The Cerberus cell had transplanted their own architecture into the dark, smooth metal of the Reaper's hull - angular white walls and floors, florescent light bright enough to make Shepard squint and think about tinting her helmet visor. Perhaps the Cerberus walkways and pathways should've made the Reaper more familiar but the whole effect just unsettled her.
The airlock shut behind her team and sealed with a hiss. The crew-members spread out, weapons raised.
"No one here to welcome us," Tali observed, "not a great sign."
"Nor is this," Jacob called out.
Shepard stepped forward to have a look. There was blood splattered across a wall and the floor.
"Human," Mordin surmised, "Dried. At least twelve hours since injury."
"No body," Shepard observed. It didn't look quite right to her to be the splatter from someone being shot against the wall - and there was no blood smears on the deck to indicate a body had been dragged around. "Keep on your toes, people."
The reminder was unnecessary. Even Jack was scanning her sector religiously, a tight grip on her shotgun.
Shepard keyed her comm. "Normandy, this is Raptor. We are all aboard and the airlock is sealed. Stand off from the vessel, over."
"Copy that, Raptor. Standing off, over."
"Raptor out." She turned back to her team. "Let's move out. Jack, you have point."
"Hell yeah." Jack took the lead with a smirk visible under her clear visor. The biotic had proven herself an apt breacher in the combat training - even if she complained about hitting mechs or holos instead of real enemies. She could clear a room with a crushing biotic field or two, or raise a barrier to protect the rest of the team.
They walked in silence except for the sound of their footsteps and the soft hum of the generators Cerberus had set up. There was no sign of the scientists or their security team, but their terminals were still online, one or two even logged in like their user had simply stepped away and would be back any moment.
"There's a video log here, Shepard," Tali called, and hit play. Kal'Reegar was close enough to be her shadow, his eyes glowing dimly behind his darkened visor.
"...even dead Gods can dream."
The Cerberus agent's recorded ramblings made Shepard's spine prickle and she could see the way her team were shifting, unnerved. "We don't have time to listen to the logs. If you find any further, just download them and keep moving."
"Aye aye," Tali said, with some relief.
Indoctrination, just from being on an inert Reaper. God is a verb, indeed. They couldn't stay here for long.
"Normandy to Raptor, over!" Joker sounded worried.
"Raptor copies, over."
"The Reaper just put up kinetic barriers. I don't think we can get through from this side, over."
"Oh fuck," Jacob said succinctly.
"As curious as I am about the Reapers," Tali mused, "I'd rather not be trapped inside one."
Yeah, that was an opinion Shepard shared.
"Copy that. We'll have to disable the Reaper's mass effect core to take the barrier generators down from inside, over."
"Commander," EDI's smooth voice flowed out of Shepard's earpiece, "at the moment of activation there was a heat spike. I believe this to be the location of the Reaper's drive core. Uploading coordinates now. Be advised: this core is also powering the mass effect field maintaining the Reaper's orbit."
"We turn off the drive core, the Reaper falls into Mnemosyne," Shepard surmised.
"And that means everyone dies," Joker added in helpfully, "over."
Having EDI involved in this conversation really messed with radio protocol, but asking the AI to say 'over' after talking to her just seemed silly.
"I'll transmit coordinates for rendesvous when its time to evac. You'll need to get to us before the wreck hits crush depth, over." An attempt by Kodiak would've normally been more palatable in terms of risk, but the shuttle wouldn't survive the conditions inside the brown dwarf. It'd crumple like a drink can long before the Normandy ran into trouble.
"Try not to die. Normandy out."
Ass.
"We'll do a sweep for survivors and recover the IFF," she told the assault team, not letting her unease creep into her voice, "then we'll hit the drive core."
The next airlock found them stepping out onto metal walkways clinging to the side of the Reaper's cavernous insides.
And that was where they found the first bodies. Three, sprawled out in the middle of the walkway. They looked as if they'd be burnt, the skin melted like wax and only scraps of clothing clinging to twisted limbs. It reminded Shepard uncomfortably of how she and Alenko had found some of the colonists and garrison Marines on Eden Prime.
"Mordin?" she asked, "how long do you think they've been dead?"
"Sterile, dry air, lack of microorganisms interrupts normal decomposition," he responded, "impossible to determine with any accuracy."
"Guess."
He sniffed. "Within past week."
A gunshot shattered the quiet.
Shepard shouldered her carbine in a split second, taking a knee. Around her the crew reacted similarly.
"Fuck!"
"Jack?" Shepard called, "What is it? Do we have a contact?"
"I thought -" it wasn't like Jack to sound unnerved. "I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It disappeared behind the crate but there's nothing here."
"Shadow, maybe?" Jacob asked.
"I don't jump at shadows, Cerberus," she snapped back.
"Enough." Shepard cut them off. "Let's keep moving. When we're back on the ship I can tell you guys about the time I put three rounds into a bush thinking it was a batarian."
"You didn't," Tali laughed.
"Oh yeah. Right in front of my entire N team." Richardson hadn't stopped giving her shit about 'infiltrator bushes' for weeks.
Jack grumbled something further about seeing something, fuck you, but Shepard's voluntary embarrassment had cooled her reaction.
They spread out across the walkways, footsteps echoing. Shepard tried not to look down. It was a long fall into the Reaper's guts.
The Cerberus scientists had been living here. Sleeping here. She didn't have a whole lot of sympathy for Cerberus scientists, but the Illusive Man had wasted every life here. He'd waste every life on her ship too, if it suited his needs.
"Oh fuck," Jacob's voice came out in a disgusted wheeze. Shepard came to his shoulder and her chest tightened. Familiar long spikes jutted up from below the platform they stood on. Dragon's teeth. Five or so still had bodies fixed on their points like pinned butterflies.
It hadn't been nearly long enough since she'd last seen them - strewn around the base of the Citadel, turning diplomats and politicians into mindless bodies that had repeatedly thrown themselves against her ground team.
"Dragon's teeth and geth," Tali said grimly, "that's familiar."
Shepard doubted the geth were responsible in this case. A walkway had been extended over the gap, right at the height for someone to climb up and impale themselves. The Reaper had stolen the scientists' minds and demanded their sacrifices, and it hadn't even been alive.
"I hate this shit," Jacob said, looking sick under his visor.
"Shepard," Tali stepped closer to her, "some of the dragon teeth - they've got blood on them but no bodies."
Blood, and little torn remnants of flesh.
"Prepare for contact with husks," Shepard told the team grimly, "I don't think we're going to find survivors."
Her words were, unfortunately, prophetic.
The husks arrived with the sound of their clawed hands scrabbling against metal and the low droning moan of their voices. The first few went down to the hail of gunfire that greeted them, but the quarters were just too tight, and in a split moment the husks were all mixed up with the ground team.
Two lept at Kal'Reegar, threatening to bear the quarian to the ground, their clawed hands scratching at his hardsuit.
"Bosh'tets!" Tali shouted. Her shotgun boomed twice.
Shepard fired a burst point blank into an onrushing husk's chest. It dropped, fist sized bloody holes in its chest, and she shot it in the head to be sure. And then there was another, crazed electric blue eyes in here face. She tossed it away from her with a biotic field - it toppled over the railing and disappeared.
That was when a shockwave of energy struck her, rattling her teeth and sending her staggering. The railing was at her back.
"Shepard!" Tali's voice rose above the shrieking, but there were too many in between them and -
"Scion, 2 o'clock!" shouted Jacob.
"Regroup!" Shepard snapped back, putting her glowing fist through a husk's jaw. Gross. She'd have to try and scrub husk bits out of her gauntlet's mesh now. She needed to get free. She needed to use her goddamn beam weapon on the scion already.
Another husk pounced, reaching for her throat. She held it back with her own grip on its neck, but the things were freakishly strong. Her healing shoulder gave a protesting throb. She dropped the Locust, the carbine thumping against her chestplate on its strap, and reached for her pistol.
But then a second husk was on her, clinging onto that arm.
Well fuck. It was all she could do to stay alive, keeping those claws from ripping at the more vulnerable joins of her armour. Their fingers skated over the smooth ceramic plates that protected her torso, gouging slivers out of the dark paint.
The husk on her left arm jerked, and its head exploded with the familiar crack bang of a sniper rifle.
"Jesus fuck!" her hand free, Shepard pulled out her pistol and shot the other one in the face. She hadn't brought Thane or Garrus -
"We've got a sniper above us somewhere," Jacob was panting, sweat beading on his face, even as they finished off the husks.
"Whoever they are, they're a good shot," Tali added.
It was the sort of shot Shepard had once yelled at Garrus for taking, and it had potentially saved her life.
"Shit! Geth!" Kal called out.
Shepard whirled -
Above them, on a walkway, stood a single geth unit, the muzzle of its sniper rifle pointing down at the floor. Its headlight shone bright in the murky air, absorbed by the patch of black ceramic over what looked like battle damage. A patch of black with the battered letters of N7.
Shepard's spine prickled. She raised a hand in a fist, silently ordering her team not to shoot and to stay where they were.
Why would a geth wear that? A battle trophy taken from one of her fellow N7s? Her head hurt.
"Shepard-Commander." Its voice was a distorted mimicry of a human voice. But it was a voice. A voice speaking English.
And then it backed up and was gone.
"What the actual fuck?" Shepard asked.
"It talked," Tali said in disbelief, "geth don't talk."
"It's alone," Kal added, "why is it alone? It should be barely functional away from other geth-"
"It saved my life," Shepard said quietly.
"That's ridiculous," Tali shot back, exchanging glances with her fellow quarian, "maybe it just missed."
That was an illogical argument. A geth could've easily adjusted and put a round through her chest within seconds of killing the husk.
It was also argument for later. "Enough. We have a job to do, let's get to it."
"Shepard!" Tali called.
Doctor Chandana's office was still brightly lit by the generators. The man himself was absent except for more of the ominous blood splatters - and now there were a few dead husks to decorate too.
The Commander ducked into the room, stepping over one of the husks. "Yeah?"
Tali smiled triumphantly behind her visor, lifting up an OSD. "Chandana had been ordered to remove the IFF from the databank they found aboard."
"You found it."
"I found it," Tali confirmed, passing it over. Shepard tucked it into her webbing.
"Good job." She keyed her comm. "Normandy, Raptor Six. Package secured, over."
"Copy that, over." Miranda's voice, each syllable tense.
"We're about to hit the drive core. We will give you the heads up before it goes down. Make sure the ship is in position, over."
"We'll be there, over."
"Roger that. Raptor out." Shepard turned back to Tali, "C'mon. The sooner we're off this hunk of metal the better."
"Shepard?" Tali followed her out of Chandana's office to fall back in with the rest of the squad.
"Yeah?"
"Do you think...it can do to us what it did to the scientists?"
Shepard slid a new heatsink into her carbine. "The scientists were here for days."
"But-"
"Tali," there was an edge to Shepard's voice, "there's no point worrying about it. We get off and Chakwas gives us all a check up. That's the plan."
Tali thought Shepard was more worried about it than she was letting on but she just nodded.
Shepard signaled for them to move out - closer to the powerful energy signature of the Reaper's drive core. The reading dwarfed anything Tali had seen before, even the liveships.
"What was that geth?" Jacob's voice echoed weirdly in the corridor. "I never saw any geth that talked during the war."
"They can't usually," Tali replied, "not the infantry models. They don't have enough programs. It's...inefficient."
"Maybe it's not just an infantry model."
Tali glanced over at Shepard with a frown, "What?"
"If we see it again, I don't want anyone to shoot it unless fired upon first."
"It's a geth!" Tali burst out.
"A geth that didn't attack us," Shepard insisted, "a geth that knew my name."
"With respect, Commander," Kal said dubiously, "geth don't have diplomats."
"All the information we have on them is from fighting them or is from before your people left Rannoch," Shepard pointed out, "this is an opportunity to get real intel. Maybe even some answers."
"Shepard, they're the enemy. They killed Nick -"
Nick Ki-tae, the young Marine with the wide smile and quick hands, who'd helped her learn Skyllian Five. The SR1's mess hall had stunk of human and salarian blood for days after Virmire.
"And Jenkins, and Mohamed, and a whole lotta my friends. I haven't forgotten." Shepard's face was hard, "This isn't a request. You will hold fire unless fired upon. Am I clear?"
"Yes ma'am," Kal said crisply.
Shepard's dark eyes fixed on Tali. "Tali?"
"Fine," she shook her head, "you're making a mistake."
"Maybe."
"Drive core is just through this airlock, ma'am," Jacob said, a little awkwardly, pointing.
"Stack up. Jack, on point."
They were through in the door in seconds, weapons up and -
"What is it doing?" Jacob demanded, rifle pointed unerringly at the back of the geth unit.
The drive core lit up the entire compartment, several times the size of the Normandy's yet smaller than Tali had expected from the readings. The geth was at the far side of the room, trying to fend off a tangle of husks while doing - something.
"It's trying to disconnect the power conduit," Tali realised. It didn't make any sense.
Like a wave, the husks fell on the geth. Even metal was no match for their sheer numbers and its pistol dropped the ground, followed quickly by its bulk.
Then the husks turned on them. They tumbled down under the scythe of Reegar, Shepard and Jacob's rifles - the few that got through were finished off by Tali and Jack with their shotguns.
"Shit for brains," Jack observed with a sneer as a husk tried to crawl towards her, its legs ripped off by her biotics. The human raised her shotgun and shot it in the head.
Shepard gestured at Tali, "Can you do what the geth was trying to do - disable the power?"
"I can try." Physically destroying or overloading the drive core was too dangerous - it could just detonate the eezo, which would kill them just as surely as crush depth would.
"Kal, help her. Jack, Jacob - we're gonna watch their backs. Something tells me that we're done playing with husks."
"Roger that," Jacob agreed, checking his rifle. "What do you want to do with that geth?"
"We're bringing it with us," Shepard decided. "I'll carry it."
"Shepard, are you sure that's a good idea?" Tali began, even as she stepped past the still geth and knelt to start working on the conduit.
"Now is not the time, Tali," Shepard said shortly, a note of warning in her voice.
Tali bit down on the flash of irritation and frustration. Why wouldn't Shepard listen to her? "I need fifteen minutes to get this disconnected."
"You'll have them." Shepard promised.
"Husks ten o'clock!" Jacob yelled, just before the thunder of rifle fire broke out.
Shepard's voice was clear and audible even as she started firing too. "Normandy, Raptor, over."
"Normandy copies, over."
"Drive core is coming down in fifteen mikes, over."
It felt wrong to have her back to the fighting, but Tali grit her teeth and kept going, omnitool bright orange around her wrist. She had to trust her squadmates to have her back. "Kal, can you get that panel off?"
He shuffled closer, his shoulder brushing hers, and pulled out his combat knife, jamming it into the joint and levering until the dark metal popped right off.
"Thanks."
"No problem, ma'am."
Tali breathed in, fingers racing across her omnitool's keyboard. She could do this.
The reaction to Shepard bringing an intact geth aboard the Normandy was, in hindsight, rather predictable. Miranda stared down her pistol's sight at the still heap of metal, sprawled on the cargo bay floor.
"Weapons down," Shepard ordered, "it's nonoperational. Husks did it." She was still breathing hard from the frantic sprint to the Normandy - while carrying a heavy load it seemed.
"Husks?" Miranda lowered her pistol, bewildered, "that doesn't make any sense. You'd think husks would be programmed to ignore geth."
"They certainly did on Eden Prime," Jacob said with some bitterness, "they never turned on each other then."
"No, they didn't," Shepard agreed, then held up a hand to pause conversation. "Joker, status?"
"Burning for the nearest gas giant, ma'am. We need to discharge the core after that. We lost a handful of sensors due to the winds, but I'm sure Tali can have that fixed in an hour or two."
"Good to hear. Lemme know before you start the discharge."
"Will do."
"EDI, can you keep the geth isolated from the ship's computer systems?"
"Yes." The AI responded.
"Man," Jacob whistled, "Tali, you're gonna get so much from this thing. An entire intact geth..."
"I can start whenever you'd like, Shepard," Tali said from behind the Commander.
Shepard said nothing, arms crossed and dark eyes fixed on the slumped geth.
"Hold on," Miranda interjected, "we need to advise the Illusive Man. You know we need better weaponry to fight the Reapers - and the geth if they decide to help their friends invade again. An intact geth could be vital to that effort."
"Of course you'd say that," Tali shot back.
"It's the logical thing to do -"
"So Cerberus can make more monstrous creations that inevitably escape and kill people?"
Miranda felt a flash of irritation. "And what will your research achieve? You've been exiled, so it's not like the Flotilla can build on whatever you discover."
"Bosh'tet," Tali snapped furiously.
Miranda hadn't meant it that way. But it was the truth.
"Enough," Shepard cut them off. She stripped off her gauntlets, tucking them into her belt, and pulled out a chocolate bar from her webbing. She tore the wrapping open and bit off a chunk.
"Commander," Miranda began.
Shepard shook her head, swallowed. "I'm not sending it to the Illusive Man."
Tali straightened in victory. "I can work here -"
"We're not chopping it up either." Shepard took a step towards the still geth. "Its wearing a chunk of N7 armor. I want to know why."
"A convenient field repair, perhaps? Geth are hardly sentimental," Miranda retorted impatiently.
"It said my name. Explain that."
"You want to turn on a geth to satisfy your own curiosity?" Miranda lifted an eyebrow.
"I want to turn on a geth because we'd be stupid to give up a chance to actually interrogate one. I want to turn it on because it saved my life, and I'm not going to chop up someone who hasn't hurt me before finding out what its motivations are."
Shepard's developing and very strange sentimentality about EDI now apparently stretched to geth.
"It's not a person!" Tali burst out.
"It's sentient, isn't it?" Shepard crossed her arms again. "You called what your father did 'war crimes'. Can't commit war crimes against a computer."
"This won't end well, Shepard, trust me," Tali pleaded.
Shepard's tone was gentle, "I've made my mind up."
The quarian threw up her hands and stormed towards the elevator. Shepard watched her go with a regretful twist to her mouth.
"What if we turn it back on and can't turn it off again?" Miranda asked.
"A bullet will shut it off," Jacob said darkly.
"What he said," Shepard rubbed her face, "I have a feeling Tali isn't going to help me with this. Get one of the other engineers for me, Taylor."
He hesitated, but only a second. "Yes ma'am."
"I want you standing by with that bullet. Get Garrus too." She looked over at Miranda. "And I want you to get EDI and Tali focused on that IFF. The sooner we work it out the better."
Getting Tali to focus was going to be difficult. She didn't like Miranda at the best of times, and now she was upset with Shepard. That would only get worse once Garrus was brought in and inevitably chose to follow Shepard's lead. She would feel betrayed by her two closest friends. Miranda really didn't want to get in the middle of that.
"I'll get it done."
Miranda paused by the elevator. Shepard was still staring at the geth, her eyes locked on the N7 on its chest.
The Normandy slid through the dark of space. In the far distance EDI could sense the great energy signature of the Relay, but they would not be making the jump without Commander Shepard on the deck and the chief engineer in the engineering control room.
The latter was currently holed up in a maintenance corridor, ranting to Kal'Reegar. The former was meeting with her executive officer after three long hours of talking with the now active geth platform.
The geth had agreed to remain in the AI core, which was hardened against external interference - and tucked out of the way. It hadn't moved for the past half an hour since Shepard had left.
In Miranda's cabin, Shepard said, "I was right. Legion went looking for me on Alchera, and that's my armor it used to repair itself."
"Legion?"
"The geth."
"You gave it a name?" Miranda's eyebrows shot up her forehead.
"Technically EDI did."
"My name is Legion, for we are many," EDI interjected.
"Thanks, EDI."
"Wonderful," Miranda muttered, though her expression and other physiological markers indicated the opposite.
"It was looking for me because the geth wanted to reach out, Miranda. It told me that the geth we fought two years ago? They're a splinter faction. The rest of them don't want to fight us and rejected the alliance with the Reapers. Hell, they think the Reapers are a threat and it wants to help us."
Miranda opened her mouth. Closed it.
"I know it sounds crazy. But if we don't have to fight the geth, hell, if we can have them as allies, imagine how much of a benefit that'll be against the Reapers. Their industrial capabilities are incredible-"
"You want to keep it."
"...yeah."
Miranda groaned and let her forehead thunk against the desk. "The crew is going to be very unhappy with this, Commander. Our chief engineer specifically."
"Let me worry about Tali."
"Oh I will."
"We ready to try the jump?"
"Just waiting on you and engineering," Miranda responded. "Should we get to the CIC?"
"Let's."
In the cockpit, Moreau turned the Normandy towards the Relay.
"Bridge to Engineering," Shepard spoke into the direct comm link to the engineering control room. "Stand by for jump."
There was a pause before Tali's sullen voice filtered back. "Standing by."
"All hands, this is the bridge. Secure your stations for Relay transit. Set material condition Zebra throughout the ship."
"Commander," EDI said, the Relay looming huge before the Normandy's prow, "all stations secure."
"Very good. Joker, begin approach."
EDI felt the connection snap into place between the Normandy and the Relay.
"Here we go," Joker murmured to himself. The ship shuddered as it was caught by the Relay's fields and then -
Alarms began to blare in the cockpit.
Tali's voice rose over the batphone, frantic, "Abort, abort! We're going to blow the core-"
"Attention," EDI advised her captain, "drive core charge reaching critical levels."
"Abort the jump!" Shepard shouted to Joker.
The pilot was already straining with the controls, pushing the Normandy's nose hard to starboard. EDI increased the ship's mass to help drop out of the mass effect tunnel. Too much of a mass increase would risk tearing the ship apart.
The connection broke and the Normandy snapped free of the mass effect tunnel.
"Drive core charge at 85%. Advise drive discharge as soon as possible," EDI stated.
"We just discharged," Joker disbelievingly.
"The IFF appeared to access a subroutine of the Relay," EDI supplied. "The IFF may require further adjutment for safe integration with the Normandy's systems."
"Get on it," Shepard shook her head and took a steadying breath, "let's not blow up my ship. Bridge to engineering: damage report."
"Testing thrusters for damage now. Drive core has stabilised."
"Back to the nearest gas giant, Joker. I want that IFF disconnected until we work out how to safely install it."
Codex Entry
Eden Prime Incursion 2183:
SYSTEMS ALLIANCE ORDER OF BATTLE
EDEN PRIME DEFENCE FORCE
Lieutenant General Sun Ling, Commanding
2nd Marine Frontier Brigade (Systems Alliance Marine Corps)
Brigadier Timothy McHearn, commanding
12th Marine Regiment
1/12th Marine Battalion
2/12th Marine Battalion
3/12th Marine Battalion
4/16th Marine Battalion - Artillery
Marine Air Group 60
Combat Logistics Regiment 12
14th Colonial Guard Division (Systems Alliance Army Colonial Guards)
Major General Marcus Ipplito, commanding
110th Colonial Infantry Brigade
1/33rd Infantry Battalion
2/33rd Infantry Battalion
3rd Colonial Cavalry Squadron
1/4th Artillery Battalion
110th Colonial Engineers Battalion
14th Brigade Support Battalion
21st Colonial Armoured Brigade
1/45th Heavy Battalion
2/45th Heavy Battalion
4th Colonial Cavalry Squadron
2/4th Artillery Battalion
112th Combat Engineers Battalion
21st Brigade Support Battalion
8th Colonial Combat Aviation Brigade
44th Armoured Brigade (Systems Alliance Army)
Brigadier Michelle O'Malley, commanding
223rd Armoured Engineers Battalion
17th Artillery Regiment
23rd Tank Regiment
SYSTEMS ALLIANCE NAVY RELIEF FORCES
Admiral Steven Hackett, commanding
SSV NORMANDY
Captain David Anderson, commanding
NORMANDY Marine Detachment, 103rd Marine Division
Lieutenant Commander Shepard, commanding
5th Dreadnought Strike Group
Vice Admiral Jacob McCallum, commanding
SSV EVEREST
14th Destroyer Squadron
SSV KURSK
SSV SAIPAN
SSV VERDUN
SSV ISONZO
31st Cruiser Squadron
SSV SYDNEY
SSV KARACHI
SSV ANKARA
SSV GIZA
15th Expeditionary Strike Group
Vice Admiral Marie Lafont, commanding
7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade
Regimental Combat Team 7
Marine Air Group 18
Combat Logistics Regiment 8
19th Ground Support Squadron
SSV HANOI
SSV RIO DE JANEIRO
SSV AACHEN
SSV CAEN
55th Planetary Assault Squadron
SSV BULWARK
SSV MARIE CURIE
Total Alliance casualties: 892 military, 1202 civilian
