June 12th -2155 - Noveria - Peak Fifteen Central Station - Main Garage
"Ok, so what have you got for us?" Isika said, sitting down on a dead Krogan merc, and taking a bite out of her sandwich. They had just emptied the garage of guards, and were now breaking for lunch.
Uno was already scanning the facility while chewing on a Luna rabbit corps ration bar™. "...Ok, this building seems to only have a light enemy presence, mostly more bots and some mercs, mostly dead. The bigger issue is that we seem to have a bug problem."
"You mentioned that in the other garage, can you elaborate?" Ishi asked, sitting on the catwalk with a self-heating cup noodle.
"Simple, there is some sort of giant alien bug wandering around, quite a lot of them in fact, they are running around in the ducts, and there is some evidence of them fighting with the mercs, so we can assume them to be generally hostile. This is probably that Omega Alert they were talking about." Uno said. "Furthermore while there are only a few up near the garage, there is a lot more below in the rest of the facility. However, I can't see our Spectre anywhere, so she must be on the other side of the tramway that leads either to another facility or an extension of this one. Either way, Find a terminal to slice Ishi, and get us some more information. Failing that, Isika sees if you can extract anything useful from any flesh and blood mercs that are still alive."
"The minute an alien baby bursts out of someone's chest, I'm leaving." Jesamine said flatly, pouring some tea from her thermos.
Ika shuddered and looked up reproachfully from her leftover fried rice. "Why did you have to remind me of that movie while I'm eating?"
"Can you guys stop referencing old movies I haven't seen?" Isika said.
"No." Jesamine replied, sipping daintily.
"More bugs are coming up!" The Batarian captain called, as his men leveled his rifles.
The alien bugs that came up through the vents were reduced to ribbons under the concentrated accelerator fire.
"Keep on your toes, people." The Captain said, as his men lowered their weapons, "We need to figure out what happened to the garage crew. They were dug in, so I doubt the bugs got them."
"A good guess, you are correct."
The merc squad quickly raised their weapons as Isika stepped around the corner.
"Who are you?" the Batarian captain called. "Are you one of Vasir's commandos? I don't recognise you from the convoy."
Isika thought about it for a moment, before deciding it was worth a shot. "Yup, I was called in as backup. How's the situation?"
The Batarian captain lowered his weapon. "Honestly? Pretty bad right now. The entire facility is overrun with Rachni and their sheer numbers are proving troublesome. We got sent to investigate the hanger, as we lost contract with the guards we had stationed there. Do you know what happened?"
"Beats me, they were all dead by the time I got there." Isika said, shrugging. "There were a few Rachni hanging around, but there were signs of accelerator fire, so there might be a third party involved."
"I see." the captain said. "Well, you might as well come back with us then, I'm sure Vasir will want to see you. We'll follow your lead."
"Very Well. Onwards I suppose." Isika said, walking past the group of Batarians , before she felt a barrel against the back of her neck.
"How stupid do you think we are?" The Batarian said, before pulling the trigger.
The Asari exploded.
The Batarian swore very loudly, as he was coated with something black, that were definitely not Asari innards. "What the hell was that? Hey someone get this stuff off me-" he said turning around.
Just in time to see every single other member of his squad's head light up, a bright white spider web of lasers having somehow pierced all their heads simultaneously.
They all fell to the floor in unison. As an alliance woman with very tall ears, and a massive rifle stepped around the corner, several prisms floating around her, being joined by even more that had been floating around the room unseen.
He tried to shoot her, only for the black stuff to twist his arm behind his back, before coallessing back into Isika.
"You were smarter than I was expecting, I'll give you that much." she said, forcing the Batarian to the floor. "Still pretty stupid though."
She touched her forehead to the back of the Baterians head.
The Scream could be heard down the hall, where Ishi was working on the console.
"Sounds like someone has been more successful than we have." Jesamine said airily, as she leaned against a wall.
"Not my fault." Ishi groused. "Somebody bricked the station VI, meaning network access is down. We'll have to turn that back on if we want anything meaningful from these terminals, unless we want to check every single terminal in the facility one at a time."
"Do you think it's worth it?" Jesamine said, she thought about what she said. "Turning on the VI I mean, not searching individual consoles."
"Depends how much Isika can mind fuck out of the Mercs. Still might be worth it anyway, after all, our instructions were to steal everything that isn't nailed down, and these guys probably know less then the janitor about what's going on here."
"Can you not call it mind fucking? Please?" Isika said, coming back, with Uno in toe. "It makes me very uncomfortable."
"Well what do you think I should call it?" Ishi said, pulling away from the console, deciding that there was little worth even stealing.
"I don't know, 'Mind Crush'? You know, like I do?" Isika pouted.
"I mean, it basically is mind fucking though, ya know, cuz thats how your Asari do the-" Ishi said.
"THERE ARE-" Ika exclaimed, busting out of the open vent. "SO MANY DAMN BUGS DOWN THERE!"
It certainly looked like it, considering how Ika's amour seemed to be coated in a fine layer of bug gore.
"You think it's safe to move down there?" Uno asked, as Ika clambered out the rest of the way.
"We could… but it would require some serious fumigation, otherwise walking is faster." Ika said, scrubbing herself with conjured water. "If we wanna catch someone off guard might be worth it, but otherwise no."
"Fine, we'll cross off vent access for now. No point trying to fight off bugs just to bypass security we can just blast through anyway." Uno said. "Ishi?"
"Terminals are a bust, no network access unless we wanna turn the station VI back on." Ishi said, hands on hip. "The Facility is on backup power too, so basically nothing's working."
"Typical." Uno griped.
"What about you two, anything useful Isika extracted?" Ishi asked.
"Not a lot, but at least we got something." Uno said, before turning to Isika.
"Those guys were grunts in every sense of the word, even the boss wasn't told anything except the objective." Isika said. "They are here to secure the Rachni queen, orders from the boss man himself, Saren. No clue why though."
"Rachni?" Ika said. "What are Rachni? And what is their queen doing here?"
"You know these bugs? Those are Rachni." Isika said. "A race of alien insect-like beings, who expanded aggressively into council space after the activation of an until then dormant relay, initiating the appropriately-named Rachni Wars some 2000 years ago, before being driven to extinction by the recently uplifted Krogan." Isika said in the manner of someone repeating a school textbook.
"And you didn't mention this until now?" Jesamine asked, crossing her arms.
"Hey, I didn't think about it until the Batarian straight up called them Rachni." Isika said. "Cut me some slack, its ancient history even by Asari standards, I don't think even Grandmother is that old."
"So if they were extinct, what are they doing here?" Ika asked.
"Don't know. The Batarians just seem to work for Saren out of pure spite for the alliance, nobody seems to tell them jack." Isika said. "That said, the fact that they are here to secure a queen should tell us all we need, they must have found a queen somewhere and brought her to this facility. Not unlike other colony creatures, the Queen is the primary breeder, and does not even need a partner to breed."
"That's convenient, I guess." Ishi said. "Still, if they are here for the queen…"
"That means we are here for the queen too." Uno said, completing the thought. "Not sure what for yet, but we'll figure something out."
"Unfortunately the queen is at the other facility, and the only way through is a bug infested tram tunnel." Uno finished.
"Can we take the tram?" Ika said.
"What part of 'the facility is on backup power' did you not understand?" Ishi said, "I doubt this place has enough spare juice to run the coffee machine, let alone the tram."
"Damn." Ika said.
"Well, we might be able to walk, how long is the tram tunnel?" Jesamine asked.
Uno looked in what everyone else assumed was the tram tunnel's direction, red eyes glowing. "...How pushed for time are we?"
"Well… The Omega alert implies that they will eventually glass the facility." Isika said, "How far are we talking?"
Uno mentally transmitted over the information.
"...So Ishi, how hard would it be to turn the power back on?" Isika asked.
Ishi sighed, "I'll have to turn the VI back on to find out the extent of the damage."
"Great." Isika said with faux cheerfulness, "let's do that."
"I don't have to go back in the ducts right?" Ika asked.
"We'll see." Uno said blankly, before clearing her throat. "Ok girls, mission parameters updated. Primary objective: Secure the queen. For whatever reason Sarens men are here for it, that makes it our top priority to secure it for the Alliance. Secondary Objective: Apprehend Tela Vasir, As an enemy-aligned Spectre it's a high likelihood that she is high up on the enemy hierarchy and probably has intel critical to the enemy operations, or at the very least, their operations will suffer for her loss, capture or kill on sight. Tertiary objectives: Restore power to the trams, the tram tunnel is too long and completely comprised with hostile alien lifeforms, and we would lose far too much time traversing it, and run the risk of either failing the objective, and or getting blown to smithereens with the facility when they finally decide to destroy it. Any questions?"
Everyone shook their heads
"Just say when chief." Ishi said.
Uno adjusted her glasses with a practiced motion, Catching the corridor's dim light. "Then let's not waste anymore time, Move out."
Lightning arched off Jesamine's fingers as she reduced another group of bugs into charred twitching corpses. "Hard to believe these are sentient creatures with how blatantly suicidal they are."
Uno sat on an upturned box as she scanned the surroundings, her focus prisms creating a web of lasers to toast any bugs that got past the Meteoromancer. "Got a point there, then again they are colony creatures, maybe they only have a collective intelligence."
"I doubt such creatures could achieve spaceflight." Jesamine countered,
"True." Uno said, before turning around. "How's the VI going?"
"Don't know, I'll ask." Isika asked, before calling down into the VI core. "How are you doing down there?!"
"Fine, it turned out somebody just unplugged it. I'm just tweaking the system permissions to give us admin rights!" Ishi called back.
"She's just tweaking system permissions." Isika relayed to Uno.
"So I heard." Uno said flatly.
A moment later, The elevator brought Ishi back up, "There we go, should be coming back online any minute now."
Not seconds after she said this, a holographic Asari woman appeared out of a nearby projector.
"Greetings *^&%#*. It appears you are attempting to restart the facility, do you require aid?"
"Correct, give me a full status report." Ishi said, before noticing the look Isika was giving her. "Don't give me that, I didn't have the time to create a false profile so I ran a few bipasses, as far as it's concerned, everyone is now an admin."
The VI ignored the side conversation and dutifully read out the status report. "Critical Failure: Main Reactor shut down in accordance with emergency containment procedures. Manual restart required. Critical failure: Landline connections are disabled. Passenger tram systems are offline. Report complete. Do you have an additional systems status query?"
Ishi nodded thinking to herself. "I see… Is the reactor damaged in any way?"
"I'm sorry, I was offline at the time. Shutdown could occur if reactor breach seems likely, or in the case of a catastrophic laboratory containment failure."
"Considering the bugs crawling all over the place, probably the latter." Ika added, voicing the unspoken consensus.
"How do I reactivate the Reactor?" Ishi asked.
"The Valves to the helium-3 fuel line must be opened. This can be done at the controls on the reactor assembly proper."
"Well that makes things simple…" Ishi said. "What are these landlines, and why are they important?"
"The landlines connect my mainframes here at Central station to the various sub-facilities of Peak Fifteen. This allows the crew to remotely access my databases from the comfort and security of their labs. When emergency protocols were implemented within the hotlabs, the cabling was automatically ejected."
Ishi frowned. "And the trams won't run without them?"
"For safety, the trams will not run unless there is a clear connection to the other terminal."
"That's slightly more problematic." Ishi said, "If we plug those back in, they will know we are coming. What do you think Uno?"
The Luna Rabbit thought about it over the sounds of Jessamine flooding the nearby vents out of frustration at the Rachni's tenacity. "... Any chance of bypassing that?"
"Possibly, but I'd need to root around in the firmware probably." Ishi said, "It would take a while, as I wouldn't even know where to start."
Uno sighed. "Well they probably already know we are here, no choice but to just bite the bullet and let them roll out a welcome mat."
Ishi nodded before turning back to the VI. "How do I reconnect the landlines?"
"The landlines are designed for easy reconnection. The Router for the landlines is on the roof of Operations. Simply activate the controls and the hardware will reconnect and reboot automatically."
"At least its simple." Ishi said. "I think we got everything we need to proceed, anything else people wanna ask?"
"Why are there Rachni here?" Isika asked.
"I'm so-so-sor- Privileged access con-con-confirmed." The VI spazzed out a bit as Ishi's bipasses did their work. "The Rachni are being bred to test their viability as soldiers. The queens broods are removed from her to attempt training. Results so far have been suboptimal. Scans suggest that they have broken containment."
"Requesting download of all files relating to the experiment." Ishi cut in, pressing a few buttons on her wrist comp. "...better make that all experiments currently being conducted within Peak Fifteen."
The VI spazzed out again as Ishi's programs override all its internal security. "V-v-v-ver-y Well DDDdd-dOWnloading-ing-ing relevant data."
"...I figured I might as well." Ishi said, to everyone's questioning glances.
"Alright" Uno said, clapping her hands to get everyone's attention "let's get this done as quickly as possible. Me and Ishi will turn the reactor back on. Ise and Ika will reconnect the landlines. Shouldn't be too hard. Just wait until after we restart the reactor before reconnecting the landlines, don't want to give them too much of a head start after all."
She turned to Jessamine, who was now electrifying the flooded vents for good measure. "You stay here and guard this area, keep it clear until we get back."
"Oh Joy." Jesamine said dryly.
"What are we looking at here?" Ishi said as her and Uno descended the elevator to the reactor.
"Total kill chamber, only two catwalks with no cover, and the mercs are entrenched on the far side of the room in an isolated chamber, as well as a room directly above the entryway. Both have large tripod mounted weapons, probably some sort of heavy machine gun." Uno said, eyes glowing. " The left catwalk has some cover from above attacks, as well as access to the above room, but to do so you expose yourself to fire, the right has no cover, from both in front and behind."
"Yikes, any strategies?"
Uno smirked. "Plenty."
With a mighty swing, Ishi batted the automatic doors into oblivion, and they immediately split up, Ishi going left, Uno going right.
As Uno cleared the second door and into the reactor chamber proper, rather than running down the catwalk only to get shot full of holes, she used her powerful legs and jumped off the side of the platform, clearing about three stories before anchoring herself to the wall with her feet and one hand. She then swung her massive rifle in one hand with only the smallest amount of difficulty and started taking potshots at the startled mercenaries below.
Ishi on the other hand, ran headlong into accelerator fire, with her shield held in front of her and the minute she reached the end of the catwalk, we jumped clear across the gap and into the heavy machine gun like a missile, crushing both it and its operator against the opposite wall. Before unleashing her combat bits to mop up the rooms other occupants.
In less than a minute, Ishi and Uno were alone in the room.
"Well that was easy." Uno said.
"Expecting more of a challenge?" Ishi asked as she rebooted the reactor.
"... Can't say I was." Uno conceded, mentally calling out to Isika. 'Reactors on, on our way back. How are things on your end?'
'Fine just more Rachni up here.' Isika thought, casually shooting one with her sidearm. 'Can we reconnect it now? It's Freezing up here.'
'Sure, we'll meet up back at the mainframe.' was Uno's response.
Isika casually leaned over and turned the console on. "Ok Ika, we're done here."
"Great." Ika said, who had been stacking Rachni corpses out of boredom. "I don't know about you, but I'm really getting tired of these bug dudes."
"It's not just you. They really are a pain." Isika said, as they casually strolled back to the elevator. "Not even that fun to talk about, they just kinda run at you and then you kill them."
"Yup." Ika said. "Do you think there will be much more of them you think?"
Isika gave her a sidelong glance.
"Right, stupid question."
With not much more to talk about they quickly linked up with the rest of the squad.
"Is the tram up and running now?" Isika asked.
"Yeah, the tram should be functional now." Ishi said. "It will take us right to Rift Station, where the Rachni queen is being held, and where we will probably find our Spectre."
"We'll probably meet our strongest resistance there, and they will know we are coming, one way or another." Uno said.
There was a moment where they all considered this.
Isika was the one to break the thoughtful silence. Grinning, she said. "So, you girls ready to become operatives?"
Authors notes:
XYZDreadnought: Rachni are super boring to write about guys, at least in terms of fighting them. My usual fights with them in game usually just had me just walking forward with my souped up pistol. So forgive me for glossing over the rachni parts.
Touhoufanatic : Rahni are weird. I like the design, but they never felt really dangerous. To answer a couple questions though, the reason why Dreads main fic with Isika hasn't updated in a while was because both of us were working on this one. I'll be helping out with the main one once these specials are done.