Ripples in the Stream
A D&D / Shadowrun / Mass Effect crossover
by Vyrexuviel
Disclaimer: The author of this story does not, in any way, derive any profit from the story. D&D, Shadowrun and Mass Effect are the property of their respective copyright holders. Jorukaia and other unfamiliar characters in this story, however, are mine.
"An actual dragon, huh? Breathing fire and all that?"
"Not here, fire and ice don't mix well." Joru focused on the door, her sight sharp and ears pricked, "Watch for krogan, there's at least one here. I don't know if there are geth, but assume they're here too."
"How can you tell?" That was Lyris, the smaller of the two commandos.
Joru gave a faint smirk, "I have a very sensitive nose. Krogan have a distinctive scent, but geth smell like any other machinery: metal, grease, and oil."
Lyris's own nose crinkled a little at that, and Joru gave a faint smile. The young commando was good, bright and willing to learn. The older one was more stoic, but deferred to Aethyta's judgment.
Their landing had been a bit abrupt, the snow hadn't been as thick on the surface when the image was taken, and they had landed hip-deep in it. Jack had had to be carried the first few meters, her stomach voiding its contents all over the snow. The rest of them hadn't been too much better, but Jack had had the worst teleportation sickness out of all of them, something she was adamant to get the others to forget.
Hence her insistence on shifting the topic, "Damn, sounds like you got the top prize."
"We can discuss this later, right now, we have a krogan to deal with." Joru concentrated, willing her sight-beyond-sight to come to the fore. The material world bled away, sound deadened and all that mattered was the magic.
Astral sight is hard to explain, harder to visualize. It wasn't a single sense, but a blending of all of them, similar to synesthesia. Tastes had colors had sounds had smells could be felt. Emotions were a tangible thing, traceable. Anger was present here, and terror, but that was older, more musty and tasted stale. The anger was a new thing, thick and cloying and somehow...artificial.
"One krogan, he must have passed through here recently." She took a breath, relinquishing her hold on the othersight.
"How?... Do I even want to ask?" Lyris sounded faintly exasperated, and Joru couldn't quite suppress a grin.
"Focus on the geth, but keep watch for the krogan. I'll take him down as fast as I can. It might get a bit messy."
He paced restlessly. He and his group of geth had been left back here as punishment, he knew it. 'First line of defense' was just a saying meaning 'expendable cannon fodder'. He was being punished, and he had no idea why.
The geth were no help, they didn't talk, just made those blatting noises at each other on occasion, and stayed still, usually curled up in that broken-backed way that made him shiver.
And so he paced, restless and tense. Which was why he saw her first.
She appeared as if stepping out of nowhere, her head turning and a gun rising even as he shouted a warning. The geth were rising and scattering even as the door of the vehicle bay blew inward with a spray of twisting metal. Four bursts of various biotics slashed through the cloud of metal fragments, shattered by what must have been a whopper of a Singularity, but he had his target in sight.
Finally, some action, after all this waiting. He just hoped that he would please Master with his kill.
Joru felt more than saw the shard of shrapnel zip past her horn, she was focusing on the krogan. In her left hand she held her gun, in the right she held her knife. It was a little thing, though modern sensibilities would call it large. The blade alone was slightly longer than her forearm, with a nice large hilt to grip. The gun was heavier, felt more like a proper weapon.
Forged of blooded and purified adamantine, machined through trial and error by a master gunsmith, and later enchanted by her own hand, it was powerful and strong. Even as she turned to face her chosen foe she let rip a trio of blasts in the krogan's direction.
Two geth were down from the door being blown inward, but six were still active. Joru had to take as many targets down as rapidly as possible, and her friends were helping nicely. Three of the geth were floating upwards towards the ceiling, but that only gave them unobstructed avenues of fire. Two more were being pinned down by machine pistol fire from Lyris, while Jack's shockwave had sent the last sailing close to Joru.
She tracked, aimed, and let rip with her weapon as it shot past her, twisting as it went. A miss, but at least it had been forced into a bad position to land in, and thudded to a stop behind a crate. Her main target, however, had unlimbered his shotgun and was starting to charge, a bellow rising as he brought his weapon up.
Joru's blood sang with battle-fire, and she let out a thunderous roar of her own as she rushed forward to meet him. She felt two of his projectiles ricochet from her arm, the mystic shield there bouncing them away harmlessly. Two more hammered into her belly as she closed the distance, she could feel the impacts as her shield dissipated them, but she ignored the repeated fire as she brought her own gun to bear.
It might not have a name yet, but it had certainly earned one. The burst of flame was almost long enough to singe the krogan's armor as the triple-boom smashed around the room. Only a glancing hit, but she gave a wide grin as the krogan gasped with pain as the weapon's enchantments turned ordinary lead and steel into elemental fire. He tried to headbutt her, but she angled her head, taking the descending crest on the bone of her horn. She could see one of his eyes, saw it widen with surprise as he bounced off her horn, an utter rejection of his great strength.
Two of the red streaks of light from her weapon had burned holes in the far wall, though only the third blew a chunk out of his side. Good enough. The two of them were locked in grapple by that point, her gun was useless, so she dismissed it and grabbed his arm. She tightened her grip, twisting as she sought the perfect angle. There.
The krogan's eye snapped to one side as she brought her arm around and slid her dagger up under his guard. It was only a few centimeters from his face, the dark metal of the blade gleaming in the dull storm-light from the blizzard outside, even as it added a nick to the unscarred krogan's crest. Only his quick jerk backward saved him from loosing an eye.
Twist, grip, and brace. She pivoted, using her tail for extra leverage, and glimpsed Aethyta, her face twisted with effort. She had a singularity going, four geth trapped in its gravity well and being torn apart along with their cover, two of the heavy steel crates already hurtling around and being sucked down the maw of the artificial black hole.
Her krogan friend gave a scream as her blade slashed into and through his arm, ripping flesh and spraying blood as it went. It tore most of his arm away in one long cut that started just above his elbow, severed the bone above the joint, and tore length-wise through the flesh of his arm almost to his wrist before his hurtling body passed out of range. He slammed into a crate with enough force to bend the metal and gave another howl of agony as his nearly-severed arm smashed bone-first into his makeshift bedding.
Another bullet hammered her shield, followed quickly by six more in rapid succession. This one managed to find a weak point and taking a chunk out of her shirt, sending a spray of black blood from her back. She turned, summoning her gun once more from its storage space and burned the head off the geth behind her as she brought it around in a savage arc. It was a poor shot, the shard of white-hot fire only grazing the target, but the thermal energy contained in the magical spike was more than enough to liquefy the light alloys of its flashlight.
Her tail lashed as the last geth fell, to a combination of Jack's shockwave and Elnaris's assault rifle. Her head twitched at a sound and she let her gun once more lapse into storage, still holding her blade and stalking over to where the krogan had finally managed to extract himself from the crate. He barely had time to realize she was standing before him before she gripped his crest and hauled him upright.
She'd seen a lot of people fight. Krogan, asari, turian, batarian, human, and others. She'd been with the best, and laughed in glee as the idiots got what was coming to them. Not one had fought with the same honesty as this bitch.
Jack grinned as Joru dragged the krogan up by his crest, making him scream again as her blade ground into the long, ragged wound that had nearly severed his right arm. Brutal savagery of krogan mixed with the grace of asari, she slammed him back into the wall behind him and murmured into his ear. Jack wasn't close enough to hear what she said, but the krogan gave a grunt and a snarl, trying to grab at her.
His scream was higher pitched as she grabbed his dangling arm and tore it free, setting her hand afire and cauterizing the wound. The human biotic was close enough to hear now, drawn by the sight of the tall, ebony woman manhandling a krogan. "No bleeding out on me, whelp."
"Kill me then, I'm dead anyway. Master will not want a crippled servant."
"If you give me what I want, I might end your pain. Refuse, and I'll throw you out into the blizzard like the trash you are."
Jack shivered. They had barely beat that damn blizzard to the Peak 15 station, and it was still howling out there. Even through her (borrowed) thermal parka, the chill had seeped into her bones. It would make short work of a wounded and crippled krogan.
Joru bent, her eyes boring into those of the krogan, listening as he explained. Apparently there were six squads of geth, each with a pair of krogan inside. His team was the odd one out, with only him to back up the geth.
Jack gave a grin as she watched them, the blubbering krogan and the strong, silent woman. She was the first to admit she was fucked up in the head. Cerberus had done a number on her way back when, and she still got warm fuzzies from being in combat. She didn't care if a man or a woman tried to seduce her, she told them all to fuck off, but if someone could prove that they were pure badass in combat? Well. She wasn't picky.
Watching Joru was like watching one of those leashed predators. Huge and dangerous and goddamn sexy. She knew it was a byproduct of her conditioning, but fuck it, Joru was hot, and in more ways than one.
Evidently she'd gotten what she wanted from the Krogan, as she stepped back, "Far be it from me to deny what I had promised. You have given me what I needed, and so I uphold my end of the bargain."
"Then end me. You are strong, I would rather die to you, then be left to the winds."
The krogan stood, his arms held out, but Joru merely laid her hand on his chest, "Go to your rest, Son of Tuchanka. May your spirit find council there, among your forebears."
She'd seen a lot of Joru, in the fight and before. Joru had shown them a quick little burst of fire here and there, especially getting through that last snowdrift and out of the blizzard. This time, though, she let loose in a way that made Jack's eyes widen and her sex moisten.
Fire burst from Joru's shoulder, wrapping around her arm like a braid of living snakes, and sweeping down to spread over the krogan's chest. He screamed, bucking and flailing, but Joru held tight to his chestplate, even as fires surged forward and engulfed him. His screams died a few seconds later, and his charred husk dropped to the floor.
Jack gave a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold as she gave the tall woman a long, appraising look. Damn that dragon-bitch for being so hot.
"At least the core is intact." Lyris was busily opening her toolkit even as she talked, "After that scene back there, I wasn't sure."
Joru could see her point. There hadn't been much in the outer sections of the facility, a few smashed desks, destroyed cubicles, what had looked like part of a locker room, and the like. The part that had been most disconcerting was finding bits of torn flesh that smelled krogan, and mounds of half-melted slag that might once have been geth.
"Think you can fix it?" Aethyta helped the younger asari pry off an access panel.
"Give me time to figure out what's damaged, Ma'am." Lyris rolled on her back and shimmeyed under the console.
Joru tapped a display window, dark like all the others in here. She wasn't bothered by the lack of light, but the rest of them had turned on flashlight functions on their omnitools to be able to see in the pitch-black space. "You might have to hurry, we aren't sure how many of the patrols were wiped out."
"I'll do my best, Ma'am." The youngest asari squirmed a little, fiddling with something. "Come on..."
There as a clunk and a curse, before she crawled out and fitted an OSD into her omnitool. "There we go, got the secondary data recorder. Now, let's see what the last few commands were."
The five of them listened, though only Jack and Joru watched as a small hologram appeared over Lyris's hand, "User Alert: All Peak 15 facilities have suffered a great deal of damage. Biohazard materials present throughout the facility. Virtual Intelligence User Interface offline. Main power offline. Landlines disconnected. Emergency Power disabled."
"Well, that... complicates matters. See if you can get the VI online again, Lyris. Something like this is bound to have a backup power supply. In the mean time, it looks like the power is out entirely, so we'd best see if we can get that back online again. I'll head up to the roof to get the landlines reconnected." At Aethyta's mulish look, Joru lifted a hand, "I'm the best one to go outside again, I can withstand the cold far better than the rest of you."
"Alright, Joru, but I don't have to like it." Aethyta gave a grudging nod, then turned to the other two asari, "Elnaris, cover Lyris while she's repairing the core. Jack and I will search and destroy the rest of the geth while we check the power core. Remember to ID your targets before you open fire, in this place, it's going to be hell to figure out who's who from just omni-lights alone."
"The geth probably don't need light to see, so you might not be able to see them before they see you." Joru brushed past Jack on her way to emergency access hatch to the roof, "Keep alert and stay alive. I have a feeling this place is going to get a lot nastier than we bargained for."
The door was blown off when the Mako's headlights finally washed over it. Vasir's eyes narrowed as she pulled the Mako into the vehicle bay. The howl of the blizzard outside dimmed, but did not abate entirely, "Right, seal up people, we're out of the wind, but it's liable to be damn cold in here."
"Have I mentioned yet how much I hate the cold?" Wrex grunted as he shifted in the crew compartment. Getting all of them into the Mako had been an exercise in spatial configuration. The krogan had had to sit on the floor of the fighting compartment, while Garrus was tucked up into the turret. The rest of the crew, including Vasir's two commandos and the young quarian, were strapped into the jumpseats, and it was just lucky that Veshar and Kiha liked each other that much.
Wrex fitted his helmet on before cracking the door open and sliding out. "No contacts, looks like someone had a fight in here."
Garrus grabbed his rifle from the rack as he slid out of the turret before following the big krogan, followed swiftly by Vasir's two commandos. "Geth. At least six, maybe more."
Tali was up and out in a flash, her omnitool already glowing as Vasir went through the final shutdown checks and grabbed her own helmet from the rack beside the door. The quarian was a good kid, eager and driven, she'd go far.
She slid out of the Mako, pulling her assault rifle up and glancing around. A quick look at her commandos reassured her that there were no threats and she relaxed slightly. "Scout."
The two commandos, both good girls and quick, shot off to secure the perimeter while Vasir stepped over to where Garrus was watching Tali rapidly working her omnitool over a geth carcass, "Anything?"
"Give me a moment. No, I don't think so. It's been too long, the automatic safeties have wiped the memory core." Tali sighed, but removed a couple components from the interior of the mangled ruin of the geth and tucked them into pockets...somewhere. "Whatever killed it did so fast, though."
"How can you tell?"
She pointed to its shoulder, where a blackened nub protruded, "It didn't have time to extend its emergency antenna and evacuate its programs. This one died with its memories unshared."
She almost sounded pleased with that, and Vasir made a note of the young quarian's vindictive tone. "Keep an eye out. Anything unusual, report to me immediately. Kiha?"
"No contacts, Spectre. We've secured the perimeter as best we can. One door leading inwards, it's open."
"Scout ahead, do not be seen."
"Yes, Spectre." One of the two dark-blue figures near the door slid through the opening while the other covered her.
She turned to Wrex, who was stooping over a crate, "Something interesting?"
"Bones and ash." The krogan pointed, and Vasir's eyes narrowed. A krogan corpse, burned so badly the skeleton was charred through in places, lay half tumbled into the crumpled crate. "I've seen something like this before."
"Me too." She reached up to touch her helmet, "Kiha, keep alert, we might have a certain long-tailed friend in here."
"Understood, Spectre."
The winds howled through the glacial canyon, like lost souls begging for help. It reminded the darastrix of her trip to Cania for a moment. Joru squinted against the rushing snow, her scales streaming a trailer of steam as she stepped through the shadows and onto the roof. Cold, but not unbearably so, the more pressing issue was visibility, as the snow was blinding-thick.
Luckily for her, her sight was not dimmed by mere snow. Normally, thermal vision would have been clogged with reflections and absorptive cold of the snowflakes, but enchantment had been laid on her horn-ring long ago to allow her eyes to pierce such concealment as fog, rain, sleet and snow. Thermally, the rooftop was a surreal landscape, with a black sky and glowing floor, the spires of the transmitting towers run with traceries of heat like glowing veins. She stepped through them with easy grace, searching for the landline connections.
Joru paused as a sound came to her, and she closed her eyes, concentrating on it. There it was again, fainter. A soft creak of metal, but it didn't come with the wind.
She wasn't alone up here.
'Best do this quick, then'. She stepped swiftly around another pylon and found the landlines, massive cables that had been blown loose from the socket buried at the edge of the roof. They had slumped down nearly two meters to the top of the snow, and now were being buried under new accumulation.
She suppressed an oath and flickered her power. Ghostly, smokey wings spread from her shoulders as she stepped off the edge of the roof.
A high, thin shrieking to her left, not the wind, caught her attention just in time to twist around and take the blast of acidic spittle only on the length of her whipping tail instead of on her torso.
It stung, badly, drawing a pained hiss from the darastrix. She rolled, letting her wings puff away, and slithering her tail through coarse ice to scrape off the worst of the burning, clinging shit. Not exactly the best method of getting rid of acid, but quick. She whirled to face the charging, six-legged beast, larger than she was, racing towards her out of the howling snow like a charging lion.
Her gun was in her hand, and spoke its bright, hot thunder into the hissing thing's face, blowing it apart like a rotten log struck by a woodsman's axe. She spotted two more, their bodies strangely mottled in thermal-sight, and grunted as she grasped the steel handle of the landline connector. This was going to be tricky.
Two more globs of acid streaked past her as she twisted around. Her wings burst into existence once more, and with a mighty downsweep, she sent herself skyward. The wind tried to hammer her into the side of the building, but bracing one claw-toed foot on the lip of the roof, she fitted the landline connector back into its socket.
It took but the work of a moment to lock it in and trigger the autoseals, but the two large things down there were determined to get at her, one of them spitting more acid, the other starting to scrabble its many-legged way up the side of the building.
She paused a moment on the edge of the roof, letting her vision expand as much as she could, and ignoring the pain that sliced through her temples at this overload. Two down there, at least six more, chilled and not moving, out on the glacier's surface. Possibly more, under the ice. Great. At least these two were the last.
Bright tongues of flame blazed through the blinding snow, sending searing-hot spears lancing into the unarmored hides of whatever these creatures were. It took three shots to down the second one, it kept jinking around, the third was a sitting duck as it scrabbled for purchase on the lip of the roof. Joru put a blast through its head at point-blank range, then kicked it off the roof to join its two dead companions.
She had best get back to the others. There might be more of those things inside the base.
"Left! LEFT!"
"I saw it!" The quick, staccato crackle of assault rifle fire mixed with the digital warble of a geth going down. Elnaris rolled back into cover just before a fusillade of fire intersected where she just was, a trio of geth advancing cautiously to either side of the core.
"Unauthorized technologies are present in the facility." The VI at least was online, but was being decidedly unhelpful.
Lyris swiped with her omnitool, flash-freezing one of the other two geth on her side of the Core, "Shut up, you stupid thing, and see if you can get comms back online!"
"Busy, do it yourself." Elnaris' arms pulsed with biotic power even as she pulled the rifle close. Two geth went flying as her Throw punched them off their feet, while she hosed the third with rapid-fire rounds.
The VI's inane comment was drowned out with a massive thunderclap which slammed a geth back into the wall, its internal fluids cooking off and blowing it apart. Lyris cried out in surprise, but felt a familiar hand on her shoulder. Glancing up, she was ever so glad to see those familiar flaming eyes. Joru was back.
"Get down."
Lyris didn't have to be told twice. She slid into the core itself, rapidly bypassing the standard VI interface to bring up a bird's eye view of the VI Core room. Six geth had entered, three were down. Two were disabled but would be back in the fight, while one was active.
Joru strode forward, uncaring as the geth fired rapid rounds at her, backpedaling as it went. Elnaris' rapid krak-ak-ak was overshadowed by the authoritative thunder of Joru's own weapon as she blew another geth to hell.
That just left the one that was focusing fire on Joru, before finally abandoning its ranged weapon and lunging forward.
She'd seen people react fast, but geth were machines, they were far faster than flesh and blood ever got, and precise to the millimeter.
Joru still managed to dodge the first wild swing, and Lyris gasped as she saw the flash-forged blade slide out of the geth's forearm. It would certainly outmatch her in strength, and it seemed to have an edge in speed too as its second swing was only barely avoided, and the third punched home to make Joru slide backwards with a hand to her side.
Black blood welled there, and Joru's flaming eyes and snarl of fury were matched with a sudden fury of blows. Talons lashed out, quicker and more precise than the eye could match, and sparks flew from where those claws left gashes along the surprised geth's torso. Joru was a whirlwind, smashing, kicking, punching, even whipping her tail around to slam one of the geth's legs.
Lyris's jaw was dangling as she saw the scaled woman heft the geth bodily into the air, a heat haze rippled around her, and her grip on the geth at its shoulders was sending shrieks of tortured metal as Aethyta and Jack came back from their own errand. Jack's jaw dropped open as she spotted Joru, wrestling with the suspended geth, its arms immobilized, and one leg tangled up, though it kept trying to awkwardly kick at the dragoness with its unencumbered leg.
"Joru! What the fuck-"
"Holy SHIT girl!"
Joru ignored both of them. Her gaze was locked on that of the geth in her clutches, and her arms bulged. Her fanged mouth opened and a hiss rose to a roar as she tore the geth's arms from its torso.
"...fffffuck that's hot."
Aethyta bopped the back of Jack's head as she stepped forward, her shotgun lowering and blowing off the head of the geth, making sure to take the antenna with it. "Joru, are you alright?"
Lyris peeked out of the Core-well in time to hear the darastrix's reply, "Yes... yes. I will be. We have bigger problems than geth."
"So how did you get dragged into this mess?" Jack sent another shockwave chasing the retreating geth.
Aethyta sent a warp twisting through the enemy ranks to blow a Destroyer to shards, "Believe it or not, Benezia asked me personally."
"Really? Joru didn't drag you along in her wake?"
"Nah, if anything, I got her going in this direction."
The pair were making short work of the geth, but the damned rocket troopers were being obnoxious. Three had taken up station on a balcony beside the control booth overlooking the main reactor floor, and were forcing the pair to alternate shielding from a ripple-fired volley of missiles. Still, of the original dozen or two geth, they were down to the three rocket troopers, a pair of Primes, and four or five shock troopers. At least they had managed to blow the damned hoppers to bits.
The last missile streaked towards her, and Jack slammed it aside with a Throw, just as Aethyta sent a singularity to drag the rocket troopers off their perch. The electronic squeal of the geth ended when Jack fired a Warp into the swirl of dark energy, sending a blastwave out to engulf all three of them. By then, however, the primes and shock troopers had managed to retreat out of the power complex.
"Right, now, let's see what shape this place is in. I hope we haven't blown too many important bits to hell."
Aethyta nodded as the human slid out of cover and headed towards the control room, under the balcony that the geth had been using as a sniper nest. "I'll check the reactor vessel, you see what you can dig up on the console in there."
"S'what I was planning, grandma."
Aethyta's lips pursed at the comment, but knelt at the access panel for the main He3 reactor, "Right, now let's see what you're looking like..."
Jack grunted a bit, using a biotic shockwave to launch herself up to the balcony rail. The long, square-U walkway around the main reactor assembly was riddled with bullet-holes, torn deckplates and mangled bits of metal. Also more than a couple drops of blood, both crimson and cobalt. Jack's gaze flicked around as she made absolutely certain that the geth were dead and not just playing possum. A quick warp made both of their torsos unrecognizable, and she quickly got down to the business of looting anything worth taking.
She'd already stowed a couple of the geth pulse-rifles in a dufflebag she'd found in one of the outer rooms. It looked to have been a shower of some sort, prior to having been torn to shreds. She didn't need more of the guns, but she did check to see if she could find any obvious mods she could remove. She was no tech-weenie, but she knew a good gun when she spotted one.
There wasn't much left of the rocket troopers, her Warp-detonation of Aethyta's Singularity was particularly effective, almost up there with Aria's Flare. Jack was still working on hers.
Aethyta's voice drifted up from the lower area, and Jack glanced over in her direction, "Any of them left up there?"
"Not a one. You want a trophy?"
"Nah."
Jack grinned a bit, more for her. "So, how'd you meet Joru, then?"
Aethyta busied herself with the access panel while Jack leaned on the railing, "The first time, or when she decided to tell me who she was?"
"So, I wasn't the only one to get that treatment, huh?"
"Nah," Aethyta finally manged to get the access panel off, "She does that to everybody. First time was on Therum, I was.. Looking for someone. Didn't find her, but I found Joru instead. She was disguised as an asari at the time, did some stuff to the geth there I didn't think possible."
"Yeah, well, we know better about her now." Jack had slid into the main control room, checking to make sure the geth hadn't disabled anything too major. "Fuck, when you're done there, you might need to take a look at this."
"More boobytraps?"
Jack gave a snort, "You should be more worried about those than me." After a pause for Aethyta's non-reaction, Jack shrugged, "Nah, but one of the consoles in here is shot to hell."
"Dammit, knowing the geth, it's probably the primary controls, or something. Hang on, I'll be up in a bit. In the mean time, how'd you meet her?"
Jack gave a grin, "Saw her first in the ring. Eclipse Sisterhood does this thing once in a while where they let various people fight, just hand-to-hand, no armor, and the best bitch gets an offer to join. They let anyone compete, but only asari get the invite."
"Let me guess, Joru wiped the floor with her opponents?"
"Something like. I thought she was going to kill the sisterhood initiate they sent to test her, though. Would have, if the judges hadn't caught her in Stasis."
Jack turned as Aethyta's whistle came from the doorway, "Hand-to-hand? How?"
While the human biotic recounted the tale, Aethyta worked on the console. Jack had enough tech expertise to recognize she was more hindrance than help in a technical situation, and kept guard while Aethyta fixed the console.
"Damn lucky none of the shots hit anything irreplaceable. Right, I think I got the bypass working right. So, what happened once they pulled her off that poor girl?"
"That's when the Blood Pack started their push. I bugged out when they called for volunteers, but I think they shanghaied Joru into fighting them off on the bridge."
Aethyta gave a soft chuckle, "After what I've seen of her, I bet she could give krogan a run for their money."
"Oh, she put one of those guys down hard during the tournament. Wish I had seen it, but I caught a bit of the aftermath."
"Ohh?" Aethyta quickly ran through the pre-start checklist, "Damn, something buggered the fuel lines. Go take a look?"
"Sure." Jack slid out of the control booth, and tapped her earbud to make sure Aethyta could still hear her, "So yeah, she put down a krogan hard. I heard later that the Eclipse made the Blood Pack run with their tails between their legs. Got no doubt Joru was behind that. Didn't hear anything else about her until she turned up to help me deal with some gangers the next day."
"Heh." Aethyta was busy, doing systems checks on the rest of the reactor systems, and trying to remember what Shev had taught her about running a fast cold-start on one of these. It wasn't the same as a fusion reactor on board a ship, much bigger for one thing, but it had most of the same features, and even a helpful little VI checklist.
"Oh god fucking dammit..." Aethyta looked out the window to see Jack kicking the fuel-line, where one of them wasn't so much damaged as 'blown in half'. "Fuck, I think I did that when I knocked aside one of the rockets!"
"Jack, I'm sure you didn't do it deliberately, and many of the rockets missed anyway, maybe the Geth were aiming at it, instead of you?" She slid out of the control booth and dropped down from the balcony to see what the damage was.
"I shoulda been more careful." Jack's face was pinched and twisted with fury, both at the situation and at herself. "Shoulda watched my fire, shoulda watched where my deflections were going."
Aethyta laid a hand on Jack's shoulder, but the young human violently threw it off. "I don't need your comforting, blueberry, I... I'll be alright."
"Jack, even if it was your fault, and I'm not saying it is, I'm sure you didn't do it deliberately. The only one blaming you is yourself."
"...Yeah, yeah, I know." She took a deep breath and sighed, "Right, probably we should head back then. This place is a bust."
Aethyta gave a nod and headed to the door, giving a sigh as she turned on her omni-light. Guess they'd have to get used to the pitch-dark or dim-red of emergency lights.
"Sound off."
"Wrex here, stop bothering me."
"Vakarian, no problems."
"Veshar and Kiha. Orders, Spectre?"
"Um, this is Tali, I'm fine..."
Vasir gave a nod, mentally cursing the quarian for being too good at her job. The readout taken from the VI terminal in the outer office indicated that the tramlines would be out of commission until they had gotten main power up and running, but there were too damn many geth in that direction. They'd had a running firefight, retreating before the geth for a while before being driven into the tram tunnels. The geth hadn't pursued them, probably regrouping and calling for backup. Strangely, they hadn't found any krogan around, though there'd been plenty of pieces of them.
"Right, if the geth are still here, then it means that Joru and her band must have been repulsed. Unfortunately, they're between us and the way out, so we're going to have to walk the tramline until we can find another way out."
"Have I mentioned yet how much I hate the cold?" Wrex grunted as he hefted his shotgun.
"Turians aren't adapted for this sort of climate, Spectre."
"Can it you two. The faster we get started, the faster we can get out of here."
"Um, what was that?"
Vasir turned to look where Tali was gazing down the tramline, "What?"
"I'm fairly certain I picked up an acoustical signature from down there."
"...So, you heard something."
The quarian girl turned her head to give a blank-visored glance in her direction as the Spectre climbed up on the tramline. It was narrow, but stable, and a damned sight warmer than the ice underfoot.
"It's not just that. I picked up the sound of ice cracking, echoing down the tunnel. And something else, I'm not sure what."
"You sure?"
Tali shook her head and tapped the side of her helm, "My acoustical sensors are very good. I upgraded them myself when I was assigned ventilation detail. Finding and replacing clogged filters is easier when you can hear the difference in their vibrations."
Vasir nodded, "Right then. We proceed down the tram tunnel, but keep together and keep alert. Veshar, Kiha. Scout. Two hundred meter point."
"Yes, Spectre." The two commandos sprinted silently ahead. Both were veterans, older than she was, but sworn to her service. She'd had them for a good century now, and both had given her exemplary service.
"Pack it up people, we head out now."
"THERE you are, you little... Gotcha."
The darkness was finally illuminated by dim red as the emergency lights finally came on, small strips along the edges of the floor. Lyris pushed herself out of the small, cramped space under the deckplating in the VI-Core room, and took Elnaris' hand with a grateful smile. "Goddess bless the light."
"We still have a lot of work to do, don't get complacent." Joru gave a faint smile and a slight nod to the young asari, "Still, good job with that. Now..."
She addressed the VI, "Can we get the tram-lines open with only emergency power?"
"I'm sorry, but the Trams require more power than the secondary Emergency Power Cell can provide. Emergency Power will last for the next, 60, hours."
Joru's lips pursed as Jack let out a curse, "Fuckin' hell, sorry about that shit."
"It's not your fault, the geth intentionally targeted the reactor vessel to prevent us from getting things running." Aethyta rested a hand on Jack's shoulder, the human biotic clenching her fists a bit.
"Fuck. Anyway, now what do we do?"
"We go on foot." Joru turned, long tail snaking sinuously behind her.
"But it's nearly six kilometers to Rift Station!" Lyris's voice was almost a wail.
"Then we had best begin swiftly." Joru's glowing eyes glanced back over her shoulder, "If you can't continue, I can carry you."
Lyris gave a shiver, but shook her head, sighing as she got to her feet. "Might as well start. Quicker begun, soonest done."
"Indeed." She could have sworn that Joru smirked at her in the dim light.
"Wrex!"
"NOT THE TIME VASIR!"
The guns were drumming hard, punishing the weird alien insects. They hadn't gotten more than a kilometer down the tunnels before Tali's prediction had come true. Just what these things are was anybody's guess, but at least they splatted easily.
The problem was there were so goddamn many of them.
"Kiha, left flank, Veshar, go with. Tali, stay bunkered down, Garrus cover her. Wrex?"
"Busy!" The krogan was up front, shotgun roaring and stomping through the guts and gore like he was having the time of his life. Still, even he was falling back slowly. There wasn't an inch of cover in the tram tunnels, carved through rock and ice in a laser-straight line from Peak Station to Rift Station. If they were pushed back too far, they'd be caught between the geth and these...things.
Vasir's own gun was barking, nothing as deep as the thudding sound of Wrex's shottie, but deeper than the twin pistols Kiha preferred, or the lighter, faster chatter of Veshar's submachinegun. Garrus's sniper took occasional deep bass booms, but Vasir was startled into snapping her head around when something that sounded like a deep staccato roar thundered from behind her.
Three more asari stepped into line, two were commandos, Vasir could recognize the leathers, one using an SMG in short controlled bursts, the other racking the slide on her shotgun as she advanced to back up the krogan.
The third, she knew. "Aethyta."
"Vasir." The matriarch didn't even have a gun in hand, but she and the inked human beside her sent out a pair of staggered shockwaves that blew the left flank to pieces, tearing a half-dozen of the creatures to shreds.
But what caught and held Vasir's attention was the dark figure behind all of them. Tall, almost invisible against the darkness of the tram tunnel, save for eerie glowing eyes. The figure held some sort of gun, but Vasir couldn't tell what it was until that roar thundered out again, and a stuttering burst of muzzle flashes seared themselves across her vision. The effect was devastating, though. Four of the creatures were hit, and all of them burst into flames wherever one of the white-hot shards touched them.
The figure moved forward, even as Vasir whipped her head back to survey the carnage. The deep, primal thunder made Vasir's lungs vibrate in her chest as Jorukaia moved up beside her tore another one of those oversized bugs to shreds, "Fancy meeting you here."
"Less talk, more killing." Vasir could barely hear her. The thunder of Joru's weapon was too damn loud, and it echoed to the point where speech was impossible. Joru didn't stop with Vasir, but moved up to where Wrex and the unknown commando were holding the front line against the now-thinning horde of the insectile things. Vasir didn't catch what she said, not over the drumming fire, but Wrex snapped his head to stare at her.
There were only six of the bugs still moving when Joru at last let up on that trigger. Vasir was glad the audio filters in her helmet were up to code, or she'd probably be deaf. Krogan were more used to such things, and Vasir spotted Tali behind one of the pillars, both arms wrapped over her helmet, probably to muffle the deafening sound as much as she could. Garrus was with her, his rifle braced on the top of the tram rail.
"Tell me that again!" Wrex's voice was loud, angry, almost snarling as he turned to Joru, ignoring the last bug as he casually blew its head to pulp.
Joru shot him a glance as she lowered her gun, working something at the breach, "You heard me."
"Rachni." Vasir heard the venom in the old krogan's voice, "Rachni! They've been dead for a thousand years, my people hunted them to extinction!"
"And yet, here they are." Joru finished fitting a new heatsink into that monster of hers, shooting the krogan battlemaster a calm look, "We got the confirmation off the VI core. Binary Helix was experimenting with a rachni queen they hatched from an egg they found in a hulled ship someone discovered in deep interstellar space."
Vasir moved up, eyes narrow, "Rachni. Bullshit." Her gun was held level at the darastrix.
"Tell me, Wrex, what do rachni look like?" Flaming-red eyes bored into the krogan's.
Vasir was startled when Wrex's slow words turned into a snarl and he stomped forward, working the slide on his shotgun and sending booming blasts into the still-twitching corpses.
"WREX!"
"I'm not waiting for you, Blueberry! I've got rachni to hunt!"
Vasir gave a sigh and turned back to the horned alien, "Right, just... I want to say give me the gun, but we both know you're probably just as dangerous without it."
"Go on..." Joru's toothy smile was slightly unnerving.
"Fine, fuck it. You're under arrest, but given parole until we can sort this mess out. Between geth and...whatever these things are," she refused to call them rachni until she had seen proof, "we'll probably need your help."
"A wise decision."
Joru's condescending tone made Vasir give her a glare. "Can the sarcasm. If we do this, we do it right." She turned to the rest of them, "Alright, Aethyta, I take it you're in charge of this bunch?"
"Actually, Joru is." The matriarch smirked at her, and the heavily tattooed human gave a snicker.
"Whatever. I propose a temporary cease-fire. We go in, deal with whatever the shit this is, and after that, I figure out what to do with the lot of you." At Jack's narrowed glare, she went on, "You were found in the company of, and aiding, a wanted fugitive from Council Space. As a Spectre, it's my duty to arrest all of you and dump you on C-Sec for them to sort out, but I'll think about it after we make sure there isn't going to be another Rachni War."
"Sensible." Aethyta gave her a smile, one that Vasir recognized as the schoolteacher complimenting the diligent student. "In the mean time, we'd best get going. Wrex doesn't look like he's going to stop anytime soon."
Another distant boom of a shotgun was followed by Wrex's laughing shout, "Come on, slowpokes, you're missing the fun!"
Vasir rolled her eyes as Joru gave a soft snicker, "Fine. Let's go."