as fast as any Salarian in terms of reflexes, or just a little bit slower. Her armor allowed her to slip out of his grip, but Garrus could handle that. Their little bout ended a minute or three in, when he finally got a hold on her and threw her out of the ring forcibly.
She had dislocated his shoulder on the way out, but Garrus held firm and made sure she was out of the ring. The trills from the crew rose a bit in respect for him, and the Human Warp ball team seemed to smile at him more. Julia had shrugged. Told him that she would win the next time. All of this equated one very angry Turian Captain and not a lot he could do to fix anything. If he had the chance to spar the Captain first, he would have at least let the man showcase some of his moves and abilities, rather than just choking him out right on the mat.
"Clearing the relay now, Captain!"
Pallus cleared his throat. "Give me a visual. Something is wrong in this system." The haptic screens in front of the raised dais that the captain stood behind activated, and a map of the solar system took shape. Garrus hitched his breath when he saw that there was only reports of debris. The fuel depot, in orbit around the system's gas giant, was gone. A couple hundred people worked out of the station, even though it dated back to the Rachni wars. Worse, there was just a debris cloud for Listening post X-19. Five thousand people were onboard when it last checked in.
"I've got no outgoing signals from anywhere. The debris is from an implosion. Something caused the reactor to blow open." One of the bridge officers stated. "Same with the Fuel Depot."
"Launch the fighter wing, have them comb the area for escape pods, survivors. Give me something. Shuttle one, take a team and see if you can recover any data from the debris. Shuttle two, take the forensics team and see if the fuel depot was sabotaged or if it was able to get any shuttles off as well. Someone had to have taken cover." Pallus poured over the system map, looking at other installations. "Take us towards Suen. Cruising speed. Sensors active, I don't want to get surprised by whatever the hell hit this place."
"I have one distress signal in system, sir!" The comm officer shouted. "It's the archeological dig site, they've got a distress beacon running."
Pallus actually smiled. "Well, hail them. The poor Salarians are probably hungry."
Julia was silent during the entire process. Simply a fly on the wall. But she paid very close attention to what was going on. "Captain, I've got no reply from the dig site, but I have a couple of distress beacons out in the mountains surrounding area. But the habitable areas on Suen are tidally locked to the star. Sending signals to some locations isn't going to work until we get closer."
"Come in from above the sun's direct angle. It's bright enough that it's blinding some of our more sensitive systems. But leave a comm buoy in place by the relay. Command will want to hear about this." Pallus' commands forced the Turian cruiser to have to add four hours to the journey. But from the uppermost angle of the solar system, they were able to find another source of debris. Garrus was silent, respectful, and did not offer any advice as Pallus led the crew. It was not his place, and his command rank was from the Hierarchy's special forces, not Naval command.
"Buoy has been dropped. Anything you want to send through, Captain?"
Pallus hummed. "Sensor records, detail on the X-19 station. See if any allied forces are in the area and tell them to be on the lookout for possible Rachni ships or Rachni controlled ships." He pointed at the upper edge of the system, where the sensors said there was a debris cloud. "What happened there?"
"We've run it through the scanners. First guess is that it might be all that is left of the frigate on station, the Laterus. Older, needed to be put in drydock or just retired."
"Reply coming in from the planet!" the comm officer yelled. Pallus nodded, motioning for it to be brought up on the comm channel. Garrus approached now, as this was relevant. Pallus reluctantly allowed Julia to come onto the command section as well.
"This is STG s-..." "ame is Mordin Solus, mission critical importance to war with Rachni. ple-..." An image of a couple of Salarians crouching over some equipment inside a cave came through, though a bit garbled. "-urface is not safe! Repeat, surface is not safe!"
"Say again, STG team, we read you!"
"Your signal isn't penetrating. Coord-" The image wavered, as the Salarians got up and started running. "Assistance required!" The line went dead, as the Salarians must have been going deeper underground.
"Where are they?" Pallus asked. The map of the system zoomed in on Suen, where the small habitable green strip of the planet had a few locations of different dig sites. The main one was in a low valley, one that never got hit by the sun's rays directly. Comm signals were terrible usually, and with all of the comm buoy network knocked down in the system it was even harder. The buoy network here was replaced around two hundred years ago, if reports were to be believed.
"Fifteen miles east of the main dig site. One mile underground." One of the crew reported. "I don't have access to any tunnel map for the planet. The X-19 base had all of that data stored in its servers locally."
Pallus grumbled something about backups. "The Hierarchy doesn't have them backed up somewhere?"
"Maybe the STG does, sir, but the military network is not sending any response back positive."
"Spirits, this is a mess. Spectre, prepare your team for drop. I assume you want to follow after our STG friend?"
Garrus rumbled a trill through his chest. "Yes, I think so. Though I would not mind having a nicely armed squad of Turian marines nearby for support."
Pallus actually smiled at that. "I'll have a team investigating the other distress beacons and the main camp."
Garrus nodded, before moving off to the side of the bridge where he could speak to Julia in relative privacy. "Where is your lead?"
She glanced at the map. "Other side of the mountains, four miles underground."
Garrus muttered an epithet about dark spirits. Turians didn't like being underground, and in ancient times living underground was compared to losing your soul. Turians did not dig deep into the ground until the population had become more or less atheistic by court ruling. Still, it never felt right to go deep underground. "Do you have any maps of the tunnel systems?"
"I have an entrance where they got in, and a tentative pathway that leads to where the team is pinned down. But they sighted something important." She wasn't sharing much detail, and Garrus doubted she was going to be very detailed while onboard this ship or with her combat team. "Another Asari helping the Rachni."
Garrus loosened his mandibles. "Sneaky little bugs." He turned to Pallus. "Captain, Our original lead that brought us to this system appears to differentiate our paths. I request that you send a team after the STG operatives, as our objective is in a different location."
He raised a plated brow at him, and nodded. "Shuttles three and four, prepare for departure. Mission parameters are the following…"
Garrus walked towards the lift, and back down to the hangar with Julia. "The Asari republics will be very happy to know we caught another assistant."
"This time we won't bring it to them." Julia said. "If Desolous is right, they will just kill another suspect and we will be out of leads again. No, this time I think we should bring the suspect to the Turian Hierarchy or Systems Alliance. I also have considered taking them to the Batarian Hegemony, and requesting they work over the suspect for us."
"Very cold, Commander." Garrus replied. "The Hierarchy may just return the Asari to the Asari Republics. As would the Systems Alliance. However, the Hegemony would love to have a Spectre as an ally, though it might cost me favors."
Julia actually smiled. "I have a few favors I can call in. When I was a teenager I managed to wound High Priest Haego D'vorak with only a knife." Garrus hadn't even gotten full access to her file yet, and the girl just kept getting interesting. It was too bad that she was only a Human.
"Did you win?"
"Only his respect. Then I was his bodyguard for a few weeks, stopping him from being killed while he visited a few religious sites on Earth. That won me favors."
"Alright, we can ask the Batarians." Garrus said stiffly. "But that won't make me feel confident regarding the answers we may receive." Especially if they incriminated one government or another.
"No better than what we would get from my government." She replied, as the elevator deposited them in the hangar bay.
"Or mine." He grunted, the beaten up Human shuttle sitting at the front loading dock for the hangar. The Human combat team had already loaded up, and the shuttle was ready. Garrus handed his satchel up to Alenko and hoisted himself into the shuttle, with Julia lightly jumping up behind him.
"Spectre Vakarian. Allied ships have been sighted coming from the relay. Two Batarian and two Alliance ships have come through, responding to the distress calls. Their ID's check out, but we aren't connected to the fleet network to be able to know for sure. We are tasking the Alliance ships to you. The Hegemony vessels are being tasked to the X-19 post wreckage."
"Understood. Connect me to the Alliance ships. Does anyone have a full medical bay?"
"Batarians brought a cargo tender and a single frigate. The Systems Alliance sent two frigates." There was a pause. "All of the models are old junk. Connecting you to Alliance Captains now."
"This is Spectre Vakarian." Garrus started. "We thank you for your timely aid."
"This is Major Clarksen. I'm in command of the 43rd Scout flotilla under the Fifth Fleet. I understand you need some help out here?" The Human male's voice sounded eager.
"Glad you could make it. We're investigating possible Rachni activity on their homeworld." Garrus said. "We will forward you coordinates and you will act as support for our teams."
"My boys are itching for some Rachni to shoot, Spectre. Just point us in the right direction!" Clarksen said. "En route, we will catch up with you in four hours. Save some bug killing for us, if you can."
"I'll try, but Spectres aren't known for their tolerance of forces at war with us."
That got the Human to laugh a bit. "Roger that. See you in a few hours." Garrus rolled his eyes. Hopefully the small frigates would be carrying some heavy weapons. The Turian forces on board the cruiser were armed with whatever they could carry and then some, a product of the Turian Military machine being prepared for nearly anything. They were a bit excited to lay some hurt on the bugs, but they were not prepared for going miles into underground tunnels.
"Makes me wish we had a few Krogan around for this." Garrus said to Julia. "The Hierarchy likes to paint the Krogan as backwards and incapable of succeeding at anything, but they know how to make war. If we had a few of them, this mission might be easier."
"Lt. Tau resembles one of them, perhaps." Julia said, forcing a smirk onto her face. "Why would a Turian trust a Krogan?"
The rest of the humans in the squad found the Krogan comment to be funny, even the subject of the joke. What an odd Human custom. In Turian society, you never made any fun of those who you worked with. No one inside of your command structure could be the target of pranks or of jokes. It helped everyone be professional about their work. "Krogan find comfort in going underground. Not to mention they were the ones who came up with the plan to invade Suen so long ago."
"There is so little on the Rachni War available from the Council's records. I never saw that mentioned."
"That's because the Hierarchy requested that anything authored by the Krogan be removed. The Krogan Ambassador to the Council died in custody at Friess Station, watching as anything that he had made and built up was slowly removed from existence. The files you are looking for will only be found on board Friess Station. Much of the details of the last three thousand years are locked away there. Safely protecting the rest of the galaxy from what they are not prepared to understand."
"That's.. unfortunate." Julia responded. "Perhaps we should talk to a few Krogan and see if they would like to fight against the Rachni once again."
"They would love nothing more than to fight. But their old methods were simply to throw numberless hordes of Krogan into the tunnels until entire worlds were cleansed. Suen saw the deaths of millions of Krogan before the end. The actual numbers of dead at the end of the war, well, the Asari only recovered the numbers from the war in the last three hundred years. The Republics are expanding for the first time in two thousand years, now that their population has recovered from the Rachni Wars the first time."
"So its safe to say that they are not excited about getting in a war with the Rachni again." Julia said. "Because in their terms they only now recovered from the war. Any word on Thessia?"
Garrus shook his head. "Quiet, as ever. Thessia is a world that is dangerous for non-biotics. Their news networks filter slowly throughout their space, on everything except economic matters. If they are fighting the Rachni, we won't know for a while. They have most of their fleet anchored there, though. Their crews and soldiers will be close by."
Julia nodded. "But most of Thessia are independent city-states. If the Rachni invade through one of the religious states then the full forces can invade. If they're somewhere controlled by one family from the Thirty, then only their direct allies will be able to come. From what I learned from our Asari teachers, the rules for weapons to be taken into other's territory are stringent."
Garrus sighed. "Spirits willing, they'll figure things out. My people have enough trouble. Our main agricultural production center is under attack from the Rachni. We have ten years of food supplies at any given time, if what the Hierarchy says is true, but it is not a pleasant thought."
"Eden Prime was our breadbasket, too." Julia said. "The Alliance will have to ask their member states and colonies to go on rations before the year will be out."
"Until they kill the Queen, yes."
The shuttle bounced as they entered atmosphere, the air breathable but hot on one side and frozen on the other. Bitter wind and heavy storms defined the weather here, and the only place that anything could be comfortable was underground. Exactly the kind of place that Garrus did not want to be. Right behind Kahje. Swimming was another one of those things that Turians just didn't do very well.
When they landed next to an old mining shaft, Garrus did not see any other vehicles. He could see marks where a shuttle had landed, as well as fresher marks from some sort of treaded vehicle. The vehicle's marks curved towards one of the other valleys nearby, but there were a few footprints in the dust going inside the tunnel.
"These your contact?" Garrus asked as they scoped out the area. "One of them is a Krogan." He pointed to the oddly large marks in the dirt.
Julia shook her head. She was pointing at a slim, barely present mark in the dust. "She is." Garrus craned his head towards the small marks, unable to tell how large or heavy the person was. "She usually has a support team. This must be them."
"Should we look for the vehicle?" Lt Tau asked, looking a bit worriedly at the tunnel.
"We will send the Alliance teams to go look for it. As well as track down this shuttle's identity if they can." Garrus doubted that the shuttle would be identified. But this was Council Space, and any information that would help them identify the shuttle or where it came from. He knew from experience that it would almost impossible to find anything on the shuttles that came and went here. With post X-19 gone there was no data on the ships that had passed through the relay. Hopefully the Hierarchy and Hegemony technicians would be able to lift some data from the wreckage.
"Commander," Garrus spoke up. "How many Alliance forces are on those two frigates?"
"Two teams of six, each with a shuttle or insertion vehicle."
"Perhaps we can send the Turian teams after the vehicle." He said slowly. "I would prefer to have the Human Marines with us in the caves."
The Humans turned their helmets towards him. "You don't want the Turian marines?" Julia asked.
"Turians don't do well underground." Garrus admitted. "You Humans seem to perform better in the dark."
She seemed to consider it. "Alright. I'll leave a beacon for them to follow. Tell the Turians to take over for the vehicle tracking." Garrus felt a bit better about having the Humans coming with them. The Turian troops would be less effective, even if they were more heavily armed. Though perhaps he could help.
"One moment, Commander." He said, stopping them from opening the mining tunnel entrance. "Captain Pallus, this is Spectre Vakarian."
"Pallus here. What do you need, Spectre." Pallus did not sound very pleased to hear from him.
"The Human Marines are going to deploy on us. I'm worried that they won't be heavily armed enough."
"Those Salarians are running Team three ragged, Spectre. The local wildlife and environment is beyond what our troops are trained for." Another way of saying that the Turian marines were bogged down and unable to continue safely. "I don't have any more forces that I can deploy."
Pallus didn't want to support them any more than he had to. "I'd like to request some heavy munitions to be sent down for the Human squads. Spirits know they need some form of help." There was a pause on the other end.
"Spirits know it. Alright, Spectre, I'll drop down a supply crate for the Alliance Marines. I'll allocate some pellet mines and seeker drones." Garrus smirked. Seeker drones were combat drones that were meant to explode when they were disrupted, and tried to get very close to any enemies. The pellet mines were something that Garrus didn't use very much. They were meant to take out large numbers of unshielded unarmored enemies, and that wasn't something he went after very often.
"Thank you, Spectre." Julia said. "Beacon marked for the approaching marines and Turian forces." She walked up to the entrance, an older Volus model. It ha rust pockets and markings that showed decay. A single tech mine in the right place could open it easily. "Spectre, your tech expertise would be very welcome at this moment."
Garrus mumbled something unpleasant about that, but had the old system responding to inquiry. Seeing as it hadn't been updated in forty or so years, the system didn't have his authority on file. So he just spooked the command files and changed the data regarding the full administrators of the system. It took a few minutes. Much less satisfying than a bomb would be, but oh well.
His heart rate increased when he saw the poorly dug tunnel going into the mountain. The tunnel went on for a few dozen meters and then disappeared into complete darkness. His visor's light filtering turned all the way up, but even then there were still too many dark corners. Turians had excellent vision, but they had evolved as almost purely sight based hunters. Their eyes were not meant for nocturnal activities, and they could see at a further spectrum of light than most of the other races. Save for Vorcha, of course. Those creatures had excellent eyesight.
"Ta'u, take point." Julia called out. "I'll be right behind you. Alenko, you've got the rear. Keep your systems focused and try not to use active detection. In these caves it will be like we are broadcasting exactly where we are." Garrus felt his scales cramp up in his wrists when they got to the inner tunnels. Something felt wrong here. "Vakarian, turn off your monitoring tags."
"I don't have any of those." He told her. "I don't have any outgoing signals."
Julia walked over to him, holding her Omni-tool up. "Hmm. Something on you is putting out a signal." Garrus nearly let out a growl. He whipped out his Omni-tool, measuring outgoing signals, and saw that something had hacked his sensors. Or at least had changed the base data that was considered 'optimum'. The only signals that his suit claimed were going out were just diagnostics, passive sensors, and a comm line. The comm line had some activity, though, and Garrus selected it. It broke down into the hundreds of connections and comm addresses that he linked with every day. Garrus wasn't overly social, but each news link and Council address had fifteen or so different identities and servers that the signal routed through. The list was exhaustive. He changed the listing to show the list according to the date that each comm source was added.
A few had been added very recently, ones that didn't quite match his previous activities. One was labeled ' ' It didn't seem to connect to anything. Nor could he manipulate it. "Found something. Isolate signal ."
"Dot exe? That's an old Human termination for a program." Julia said. "You aren't looking up pre-Element Zero technology now, are you?"
He chuckled. "Perish the thought. That at least tells me that I picked up some form of malware or virus." He tapped a few keys. "Unfortunately, it is not a sign of intelligence when you try to bug a Spectre." His Omni-tool isolated the signal, which seemed to be coming from the part of his armor that covered his spurs. "I don't mean this in a sensual way, but do you think you could examine my right spur?"
Julia nodded, reaching down and finding some tiny little piece of plastic that had adhered to his armor. The service stopped being transmitted and the .exe program was removed from his comm list. "Got it. So instead of playing footsie, Turians rub the back of their ankles together?"
"What is footsie?"
"Human version of foreplay. Rubbing the feet together."
Garrus let his mandibles quiver. "That is disgusting." Turian feet were never pretty. Geneticists didn't hold feet to be one of those aesthetic qualities that were important. "Spirits, no. Touching the spur in any form is enough. Females of my species have smaller versions of the same. We only call it sensual due to it being one of the few forms of affection displays offered between couples."
Julia nodded without looking at his spur. "So if I tried to slap it right now you'd take that as a come on?"
"You're a Human. At best it would be like wind ghosting over my skin. Uncomfortable, and usually unwelcome."
Julia rolled her eyes and gently Threw him off balance. But the device she lifted from his spur she placed in her Omni-tool to start analyzing. "I've disabled whatever it was. I'll know more soon. Let's get moving." Then his focus drifted back to the cavern. The tunnels, and as they continued inwards, the tunnels got to be more natural looking. The shape of them became hexagonal, with old Rachni webbing covering the walls. Old enough that it looked like the stone, the dust so still and untouched that it was only discernible through the shape of the webs as they went around each of the larger rock in the tunnel.
He didn't like this at all, especially when the tunnel started dipping further than his boots could account for. Some of the Humans had already resorted to setting their weapons into magnetic strips and climbing down with their hands. He had to set his toes into the webbing and carefully position himself before moving downwards. His hips just did not bend as well as theirs did.
"Powered rail and a piton system are down here, Commander!" The bigger Human in front reported. Lt. Ta'u. "Looks like it was placed here a while ago."
"Don't use it." Julia told them. "It could be a trap meant for someone following."
That led them down into the largest cavern that Garrus had ever seen. The Batarians were supposed to have some of the largest on one of their moons, but they didn't really endorse tourism to that system. The pictures did not compare. This place could easily fit a Turian cruiser, even with the collapsed sections. His sensors did not go far enough to truly measure the place, and during the Rachni war this would have been even worse.
The cavern was filled with spindly spiraling walkways that connected to the ceiling of the cave. Some of these had collapsed, while others still stood. The one they had to climb down had boot prints in the dust covered webbing. The crazy people went down into this mess. His sensors were having trouble in the cavern though, and seemed to be fritzing out.
"Anyone else lose their Omni-tools?" Lt. Ta'u asked. He took off his helmet, the air down here fed by algae and breathable. "My HUD is down, too."
"Shit!" Julia spat. "We saw this on Eden Prime." Everyone tensed up. "Watch out for zombies. They pump out a signal that damages electrical gear. Shielded Omni-tools only do so much, the sensor systems of your suits aren't shielded against this kind of thing either. Magnetic strips and other integral systems don't work too well the closer the things get. Make sure that the emergency straps are securing your weapons."
That was a new word. "What is a zombee, Commander?"
"Corpses of dead Humans that have been animated with cybernetics of some sort. The Rachni have done something with their technology to be able to do this with the dead corpses on the battlefield. We call them zombies, just to make it easier." That sounded despicable. Garrus shuddered. The dead were sacred, and their ashes were supposed to be protected.
"What kind of cybernetics can send out a signal like this and still work?" Garrus asked.
"We don't know. The Rachni put some sort of failsafe in the technology, making the entire thing melt down into component parts and individual elements when the zombies are dead." Again, he shuddered. That kind of technology should not be in the hands of the Rachni. "The source of the mess are long metal rods that extend like a spike, coming from a heavy tripod type mechanism. The Alliance has determined that a corpse attached to the spike will be turned into the Zombie."
"Thank the Lord." Lt. Ta'u said. "Man at least we won't have a zombie apocolypse now."
"Yeah, they can't turn people by biting them."
"Or breathing on them like in the Lurking Dead series last year." Rahna said. "That always gave me the creeps."
"These are worse." Julia said. "When they get close, your weapons will stop working. Their claws seem to be made to go right through most armor. And they move slow enough that unless your kinetic or biotic barriers are very sensitive they ignore them." She was strapping her weapons to her body with some form of emergency adhesive strips, which Turian armor did not have. He gave a small grumble as he took hold of his sniper rifle and returned his rifle to a storage pack. His pistol he dumped inside of his cowl section of his armor. Some of the Turian troops called them buckets.
The climb to the ground was a bit more harrowing, with the biotics all glowing with their barriers and everyone's sensors shorting out. His sensors went out, but his Omni-tool was shielded against this sort of thing. It was still able to use laser detection to check things around him. But he was now limited to line of sight and motion sensors built into his Omni-tool. His HUD was suffering from not being able to connect to the other members of the squad, and it was squealing about how everyone in his combat team was down on the ground dying somewhere.
He couldn't disable the screeching until he got to the ground, his trembling feet finally coming in contact with something that wasn't spongy webbing. Some of the Rachni webbing had broken as they went down, making feet slide until they caught on webbing again or risk falling off the spindling structure. Lt. Ta'u almost fell off at the very top, and being the largest one he risked holding onto the powered rail line on his way down. Garrus would have done the same if it wasn't for his pride. Thankfully the armor concealed any shaking that he had when the webbing under his feet stretched or bent.
Once the alarm was disabled, he took a deep breath and let his visor covered eye roam around the area. "Commander." He stated. "I've got a body ahead."
She had taken off her helmet, as had the rest of the Humans. "Lead the way. My systems aren't shielded." She had put all of her weapons away, and instead pulled out two very wicked looking knives. One of which had five individual blades with Batarian markings on the hilt.
"You have a Kavka?" She twitched an eye over towards him. "Those things have started wars, you know."
"It was a gift. Show me the corpse." He didn't investigate more. A Human with a Kavka was not something he had ever heard about. Interesting. He would find out more later. The corpse they found was something messy. Bits and pieces were everywhere, and the blood covered the rocks. The rotting corpse, as he now saw, had been mostly consumed or destroyed by something. The blood had discolored the rocks and had dried, black with a few bluish streaks on some of the thicker poolings.
Julia looked at him expectantly. "You've got the only working Omni-tool." So he did. The analysis function took longer than expected to work, but came back solid.
"Rachni Warrior." He said with finality. "Your lead was good. But something tore it apart here. Was your lead a Krogan?"
"She's Human." Julia admitted. The most she had so far. "But the Rachni are here about something."
"Man down over here!" Kaidan called. "He's not moving!"
"Do not approach!" Julia ordered. "Lt Alenko, Lift the body." Garrus aimed down his sights at the corpse, which had strangely been in a hollowed out area near the Rachni corpse. When the biotic sent out a bolt of dark energy towards it, the corpse gently floated into the air. It slowly rotated, the helmet and armor of the corpse seemingly unharmed. Until they could see its hands slowly uncurl. The helmet concealed the face, but not the wave of energy that came off the corpse. Zombee. Whatever the Humans called it.
The wave of energy was blue, and it rolled over everyone with the sound of kinetic barriers crackling and dying. The spotlights on their armor also died, plunging the area around them into almost total darkness. Only Garrus' armor still had working systems, though they had felt the wave as well. His lights only reached to the middle of the pack, and residual light revealed the corpse jumping off to one side.
"This is a trap." Garrus said. "Everyone get close to me!" The Humans all moved back towards him, and he took a moment to hold his arm with the Omni-tool above his head, to let its laser detection grid map out the area. His lights were halfway impeded by the Human biotics that stood in the way. But his sensors showed that there was movement in some of the places around them. "I'm counting two enemies."
"We can't see anything!"
"They will come after anyone that they can pick off." Julia said. "I'll go put them down." She jumped forward, biotics glowing and knives out. Garrus pushed past the gigantic Lt. Ta'u and brought out his rifle, the scope not meant for looking for undead spirits possessing flesh. Julia hadn't cloaked, so that must mean that system was also not working. He couldn't see her very clearly and he couldn't see her targets.
Then his sensors cleaned up. He could see armor lights starting back up on the marines, and he took a moment to shudder in relief. Turians hated caves. Julia stepped back towards them, and once in the small hollowed area her lights also came back on. "There are a bunch more of them out there. This spot is protected for the moment, but I think we can find a pattern to them and find out if they are here to protect something or here to attack something."
"Alright, What does that include." Alenko asked.
"Vakarian is going to get up on higher ground, see if he can snipe out anything that is moving. The rest of us stay near him until he has cleared out the area. Take off your helmets, otherwise we won't be able to hear each other."
It was a decent plan. "We need to get you all shielded armor. What would happen if the Alliance had to fight these things in environments that you need armor to function?"
"I'll try to talk to them about it." Julia said. "Take that collapsed spire and get up there." She pointed at one of the spiraling constructions that used to form a pathway to the ceiling, the upper two thirds having fallen. The remaining third poked upwards at an odd angle, and would make a decent sniper position. If he trusted Rachni webbing to hold him up. Shuddering once, he quickly jogged over to the spiraling structure and hoisted himself on top of a larger flat section that hadn't collapsed.
His Omni-tool pointed out two of the corpses laying down further away, now that it knew what to look for. "Taking a shot!" He called. With his sights zeroed in on the corpse, he blasted the creature in the head. His rifle went through the armored plating of the corpse's helmet and left a spray of brain matter on the rock behind it. He quickly cycled to the other corpse, but it had already shifted locations.
Odd, that it wasn't moving to attack him. He could see shadows of more of the corpses moving around at the edge of his Omni-tool's range. But they were just staying at a range. Like they were trying to block them in. "Commander, something else is going on."
"What is it?"
"They're just keeping us surrounded. Like they are setting up some sort of ambush."
"Take them out as you can. We aren't capable of going on the offensive until we can safely move out there. We need light for this."
His Omni-tool pinged. There was something larger out here. Something bigger than any humanoid creature. "Tell me, Commander, did your contact say anything about local wildlife?"
"No, she didn't. Why?"
"Because I certainly hope that something fifteen meters tall and moving towards us is a nice peaceful herbivore." Garrus couldn't see the thing, but his Omni-tool was telling him that something extremely large was heading this direction.
"Arrow formation! Let's hit this thing with a Warp!" Alenko called.
Jack let his helmet's visor switch over to control mode. Putting a QEC inside of his armor had been the best he could do. Charles had told him that shrinking a QEC and its component communications systems to the size of a pair of sunglasses was impossible. It was only thanks to the Protheans and Vigil that they were able to shrink the module down to an armor upgrade. Still, it was enough. A quick glance at his ship's sensors showed that the Normandy had slipped into its private drydock without being detected. It wasn't going anywhere for at least eight hours. Long enough that he could risk being distracted.
The QEC systems booted up, and he saw that the connection list was still down to three options. The first was of course, Charles' office. That one he skipped over. The second was the connection that had been placed in Mnemosyme. That drone was pretty much ruined from what it had been put through, but it could be repaired. The last connection was the Acheron. He selected that one, the connection coming through slowly. Once it was established, though, he saw the image of the bridge of the Acheron, with its three seats and his crew working on some damaged section.
"Status report." He called. The captain of the vessel, Matthew Qing, turned to the console and gave him a jaunty salute.
"Reaper came into system, Sir. We had to land to avoid its notice, and we chose the frozen side of the planet. It's causing us a lot of trouble, and now there are two Alliance frigates on station above the planet, and one Turian cruiser."
"Stealth systems?"
"Damaged from some ice, sir. We're trying to replace the damaged armor but I'm worried that we won't be able to break orbit without losing some more of the reflective paint. There is some ice buildup along the port side that we haven't been able to clear. Stuff builds up fast, too. We had to park it in a valley over here, but it hasn't seen the sun in a few thousand years. So the permafrost and the wind and ice crystals have done a lot of damage."
"Any word from Allison Gunn and her team?"
"None. They've been stuck inside that mountain range for 124 hours right now, and they only packed for a few days. Injuries were reported but no deaths." Captain Qing told him. His ancestry was more Asian than Caucasian, but he was raised in the UK. He didn't speak a single syllable of Cantonese. He also had no connection to the Reds, or any family with connections to them. "We remotely controlled the GRIZZLY and had it return to the ship. The ground here changes quickly enough that the tracks would be frozen over by the time it got here."
"Perfect, captain." Jack said. "Load the QEC module into the drone that Charles sent you. Then have the GRIZZLY take that drone back. I'll directly control the drone and go in after Allison."
"She will probably blame you for it all if you don't go after her, Sir." Qing said, though with one raised eyebrow he didn't mention any more.
"Quite, Captain." Monogamy was contingent upon Hannah being alive to enforce their agreement. It didn't suit him, but then again none of this cloak and dagger lifestyle did. There was supposed to be some transparency, some form of public display of his pride and arrogance. He didn't enjoy much of this.
"I'll have the QEC placed into the drone. It's the body double you had ordered for Allison Gunn, Sir." Well, that was awkward. The body double of himself was obviously still with Charles. Well, it wasn't quite what he would normally prefer.
"It's not what I would prefer, but I think we can work with it. Do you have any men you can spare?"
"No, Sir. I've got everyone on double shifts just keeping the ice off of our engines. The Quarians are trying to keep us from getting too warm and getting noticed by the ships in orbit. That's been the real trouble. The ice is forming all over us because we can't afford to be warm enough to melt anything."
"How much longer can you afford to stay in the cold?"
"Not more than a week. Otherwise we will need some help to jumpstart the core. It'll be so cold that the containment fields will all be slow on the uptake. We'll risk some contamination in the Engineering section the longer we put it off."
"Connect the QEC module. I'll see what I can do directly." Qing nodded, and the connection went down for a few minutes. The drones that he had built for the QEC to be mounted on had been an original idea that the old Cerberus in his memories had stumbled upon. Fully composite bodies that could be attached with synthskin and become undercover agents, with an AI system built in to control the movements of the drone. Unfortunately the AI systems were based on Reaper code, and he wasn't able to get a reasonable substitute.
The drone was large enough to be EMP shielded and have a QEC device, not to mention carry everything that he needed. Husks could damage any electronics that they came into contact with. Bloody things ruined everything they touched. The organic material broke down after a months and made the Husks worthless as militia troops or garrison forces. His drones were a lot more expensive, and every inch of them was armored and EMP shielded. Just for good measure each of the interior processors and components were shielded again. The drone had an internal stun weapon built into its arm, and could carry a few heavier pieces of equipment without trouble.
It couldn't cloak, though. He didn't bother getting it a catsuit. Instead the drone had a faux paux made, something that looked like a catsuit and functioned more like a heavy-grade armor. This drone was originally intended for Hannah to be able to meet with anyone she needed to, and not be at risk. It was the same reason he had his drone made. Of course, the drone modeled after him had gotten shot at the moment he started to use it.
But he could always blame Garrus Vakarian for having a good eye. It just so happened he shot out the drone's eye before Jack could safely walk away the last time. This time he knew that Garrus Vakarian was no where near this planet. He just had to get in there and extract his girlfriend before things got worse. She would be pissed if he didn't at least try. She would hold it against him forever.
He kept himself from sighing about that as the connection came back online, the view changing to the inside of a helmet. A Quarian tech tapped the side of the helmet with his longer digit, the other two curled into his palm. "HUD online, systems deployed. Weapons are active, and I think we have a connection."
"Connection is good." Jack said, the voice of the drone pre set to Hannah's. It was decidedly odd. "Is the GRIZZLY ready?"
"Yes. That Reaper tore a hole in the side of the mountain looking for our people. I've marked it on your HUD. The team reported contact with fifty Rachni and one Brood Warrior in there, so we've loaded your suit with a lot of HAMMR-3 rifles and a Napalm Launcher. We've got food, water, and enough ammo for the team to shoot their way out of there. The GRIZZLY is also loaded with a mining laser if you have to carve through a cave in."
"Thank you." Jack told him. "I'll get going then." Driving while looking through a virtual helmet, driving a sealed vehicle through a virtual interface, and controlling limbs remotely is hard. It was truly disconcerting. Jack would never admit to scratching the paint job on his way out of the valley, but the arms of the drone did not respond the way he expected them to. They were shorter than his arms, and so he kept over reaching and over correcting on the GRIZZLY's turns.
The two hours it took to get back to the sunny side of the planet were boring, and so he multitasked and made sure that his projects on Virmire and Illium were still on schedule. Just because he had been kicked out of the stock exchange in Citadel Space didn't mean he couldn't still turn a profit. Plus, it was something that he could do in his spare time between keeping his daughter and girlfriend from getting horribly killed. When he finally got to the sunny side of Suen, he could see nothing on his radar.
Climbing up through the mountains was simple enough, if a bit dangerous. The pathways were clogged with loose dirt and chunks of rock, a large black scar mark on the side of the mountain where the Reaper had struck. The GRIZZLY's tires tore through the loose dirt and chunks of stone like a snake. Eight tires on each side with enough torque to handle anything pushed him up the steep side of the mountain, until he reached the lip of a Prothean chamber.
It was pretty wrecked. Shattered crystals were everywhere, and a few dead bodies remained. All Rachni. The GRIZZLY he parked facing the exit, but safely in one of the old Prothean docking slips that were deeper in the structure. He passed a ruined Napalm launcher next to a good sized pile of corpses, something that would definitely have to get cleaned up or else Crucible would be blamed. Then he made the drone get up out of the vehicle, and immediately got a motion warning.
A Husk, armored and tucked away next to the entrance to the interior of the mountain range, had stood up and growled at him. Hannah had spent months modifying the drone's combat protocols. Jack grinned, booting up the single target protocol. "Goodbye, little prick." He told the Husk just before it got carved to pieces by the large cleaver knives that Hannah preferred. Against a single target the drone's faster speed and strength tore it apart, the damaged armor doing nothing for it as the drone slammed a knife through the vulnerable neck gorget, and pushing upwards until the brain matter and spine were disconnected. The Husk dropped like a sack of potatoes, already breaking down into its component parts. The nanites that made up the Husk would last a few minutes longer, looking to bond to any technology or armor that stepped through the puddle of ash and organic material. The Reapers were annoying like that.
The knives slid back into their holsters and the program completed, and Jack took control of the drone again. Oddly enough there was a piton set up at the top of the cavern, and the drone clipped into it and rode down the rail line quickly. At the bottom he could see two more Husks, both curled up in a pile. Rather than run one of Hannah's combat protocols, he drew a pistol. He always preferred pistols over heavier weapons, to him it felt more personal. More elegant, or at least refined. Pistols meant that you really had to get close to kill the other person. The last thing they would see was your face.
Five shots rang out, piercing the helmets after two and three shots respectively. He blamed the smaller drone arms for not letting his shots be groups as closely together as he normally would prefer. The Husks slumped to the ground, and Jack moved forward quietly.
His comm unit was picking up signals. Or at least ID codes, but with all the Husk-based interference the signals were so choppy and fragmented by the time they reached him that it was hard to know what they were. He could confirm that some of them were Alliance codes, though. The tunnel let out into a chamber that Jack could identify as another Prothean built chamber. He didn't understand the purpose of it or the half-domed shape. That was why he sent Liara here. Though God help him if Javik heard that one of his precious Avatars was in danger.
Stuffy Protheans aside, the room was filled with nasty foes. A Rachni Brood Warrior stood there, or at least half of one. Blue cables drifted out of its eye sockets and ruined armor adorned its cybernetically enhanced body. Half of its head was missing, and most of its thorax. It was not alive in any sense of the word any more. It was just a larger than normal Husk, albeit one that could crush the drone like a paper cup. The fifteen other Husks in the room were a mixture of Human and Turian ones, the Turian Husks in even worse condition. Without their scaly hides they didn't last long.
"Well, I think I've found my people." The one real trouble creature in the room was a Krogan Husk. A Brute. It was pawing at some large doors in the center of the room, and the Rachni Brood Warrior's plasma cannon was being repaired. Those weapons were still a large unknown to everyone. It didn't help that they were unstable, and often melted or self destructed when the brood warrior was killed. No one had captured an intact version yet. "Anyone home?" He called across a comm line.
No one answered him. Troubling, he didn't have enough firepower to clear out this chamber alone. Perhaps he could draw away some of the Husks and then get a signal through. But with the drone's combat protocols meant for assassination and stealth, that wasn't going to be easy.
"Mum, is that you?" Jack felt his heartbeat rise for a moment. She was not supposed to be here. She was supposed to be on the Citadel! He thought quickly, going through what Hannah had explained to him regarding her relationship with Julia. Neither of them were aware of their true relationship as mother and daughter, and Jack was not keen on telling them. Julia wouldn't forgive him, and Hannah would lose trust in him.
"A little low on whiskey and ammo, but I'm here. Stuck behind some Husks, for now." Hannah said that most of their relationship was based on practicality, and that the emotional language that most families shared were skipped over in favor of quiet moments of privacy.
"Husks? I can hardly understand you."
"Zombie bastard things with cybernetics. Where are you?"
"Taking cover from some local creature. It, it ate some of my team." Julia's voice was strained. "There's only four of us left, and if we move forward those zombies will take down our armor again."
"Do you have any heavy weapons?" Jack noticed a beacon activate on his HUD. Thankfully enough, Julia appeared to be on the other side of this very cavern, up another tunnel.
"Three biotics and a sniper rifle." Julia replied. "But we lost five biotics on the way in."
Jack grimaced. The only biotics on the Normandy were the Titans. That meant that there were only two of them left. Every loss of those symbolic men and women were a loss that Humanity would feel. Advertising campaigns, sporting events, glamor magazine covers, recruitment drives, all of those would take a hit from losing them. As well as weakening Humanity as a whole. "Bugger." Hannah's favorite curse word when things got bad. "I'm coming to you. You better be ready to fight these things. I've got a couple guns but most of my team are pinned down."
"We have some Alliance Marines coming up behind us. They're taking a different route to get to this location, but they will be here in a few minutes."
Jack huffed. "If you trust them, then I will wait." Alliance military. Trouble for his injured team. Not to mention they had a very large bounty on Hannah and himself. He decided that he could safely wait for the Alliance to get torn apart by the Husks. A few nameless marines could die before he broke out the weapons he brought with him. Hopefully Julia would do the smart thing and lead from the back. "But if the Alliance try anything…"
"They won't. I promise." Julia said. Probably with more emotion than any time he had spoken to her. Jack had the drone move back up the rail line and deal with the napalm launcher and any other remains of weapons that had been left behind. He had to use some adhesive and a bit of crystal to replace the M-9 Avalanche that was holding up a section of the tunnel. But by the time he had gotten those taken care of, the Alliance had arrived.
"The room you are connected to has a few larger Husks. Be careful."
"We're moving in now. We have twelve more marines with us."
"Tell them that they should have bayonets. The moment they enter this room their armor won't work."
"They brought another Infiltrator, Mum. We should be able to take it. As long as you can divert some of them away from our side of the chamber." Jack grimaced again. An Alliance Infiltrator was here. The Office of Intelligence would not ignore anything that happened here. They would also take it personally if one of their Infiltrators disappeared. Jack didn't like the idea of helping the Alliance in coming into this chamber, but he did love his daughter. A single pellet mine at the midway point in the chamber between the two entrances seemed safe enough to not cause a cave in. The napalm launcher was especially satisfying, and made him feel like a young man working the tech gangs in Chicago once again.
"Alright then. Whiskey's on you if I get shot because of this."
"Go!"
Napalm was effective against living organic targets. The Brood Warrior was out, as it was more machine than organism at this point. The Brute looked perfect to bring down, but that meant spraying down the area that his team would be in with napalm. So, Jack guided the drone and sprayed down his half of the room's Husks with liquid fire. Their machine like screams carried through the drone's sensors, and he had to turn down the input volume.
They flailed around on the ground, melting and cooking inside of their armor. Thankfully the drone wasn't equipped for transmission of smells or taste. Cooked Husk just sounded unpleasant. Not to mention their nanites would be burnt up by the liquid fire. This all got the attention of the big Brood Warrior, it's half-destroyed face turning towards him and growling. Jack was admittedly not a soldier. He had been a mercenary, once, in another life. But that was a long time ago, and he was not the kind of man to stand and fight. The powered rail carried the drone and the napalm launcher up the tunnel to safety, where he drew pistols and prepared for the rush of Husks.
Four followed him up the tunnel, and it took almost thirty seconds to put them down. Husks' spines didn't function like a normal Human one. They could bend and snap their heads around at odd angles, and they moved with over exaggerated motions. This meant that trying to pick them off with a pistol was more difficult than normal. Still, he could always just go further up the rail line until the Husks were dead. The pistol had to cool off twice before they finally died, twitching limbs and crumbling ash the only signs left of their presence. He sprayed each mark with napalm for the drone's safety before coming back down to the chamber.
It was of course in chaos. The Brood Warrior was struggling to crush one of the Titans, his Onyx armor cracking under the pressure of the cybernetic jaws of the beast. He was glowing with biotics, his arms straining to hold back the remains of the creature's jaw. Three Alliance Marines were grappling with Husks on the other side of their rifles, their claws gouging their gauntlets and wrists. Five more marines were down on the ground in pieces, bleeding out or close to it. Two more were in back with Garrus Vakarian, taking shots with long rifles at the Brute. The marine's weapons appeared to be some Turian things, heavy duty and more shielded against the damned effective Husk dampening field.
The Brute was on fire, for one reason or another. It had lost one of its arms, the heavy claw twitching off to one side. The claw held another marine, impaled by the metal. Jack grinned, though, when he saw Julia positioned on the creature's broad shoulders. Her knife was buried in its good arm's joint, and the Kavka she had been gifted so long ago was being used to slash at the exposed neck cords of the Brute. Another Infiltrator was in front of the Brute, using an Incinerate to ignite the corpse's chest plate.
Jack decided that losing another Paragon of Humanity was unacceptable. Two HAMMR rifles came into his hands, and with their shielding he didn't need to do much to stabilize them. The drone was certainly strong enough. He felt some masculine pride as the two weapons went full auto, heat sinks going way above their normal capacity and causing some overheating as he fired them. Instead of letting them cool off, he just dropped the weapons and picked up another pair of rifles, letting them rip into the same target.
The Brood Warrior screeched as hundreds of rounds impacted the back of its ruined head and upper torso, thrashing even more violently in response. The big Human still grappled by it glowed even more with biotic strength, taking hold of the damaged right side of the face and ripping off the Toothy appendage holding him. It tried to impale him with its tentacle in response, but a Throw came from across the room, from an injured Kaidan Alenko. He was bleeding from multiple wounds on his head, his nose and ears bleeding. But his Throw hit hard enough that the top third of the tentacle was sheared off, blue wires sparking in the remnant.
"Just die already!" The other Titan shouted, Throwing the stolen appendage into the head for good measure. The tooth slammed home, the brain matter gushing through the other side of the skull where the appendage pierced through. With a shudder, the Brood Warrior collapsed, its organic material breaking down and smoking. Acidic blood was just a problem for everyone. Jack lined up the rifles that were now overcooked, and wouldn't be cooled off for a good fifteen minutes. But the marines still grappling the Husks needed help. He selected the assassination protocols, and the drone took to its preferred method of combat with abandon. The remaining four Husks in the room died, the drone's knives slicing through the jugulars and back of the head with satisfaction.
The Brute, however, didn't want to go down. It had tried to slam the other Infiltrator into the wall, but she rolled with the strike and only took a glancing blow. She still rolled ten feet from the hit. The fire support team was trying to injure the thing, but it was covered in some sort of armor that resisted most shots. It tried to line up a charge on the downed Alenko, but one of its knees got shot out before it could start moving. Vakarian had gotten better over the years.
The other knee went down as well, combined with a Pull from two sources, making the creature fall flat on its face and stomach. It tried to avoid the inevitable, but now with the stable vantage point Julia was able to slice the head off. The creature fell limply to the ground, its remaining hand unclenching and slumping. Julia held up the head for a moment, until it started falling apart at the seams. She yelped, dropping the mass of blue wire and mucus-like organic material.
"Julia! Get off of that before it infects anything!" Jack called. She didn't hesitate, jumping off of the Brute's body and moving to Alenko. She was dispensing Medi-gel and making sure her team was alright. He directed the drone to move towards the center of the room, and look at the giant doorway that his team was hiding behind. He switched to a private comm line. "You know time is money, people, and my time is very expensive. You had better all be alive in there."
"Jack? Thank God. Wait a minute, how the hell did you kill everything?" It was good to hear Hannah's voice. Even at the distance he was at.
"Boss man actually got up from his desk?" Don asked.
"You doubt me, my Lady?" Jack scoffed. "I always find a way."
"I never expected you to actually come, though. What about Julia and the Normandy?"
"Funny story about all of that. Now come out of there, we have extraction prepared and I have enough food and ammunition for you to blow through these Alliance marines if they don't agree with your travel plans. How much of your team are effective?"
"Three. Everyone else is injured. Don is missing most of his arms, and Henry's cybernetics are heavily damaged. We're out of medi-gel and nearly out of ammo."
"Well, my Lady, let's get you out of th-" Before he could open the door, the drone reported damage. Something had pierced through the back, into the central processor cluster. The drone started falling over, when an explosives alert ripped through the system. Jack brought up the kinetic barriers to full, but it was too late. The tech grenade exploded, incendiary charges spreading across the entire frame. The barriers released as the shield emitters were covered by melting synthskin.
"Finally, Hannah. It's done." Jack felt his blood go cold. Julianne Jones was in the room with his daughter. He scrambled to slam the controls, the drone now nearly useless. The screen inside his helmet died, and his view was returned to the Normandy, resting so quietly in its perch. His fingers typed faster than they ever had during his time he had been Indoctrinated, punching in a direct comm line number that he knew by heart.
"Charles! For the love of God tell me have something else in these drones!"
"I didn't put in a self-destruct, if that's what you're asking. Spent most of the budget on just making sure it was shielded. Wait, what the hell happened?"
He slumped back in his chair. Two injured biotics and Garrus Vakarian were the only things in between Jones and his little girl now. "Jones is there. She killed the drone. How the hell did Hock find out about this? I thought we were secure!"
"That is something I can deal with sir. I just checked the drone's feed. I'm gonna figure out how she found us."
"Connect me to the Acheron. There has to be something we can deploy!"
Julia watched with horror as the other Infiltrator plunged her knife into Hannah Shepard's back. She left the knife there, which exploded into an incendiary charge. Julia screamed, seeing Mum on the ground with patches of skin melting off. Then the other Infiltrator took a recording of the event, turning around to face Julia. The Infiltrator's helmet came off, revealing the Caucasian face of Julianne Jones.
"The Alliance can safely rest, now that one of their greatest traitors lies dead." Jones told her. Almost like the women hadn't betrayed the Alliance herself. "Wouldn't you agree, Spectre?" She asked Vakarian.
Garrus stood to his full height. His armor was covered in scratch marks from when he had led the Husks away. He gave them a chance to survive against that damn creature. Garrus' kinetic barriers were down and his battery connections were damaged. She had assigned the two marines to him to keep him alive. His helmet had been torn off during the struggle, and claw marks went across his forehead scales. "On the contrary, Agent." Garrus said. "You have just gone against direct orders. Hannah Shepard is a wanted criminal, and could have been an endless source of information. By killing our source of information, I will be going to Alliance Command to complain about this."
Julia almost shook her head. Kaidan was still bleeding from where that nightmarish creature had bled on him, having the same acidic blood as the Rachni they shared a homeworld with. Not only that but the man was overstressing his amp, and he had a nosebleed going. The only other squad member she had left was Lt. Ta'u. He was unharmed, though his armor was shattered from where the Rachni tried to eat him. The power and sensors were down, and his Omni-tool couldn't get his heart rate and vitals.
Jones just gave Garrus a slim grin. "That's too bad, Spectre. I've already sent my preliminary report to Alliance Command. Though you and your candidate succumbed to your wounds, we managed to contain the Rachni threat here on Suen." Jones leveled her SMG towards Julia, while the five remaining marines in the room levelled their rifles at her people. "Nothing personal."
Julia could see that even though the Husks were down, her weapons and armor were still dampened. Something else was generating a dampening field. Jones' eyes widened, and she rolled, the air behind her rippling and sparking. Jones released an Overload, revealing a duplicate of Hannah Shepard. Or perhaps she was real. Her hair was a bit frizzy from the Overload, sticking up out of its bun.
"Nothing personal." Hannah grinned. "Bitch." Hannah rolled, the shots from Jones slamming into a biotic barrier. But Mum wasn't even a biotic. Julia followed the lines of energy and saw an Asari standing behind her, extending her barrier in a massive bubble all around her.
"Mum?" She said out loud. "I just saw you die."
"I have no idea what you mean," She said bluntly. "Get your ass off the ground and help me!" Julia rolled, coming to her feet.
"Marines, stand down! This woman isn't a traitor to the Alliance!" She yelled to all of the men holding hers hostage. All she had to protect herself was knives and a kinetic barrier. Her guns weren't even working.
The lead marine Lieutenant chuckled. "The Alliance doesn't pay all the bills, sweetheart." He said. "We don't take orders from you."
Jones smirked. "Kill them all. Leave the spooks to me." Julia took a position in front of Kaidan, using a Throw on one of the marines surrounding Lt. Ta'u. The one she had been trying to order let a burst of rounds hit her, and her barriers dropped to half. She couldn't attack him without his rounds impacting Alenko, and Alenko wasn't quite conscious any longer.
He got run over by a Krogan, who didn't seem to have any working arms. She recognized Gatatog Don, the Krogan that was one of the stars of the Ninja Turtle movies. With only his head and shoulders he checked the marine into the dead body of the Rachni, the man screaming as he came into contact with the acid. "Kowabunga." Don muttered.
A Quarian, glowing with biotics, was also keeping up a barrier on Mum. But his hand was up and curved away from him, like he had just Thrown something. She twisted to glance at Ta'u, who had the last marine in on the ground, beating his face in. The big polynesian's arms were larger than the man's legs. Poor bastard.
She drew her knives and charged Jones. The woman just sneered at her, and aimed one of her palms in Julia's direction. She could hear a slim whining noise, and too late realized what that sound was. A Mass Driver. Just like Haego. She brought her arms in front of her, but Jones blasted her before she could properly protect herself. She was sent flying back, rolling to a step next to her Turian ally.
Garrus was alright, having bent over to avoid the first bursts of fire, and hooking the spur of his leg armor into the collar of one of the marines, and dragging him into an elbow strike. He received a pistol shot, straight through the back of the head. The Turian didn't even turn fully to face the other marine before he too went down, but they had shot up Garrus. He was bleeding from multiple spots along his torso, his expensive armor nearly ruined.
"What.. are those?" He asked, gasping.
"Mass Drivers. Batarian technology." Julia heard them go off again, and Lt. Ta'u cry out in pain. Glancing up, she could see the man being thrown over the shoulder of Jones like he didn't weigh twice what she did. His armor was dented in his upper torso, the Mass Driver having allowed Jones to impact there.
"Anti-Vanguard tactics! Scatter and surround!" Mum yelled. Her armless Krogan came in hard, coming in at Jones from behind. Jones again sneered, looking at the seven foot tall sentient and getting ready to blast him. Instead, she jumped upwards, as the biotic Quarian from earlier used his own Charge to come at her from the other direction.
"Bosh'tet! Her head was turned the other way!" The Quarian yelled, rolling to the side and letting the charging Krogan go yelling and sprinting past him. He shot his shotgun at Jones, whose barrier absorbed the spread without difficulty.
Garrus helped her up, and then grimaced. "I'll cover you."
"I'm not going to have to depend on Desolous as a mentor. You stay in cover." She retorted. How the hell was she supposed to approach and take down Jones? The woman was a lot more dextrous than Haego ever was. Jones was trying to shoot out Don's knees from behind, but the Krogan's leg armor was still doing fine. Her SMG wasn't going to get through anytime soon, and Don was wearing his helmet. Even without arms he was going to be a threat. The Quarian was quick, ducking and rolling away from Jones before she could bring the Mass Driver upon him. She was nearly upon him when Jones was Pulled, her body lighting up with a biotic field stronger than anything Julia could use. But for all of the Jones remained standing, her sneer even wider.
"Who the hell brought an Asari to a gunfight?" Jones said, and then threw a grenade at the foot of the oddly painted Asari shielding Mum. She shrieked as the grenade went off the Asari clutching her ears and slumping to the ground. Next to her, another figure became known as a Drell also started yelling, the small female clutching her face as well. "When you get your eardrums back you can try again."
An SMG answered her, another Human in melted armor coming out of the Prothean structure weakly. An IV bag still hung from the man's waist, and a mangled torso belied the reason behind that. His right arm was dangling wires and hung limp, but his left held a heavy SMG that was smoking with heat. Jones responded by firing her Mass Drivers in her legs, vaulting over the still screaming Asari, landing on his good arm. "Aww, Mr. Cyborg. You're the shining example to the rest of Humanity, with your thirty percent conversion."
The man grinned back. His supposedly limp arm became active, grasping Jones by the upper arm. "Took a year of acting and choir too!" The entire thing was made of metal, she realized, as it flexed and seemed to crush Jones' upper arm. Then he glowed with biotics, a Warp slamming into Jones. She couldn't take the strike on her kinetic barrier, not with the male's arm in direct contact. She finally had the sneer wiped off her face, and her arm seemed fine. She ripped it out of the Human's grasp, her armor and skin getting pulled off her arm.
Jones seemed to grin even sharper as her arm was revealed to be as cybernetic as the male's. It was only slightly dented by all of the effort. "Too bad you weren't the first. Dr. Lawson and Dr. Lionel had to go into witness protection because of your mess, Hannah. They got bored, and I turned out to be their new favorite project. Finally made being a triple amputee worthwhile." With a flex of her other arm, the armor and skin popped off. Her other cybernetic arm was revealed. She didn't show us which of her legs was real and which wasn't.
But the multiple shield emitters and glowing lines of circuitry running up her body showed that her defenses had hardly been stressed. She must have been too heavy for the Asari pick up or pull. With the amount of metal in her arms alone, the woman was going to be dangerous. The only mark on her was from the Warp that had been used at close range by the other cyborg. A couple of bent pieces of metal on her upper arm were all that showed of their efforts.
She casually shot the man who had dared try to stop her in the body a few times, kicking his SMG away. She didn't even face him to do it. Julia noticed that Jones had two small eyelets on the back of her shoulders, cameras. Eyes in the back of her head. "She has camera mounts in the arms! She can see behind herself!" She called out.
A quick glance around revealed only Lt. Ta'u, the Quarian, the Krogan, Mum, and herself as the people still standing. The Krogan's arms were bloody gibbets. Ta'u's armor was shattered. No one had kinetic barriers. The large glowing sections of Jones' forearm seemed to be the cause of the dampening, by what she could tell. But if everything was shielded and reinforced, it would be easier to go after her Human parts.
"Focus on her head, I say." Mum muttered. "Full frontal. Shev, take her damn gun. Don, back him up. Julia, just like I taught you. Big hands, stay behind Don." Mum had her knives, and didn't bother drawing her dampened weapons. Mum's Kavka was from a dead Spectre. Hers was one of Haego's. Both of them also used a variant of KA-BARs. The knives were a staple in the military forces that went into the Alliance. They would be useless here. Jones had some sort of armor that could take a Warp. Her regular knife wouldn't do anything.
Jones patiently waited for them to decide their fate, before holstering her SMG. "Ask nicely enough, and I'll make it even." Don roared out his challenge, rushing forward with the Quarian, Shev, glowing biotically and launching himself forward. Jones held up her hand, the pointer finger glowing. Shev slammed into her Mass Driver, before the SMG rotated in its holster and blasted him. "Oh, how rude of me. I lied."
Shev must have been one hell of a biotic, to take all of that and still be standing. His barrier was still up, too. Jones didn't have the opportunity to focus on him, with Don coming in fast enough to force her to move. She gave him the other arm's charged up strike, the driver causing a massive dent to appear in Don's armor. The Krogan only stumbled, swinging his body around for a kick. Just like in the Ninja turtles movie, except that Jones saw it coming from a mile away and ducked underneath the Krogan.
Julia and Hannah moved in, knives out and systems flickering. Both of them had tried to trigger their cloaking devices, but with the dampening nothing had happened. Habit had a way of doing that. Or muscle memory. Jones took a solid stance, a basic muay thai position. Julia came in low, keeping her face calm. While sidestepping, she let her biotics out, a Throw gathered in her hand. She wasn't strong enough to be able to knock Jones anywhere, but that gun was certainly light enough.
The holster and its magnetic strip were blasted off of her waist, Julia not able to miss from five feet away. Jones fired her Mass Driver at her, the biotic barrier flickering in response. Hannah jumped over her aimed driver shot, rolling like a high jumper and coming to a standing position on the far side of Jones. Julia's forward progress was halted, the Mass Driver hitting her hard enough to make her avoid getting close. Shev tried coming in at her again, but the woman slammed her leg's Mass Driver into the Quarian's gun, sending parts and chunks of metal all over the place. The Quarian himself engaged her in some form of martial artistry, hands glowing with a biotic barrier.
Jones tried her hand at trying to punch out the Quarian, but he seemed to have a thick enough barrier to handle it when she hit him with her driver. She was bringing about her other arm to blast him when she was distracted again. Lt. Ta'u decided to Throw something at Jones. She wasn't able to dodge it, as the Titan had thrown the tooth he had used to kill the Rachni. It hadn't melted in the acid at all, and it managed to impact the woman on her already damaged arm. She flinched at the hit, staggering slightly.
Jones rolled, avoiding the rush forward of Julia and Hannah, leaping to the top of the Prothean building. Julia stopped, not sure if she wanted to follow her up the thirty foot tall structure. The woman took a breather there, and would have had enough time to let her kinetic barriers recharge if it wasn't for Julia and Shev. A couple of Throws were enough to make Jones have to steady herself, blasting her left arm's mass driver to keep from falling at one point. She drew her pistol, Jones taking lethal aim on Lt. Ta'u, striking his barrier until it broke. A pressure grenade was enough to send the big man to the floor, holding his head as his ears bled.
Jones chuckled, turning her pistol towards Julia and Hannah. "I think this is all wrapped up." Her exposed arm was still glowing brightly, obviously responsible for the tech dampening. "Just the three of you and a washed up N5 biotic." The Human Male clenched his fist. He rolled, coming to a stop and grabbing her dropped SMG. But when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. "My guns are loyal. They only fire when I want them to."
Julia glanced down towards where the person she thought was Mum had been stabbed and was on fire. It had dropped a few weapons, and she remembered that they had worked in the presence of the damn zombies. She could see that some of the weapons were damaged by the explosion that had occurred, while two seemed workable. She grabbed the two rifles, the remains of a Napalm Launcher having exploded across the back of the woman. Julia had to use a small Pull on one rifle to grab it, and hefted the other to Hannah.
Jones was dealing with Shev, who was acting like a pinball. Every time she tried to get through his barrier, he would take cover and let it come back, and then charge into the small area that Jones was standing in on top of the Prothean structure. She was shooting bursts from her pistol, but the thing would overheat long before it broke through Shev's barriers. As it turned out, he had another layer of kinetic barriers, ones from his suit, that triggered when the biotic ones broke. Jones growled some sort of curse regarding that moment, and Shev took a moment to bring back his biotic barriers.
Hannah nodded at her, and they both let loose with their rifles. This time the shots actually impacted the kinetic barrier, but the rounds were loaded for something else. They were Inferno modded, and the shots did less damage to barriers. Hannah had to take cover, her rifle overheating too quickly. Julia's rifle was warming up quickly, but its rounds still weren't penetrating. Jones had a terribly strong barrier, and the only thing that was going to get through it were biotics and knives. Which was why Jones was hiding like a coward up there.
Jones didn't like the amount of resistance she was experiencing up there. She took shots at Hannah, whose barriers were disabled. Julia got in the way, taking the shots on her biotic barrier, but unable to move without Jones getting shots into Mum. She was breathing hard, the strain of extending her barrier over someone else heavy. Jones drew back her arm, preparing another one of those damned pressure grenades. But while she was focused on them, she was unprepared for the gigantic object that came at her from behind.
Thinking it was Shev Charging her again, she used her one arm to blast the object with her Mass Driver. But that didn't work, as the shadow of a large Krogan eclipsed her. Don, who had to have been Thrown by Shev, impacted the mass driver and grunted as his armor took the hit without breaking. He then carried forward, the four hundred pound object knocking Jones right off her perch. The grenade went off right on top of both of them, stunning Don and making Jones shriek. Served her right. He fell gracelessly, impacting every pinnacle and spike as he fell. Jones recovered her balance, characteristically by blasting the falling Krogan into the ground to disrupt her own fall. But her barriers were actually low, now.
A loud rifle blast echoed through the chamber, Jones grunting in pain as one of her knees exploded, blood going all over the place. The armor held the leg together, but Jones faltered, the armor shattered enough that it couldn't lock into place. She was looking far past those directly in front of her, settling her gaze on the tunnel entrance they had all come through. Julia took a chance to look back over her shoulder, and her eyes widened.
Garrus. He managed a shot off, his glowing eyepiece solidly locked on Jones. The collar of his armor was bent, and he was using one of the dead marines as cover and a gun mount, His second shot never hit Jones, as she rolled out of the way. Her reflexes were beyond Human, and had to be assisted by those cameras in her arms. She favored her metal leg, as the Human one was evidently blown out. The one leg she was standing on glowed, exhaust vents along the vent opening wider than normal and letting the woman put all of her weight on that Mass Driver.
Jones vaulted over Don, coming down on Garrus with force. The Turian let her do so, Making an odd keening call as she landed. He rolled, bringing the corpse he was using and holding it like a shield. Jones flinched as she landed, tech grenades in abundance went off. A few of them were flash bangs, making Julia flinch. Her eyes still saw stars, Out of habit she took cover, feeling Mum slide into the same piece of shale covered stone. "We've got to take out her other leg!"
"Cloak! She's far enough away!" The pleasant tingle of her tactical cloak came over her, and Julia looked over towards where Garrus had been positioned. Jones and Garrus were nowhere to be seen. "Can she cloak too?"
"Your field will collapse as you get near. Use it like radar." Hannah said clearly. Jones would hear them anyways, given that she was able to notice Shev coming in from a Vanguard charge. The cloak might just give them an edge, however. She moved her grasp on the knife to an overhand grip, ready to stab instead of slash. Those Mass Drivers wouldn't be something she could block. Julia slowly moved to the left of the room, using the curving shape of the walls to narrow down where Jones might be hiding. The woman was injured now, and her options might be more limited.
Her cloaking field did not flicker or stutter as she made her way over to two corpses that Garrus had been responsible for. With dread I could see that there was still a leg sticking out of the crater, on fire and partially melted. It was too small to be Turian, and so Julia decloaked. "Vakarian!"
There was no response. Julia threw a weaker Singularity onto the still immobile foot, but it didn't even budge. The flame struggled, and guttered out, but the boot remained stuck there. "Over here!" The Krogan said, toeing at another armored figure on the ground. "I don't smell the cyborg."
Hannah decloaked. "She left her foot behind. Someone just used the powered rails."
"Don't go after her!" Julia said. "We had some mines up there for more of those Husks. She'll be able to collapse the tunnel on us." Back when the marines were their support team, they had set up a backup post. "She also has two more men up there."
"Don! Blow the tunnel. We'll go out the other way."
The Krogan grinned. Julia helped him set the charges and blow the Rachni webbing off of a particularly large stone, letting it fall down and block the passageway. The Krogan carefully measured the stone, making sure that it was something he could get through if they decided to go after anyone. She had to do all of the measuring and placing, as his arms did not work. She tried not to look at the exposed bones.
Once secured, they came back to everyone else. Hannah had been dragging everyone to the center of the room, with the help of the Human male. He was moving very slowly, though. Shev'rash was pulling Garrus over gently, using some sort of biotic ability to lighten the Turian. Julia keyed her Omni-tool, seeing that Kaidan was doing alright. His biotics had been overstressed and he was just exhausted. Andrew Ta'u was still unconscious, his armor shattered. His medical tools weren't working, mostly due to the lack of working armor. His Omni-tool still worked, but it wasn't synced with the broken armor.
She had to check his pulse manually, the big Polynesian's wrists easy to measure the heart rate. It was slightly irregular, but he was alright. There were no major lacerations or cuts, and he didn't have any bullet holes. There was just acid burns on his armor. As well as a darker patch where some of Rahna's blood had gotten on him. Julia shuddered at that memory. She didn't look forward to telling the Alliance about how she had lost five of their most prized biotics.
Garrus was another problem entirely. His Omni-tool registered his armor as being broken and his collar bone being broken. Multiple fractures. She … couldn't fix that. He needed a hospital. She tried to send a small ping of data up to the Turian cruiser above them, but the signal bounced back without connecting. There may be more of those damned Husks in the area.
"Mum, if those Alliance marines were working for Jones, then the frigates in orbit might not know about it."
"Or they do know about it, and they are preparing to send more men down here to wipe out the rest of you." Julia twisted, her guns nearly out of their holsters when she heard the voice of her father. The woman that had been set on fire earlier stood up, bits of burnt skin still attached to the plastic and metal that made up her body. "The ship that my people have on this planet is reporting some shots fired in the upper atmosphere. Javelin torpedo emissions. I think someone is trading shots with your ride."
"Jack?" Mum stated. Julia was just in shock. "The hell are you doing?"
"Charles finally got the vocal package uploaded to your drone form. I .. apologize for damaging your drone, but someone decided to stab me." The drone stood, rather shakily. Its entire lower back was exposed, circuitry and wiring sticking up. A few parts spat a couple of sparks as the machine turned towards her. "Nice to see you, too, Julia. You seem to be doing well for yourself."
She refused to call him by anything resembling familial connections. "Jack Harper. Give me one good reason that I shouldn't have this drone brought to the Citadel for the Spectres to look through?"
"Touchy, touchy. With a face like that you would think I skipped on child support payments." The drone took a relaxed position, lettings its arms rest on the hips. "However, if the readings from my ship are correct, the only way you are getting out of here is with my help." The voice of her father coming from a drone just had her angry.
"We've got a shuttle."
"They've got two frigates and Separatist fighters. They're cheap and easy to hire for services. The Batarian capital ships are looting shamelessly, of course. So, out of the kindness of my apparently cold black heart, I would like to offer you a ride."
"You stole the stealth technology from the Alliance and the Quarians, didn't you." She had seen the vid images of his ship and its ability to ignore sensors.
"I didn't steal the technology. The inventor simply needed a decent prototype to prove the viability of the technology. Before she could sell it, she needed to prove it worked. But we aren't here to discuss Quarians and their marketing strategies. Your people are not capable of getting to your shuttle, or escaping through the relay, not without getting noticed." The drone twitched, almost falling over. "Ah. Looks like this drone will be collapsing soon. Henry, as the second highest paid person in the room, it is your job to make sure that this investment is returned to the ship. Allison, you may continue the negotiation and make sure to bill them the family rates. Can't have the stockholders notice a free trip here." The drone faltered again, dropping to the ground.
The Human male, Henry, stepped forward and picked up the drone, staggering a bit. "Ma'am, this better not be a duplicate of your actual weight." He said to Mum. "It's gotta be at least four hundred kilos."
"The drones are experimental, not duplicates. That said, as your superior I won't tolerate any kind of talk about my eating habits." Hannah looked tired. "Strap it to Don, attach him to the powered rail, and get them both up to the shuttle. With your internal bleeding I want you to go up the rail and avoid climbing. Your lung is still bruised."
"Yes, you nag." The man said, leading the Krogan and dragging the drone. "Boss man actually did something?"
"He pays the bills." The Krogan muttered, as he was carefully being attached to the kinetic rail system. "I'll see if he banged up our ride."
"Were those grenades permanently damaging?" She asked Mum. She was ignoring her father for now, but he would get what was coming. If his ship were here, then she would be able to deal with him personally. Not to mention see about those Alliance ships in orbit.
"For Drell, possibly. Don't know enough about Asari physiology. Your two Humans are probably going to be fine, other than a month of hypersensitivity and some dermal regenerators where the doctor has to go in and fix things up. Biotics hate those kinds of grenades. Throws off their sense of balance and apparently is like a gigantic migraine went off. It's your Turian friend I'm worried about." She glanced at her, noticing a few burn marks and scrapes on the light armor she was wearing. "Didn't you come in here with more than four people?"
Julia nodded. She remembered the twins, one of them impaled by the claw of the creature, the other getting hit by some sort of biotic attack. He had gotten pulled up into the air, and Julia hadn't seen him come back down. Creatures that had armor thick enough to repel their rifle rounds. Biotic things, without a barrier but with acidic blood. "I lost five to some things that used biotics. Insectoids, standing tall enough to equal a three story building."
"Oh!" Hannah said, looking worried. "Those bastards. They go after anything with Element Zero. We saw one on our way in. They're the apex predators on this planet that the Rachni evolved to fight." She leaned down and used a wet cloth on Alenko's face, clearing the blood away from his pale face. "I'm sorry."
"We could have done something if it weren't for the damn Husks." Julia muttered. "Without sensors or guns we couldn't drive them off. Garrus, er, Spectre Vakarian led the Husks off so that we could fight back, but by then we had already lost four people."
"Thanks for coming." Hannah said, glancing around at their many wounded. "You didn't have to."
"Miri asked." Julia said, letting that explain for her. Miranda never asked her for anything. "Though explaining this is going to be hard."
Hannah gave her a small smile. "Tell you what. I'll see what I can get you from our Terminus contacts and see if we can trade some information to you. We can take care of your people and give you something that might make up for whatever complaints the Alliance may have."
"Like whoever invented this stealth technology?"
Hannah waved her hands. "That crazy Quarian is certifiably insane. She invented the technology, but she stays in their fleet. You won't get to have access to her unless you have something she wants."
"What about the Rachni?"
Hannah shrugged. "We've found only a few things. Some Asari that ship the damn bugs around. Though all of them move around in the Terminus systems. Mostly Eclipse Sisters, though there are a couple that we have been looking for that are just independent traders or smugglers. All of them are clanless, too. So no families or part of the Asari Republics to go looking into."
Julia slumped. "I've got no leads on anything, then."
Hannah shook her head. "I didn't say that." She picked up a burned section of metal. "Jack found out where these bugs are getting their armor from. They aren't the ones manufacturing it." She didn't smile about it. "It could be one of a few groups, but they are out near the Perseus Veil."
"What? Isn't that the older section of space that the Quarians used to live in?"
"Not quite. A lot of shady types of people make a living out there. Including a very scary group of Krogan that never surrendered at the end of the Krogan Rebellions. Clan Ganar. Not to mention the Vorcha apparently have a colony out there somewhere too."
She nodded. A small brief had been included on dangerous groups in the Terminus. The Alliance had included a small section to the Krogan clan, which basically was just a notification from the other Council races that they existed and carried a grudge. "So Krogan might be supplying their old enemies?"
"If someone is gunning after the Council, then there might be Krogan out there that support that. It's just that the Asari don't fit into the picture."
"Unless they are the ones behind it all." Julia didn't like that idea but it was the Asari that had killed her best lead.
"Let's hope that the most powerful group of people in space don't have some gigantic secret grudge match planned against the rest of us." Hannah said soothingly. "Don just got up the rail. Time to get the rest of these folks up there." Julia felt better, with Hannah here. Where the Alliance couldn't take an opinion regarding their association. Where there were no other eyes that would report her association with her. Hannah was a trusted friend. Someone she could always depend on. She resolved that she would not report her presence to the Alliance. Not unless she had to.
Author's Note
Well, ladies and gentlemen, this one took an awful long time to write. My boss decided to move the desk configuration and have me sit right in front of him. I had a bit of a difficult time writing much of anything with my boss hovering right behind me. This chapter is a bit of a long one, and I am a bit glad at how it turned out. Writing the actual mess was harder, as I was using my cell phone's screen as a reflector to see when my boss was facing me or not. I'm applying for a better job(For money reasons, of course, as well as academic) within the next couple of weeks, so if another chapter comes out next week it's a good sign.
Arkhipov is a pretty famous Russian name. I've been watching a few submarine movies for inspiration on how the Normandy is supposed to be able to fight. I was watching K-19, the Widowmaker. Arkhipov is very much an inspiration from that movie. Jenkins is going to get some very unofficial training from the only people that still have submarine commanders. With the advent of space based warfare(60-80 years back) submarines and water based warfare would no longer be important. All of the big countries would have left for space, as usual the last to do so would be Russia and the Third World. If you look back through history(I've been looking at the Rus and their descendants mostly) Russia is usually the last person to hop on the boat. Or if they do make the jump to the newest technologies they do so at the minimum level possible, while the rest of their population have to pick over the remnants of the last great step forward.
So yes, the Russian Navy would be the best call for submarine specialists. We will see more of Arkhipov and Jenkins as he goes through his training, as well as one other person that we get to meet next chapter. He is seven feet tall, loves shotguns, and happens to love politics involving Rachni. To all of you patiently waiting this long to meet him, you can be pretty happy. There is also a New Poll in my profile. I made sure that this one actually works before I posted it. Don't worry, the old poll is still valid. I took down who won there, and that will be part of a mission coming up.
