The sound of battle drew them on. Someone was causing some serious trouble for the Reapers at the beam. By the time he could see the objective, Kolyat found his mind so saturated by Reaper perversions and ugly what-ifs that he'd become numb to it all. All that mattered was the objective, and the objective was just ahead.
Underneath the feet of the smaller type of Reaper ship—the new guardian, now that the really big one had screwed off to take potshots at something—three figures were barely shadows against the eye-searing brightness of the beam, occasionally punctuated the pop of biotic light.
"Alright, boy," Siu said, and fitted the dog—whose name, apparently, was Karl—with the breather from the equipment it still carried. Without knowing what to expect on the station, breather gear was important. The dog whined, but quieted when Aggie—the geth who had needed a name so the organics on the team didn't feel like total duds for saying things like 'hey, Geth'—patted his back. Karl didn't like the breather at all, but took it stoically. "Good boy, you're a good dog," Siu assured the dog, whose tail began to wag half-heartedly.
Having heard the dog's story from Aggie, Siu was of the opinion that Karl's life as a military service dog was over. There was no knowing how many people he'd been through since his original military handler had died. You could tell, so Siu said, that the poor dog was unhappy. Heartbroken even.
Yes, Kolyat agreed. You could tell.
"I am concerned about Karl's safety," Aggie announced, not for the first time. He gave the impression of anxiety.
Kolyat thought of Aggie as male on reflex, though Siu usually referred to him as 'she.'
At first, Aggie hadn't wanted to leave Karl here, alone, on his own. Then he'd worried about taking Karl up onto the Citadel. Finally, the geth came to the decision to fit Karl with his breather and let the dog decide whether he was going or not. Kolyat found he couldn't even begin to guess what the dog would prefer: Earth or the unknown. Given the way he pressed up against Aggie's metal shins whenever they stopped, he might just prefer to go where his person went, and screw concerns about the unknown.
"Alright, let's get moving."
"Wait," Aggie held up a hand. "This unit should go first."
"…um…" Siu and Kolyat looked at one another. No one ever wanted to go first, but everyone expected to volunteer.
"This unit is concerned. If the beam is meant to transport freight, it might not be a gentle process. The landing may not be gentle. I will be damaged less if you land on me, than you will be if I land on you or Karl," Aggie clarified.
The two young men exchanged looks. They hadn't considered the landing. "That…" Kolyat began.
"…might not be a bad idea…" Siu finished. "Alright, you have point, Aggie. Be careful."
Aggie nodded his head. "Thank you. Please. If…we become separated, take care of Karl."
"I will," Kolyat assured him, patting the geth's arm reflexively, as he might have done for a fellow organic.
"Thank you, Private Krios." With that, the big geth turned and lumbered out of their momentary cover.
Kolyat, and Siu followed not Aggie, but Karl. As soon as the geth took off, so did the dog. Not for the first time, Kolyat was glad the dog's weird little shoes had survived as well as they had: the terrain might have been murder on canine feet.
The first husk that reared as they neared the source of all the commotion was caught by Aggie lashing out an arm, catching it in the throat and flinging it away. Karl, with growls and snarls, slammed the next one and—had it been an organic—would have torn out its throat. Siu put a round from his pistol into its head in passing, prompting Karl to jump away and continue running to catch up with Aggie.
The Reaper forces were somehow denser now than they had been a few minutes ago.
"Hail, friends!" the voice that boomed out was female, a voice of authority, labored for breath but still strident, powerful. "Take the beam! We've held the way clear for you!"
He had a vague impression of red armor and blue biotics, of a ring of corpses around the figure beginning to mount into a shape he might describe as a bunker of corpses. "Come with us!" he shouted back.
"We shall hold the way!" another voice, slightly higher but with the same timbre of authority and command, regality even, assured him. "Save our people!"
Kolyat lowered his head and passed between the two figures and their growing bunkers of corpses. As he passed, he recognized them as asari, redressed in sleek armor that made them look somehow…antiquated…out of their time.
Then he hit the beam and lost all capacity to focus on anything except the sense of being bent in half backwards by the momentum of travel. The trip lasted a few tense minutes before slamming him into the floor. For an unarmored body, the landing would have been worse. On instinct, remembering concerns about landings, he rolled blindly.
He rolled right into Aggie's metal legs. The geth stopped his roll, then picked gently him up and set him on his feet.
Kolyat looked around breathlessly, mentally shaking himself from his daze, realizing what a nasty landing for an unarmored body, especially if that body was one in a series, this would be. Surely people sent up here as freight would have sprains or broken bones just from the landing, on top of anything else they'd sustained. It was a pretty grim thought, and left him aware that there might be wounded elsewhere…
"The Presidium's life support suite is engaged, but I do not recommend removing your breather," Aggie announced as Siu appeared, moving to put the other serviceman on his feet.