When the Normandy's cargo bay light lit up to signal that they reached the drop zone, Jack and the others jumped out of the hatch not knowing what was beneath them. Jack could only hope that whatever was attacking colonists on the surface hadn't already gotten the beacon. He didn't fancy having to battle that awful ship with so little firepower. His boots were the first to hit the ground and even though he used his jetpack to slow his fall, he still had to roll forward to land safely. While the others started landing behind him, he looked around to survey their immediate environment. If there wasn't clearly a fight going on evident by the burning trees around them, Jack assumed that this place would appear to be like any other stereotypical agricultural colony. The wheat and corn fields seemed to stretch on for as far as the eye could see while native creatures floated across the crops appearing to be grazing on them. Despite the rather scenic farmlands, the sight of uncontrollable wildfires and the sounds of intermittent gun fire told the group that something was very wrong here.
Kaidan landed right beside him glancing around seemingly disgusted by the scene unfolding, "You'd think that the Batarians would've learned their lesson by now..."
"I don't think the Batarians are the ones behind the attack." Jack conceded not seeing any Batarian bodies amongst the carnage.
He didn't have time to elaborate hearing Ashley and Richard landing before the Normandy took off back into low orbit. Since he was a native to the planet, Richard seemed understandably the most upset about the situation then the rest of them. Richard's depressed reaction was exactly what Jack was afraid of when they first talked. There was always the possibility he could crack under pressure especially if this was his first mission. He remembered how nervous he was landing on Akuze and that hadn't started as violently as Eden Prime was shaping up to be. In the end though, Jack was relieved he made it to the cargo hold on time. The maze like set up for the colony outskirts ahead of them would've been hard to navigate without a guide. At least the outer edges of the colony would be different enough that he could get lost if he was on his own. Once they got past the front gates most colonies the Alliance controlled this close to the Terminus had a prefabricated design. Whether it was morally right or not, the Alliance saw colonies this far in the Traverse as not being worth individualized blueprints due to the constant instability of the region.
After a few moments of waiting for the boy to recover from his shock, Jack turned towards him asking, "Do you think you could get us to the center of the city? That's supposedly where the beacon will be located."
Richard attempted to appear stoic gripping his M83 Avenger assault rifle far tighter than he needed to, "Yes sir, I'll lead the way and it shouldn't take more than twenty minutes to get there if we hurry."
Jack motioned silently for him to lead them and started moving at a quick jog right behind him letting the more experienced Ashley and Kaidan take the rear of their tight grouped formation. The only real chance for this mission to be successful was if they avoided any major confrontations with the attackers and steal the Prothean device from under their noses. He was trying to keep track of all the twists and turns they were making on the forest path in case they needed to come back this way but, it was starting to become too confusing to keep track of. As he turned around yet another corner, he saw Richard had stopped and so he held up his fist so that the others would slow down. At first, Jack was concerned that they had somehow gotten lost, until he saw Richard was standing over a pile of bodies. They were burned recently with the embers still visible, and it looked like their killers had tossed them aside like trash.
He approached Richard slowly guessing this was the first time the private had seen anything like this, "You ok private...?" Jack asked him gently doing his best to keep him calm.
The soldier had misty looking eyes but nodded, "I think I knew them... This family ran the pharmacy for the colony since I was born. Mr. Taylorson always gave me free candy when me or my family was sick."
Ashley shook her head with disdain in her voice, "Damn Batarians, they liked to leave all sorts of barbaric messages around colonies they sacked... This is worse..."
Kaidan looked around sounding skeptical, "Yeah but what message are they giving to people in the middle of this forest outside of the actual colony?"
The sound of approaching machine gun fire rang in Jack's ears, so he shoved Richard forward to get behind a tree before he quickly doubled back and ducked behind a rock in front of him. After a few seconds, Jack perked his head up over the rock and saw six fist sized military drones chasing a woman down the hill ahead of them. Upon giving the situation a closer look, Jack realized that the woman was the same one from the earlier distress call he saw. The drones' attention was completely focused on the woman, so Jack signaled the others to start shooting from their positions in the tree line. While these machines could pack a serious punch with their rapid-fire weaponry, the armor they used was often described as coming from a tin can. It was no wonder then that the drones went down like annoying pests from the combined firepower of the five of them. During the brief fight, Jack was surprised at how well the supposed civilian woman handled her pistol but, he guessed it made sense to learn how to shoot when you lived so close to the Terminus Systems.
When it became clear that no more drones were coming at the moment, Jack emerged from cover and approached the woman, "Are you ok ma'am? Can you tell me what happened here?"
"It all happened so fast, one second I was getting ready to meet a colleague for lunch and the next I was running for my life from those bloody Geth." The woman spoke quickly displaying emotional distress that mostly appeared logical for the situation.
Jacks' eyebrows shot up in surprise, but Kaidan was the first to speak, "Geth? Here? They haven't been seen past the Perseus Veil in nearly three hundred years, why would they attack us now?"
Having been with a Quarian lover in the past six months, Jack had spent many a night having pillow talk about the Geth. The way his ex told the story, the Geth were the first true artificial intelligence ever developed in the galaxy and his Quarian ancestors were honored by the prestige of having that creation. At first, the Geth were tasked with low class labor jobs that Quarian scientists couldn't be bothered with. However, around three hundred years ago, the Geth took up arms against what they saw as their evil owners and ultimately, kicked the Quarian's off their homeworld of Rannoch. As a result of the AI rebellion, the Citadel Council refused to allocate any space on any world for the roughly eleven billion Quarian refugees thus forcing them to live on a flotilla they called, the Migrant Fleet. Jack guessed that the Geth had another perspective on the situation but, none had travelled this far from the Veil to be asked.
Ashley folded her arms and looked around, "They're probably here for the same reason we are lieutenant, the Prothean beacon."
The woman blinked in surprise seemingly stunned by the revelation, "So that's what they dug up, no one would tell me anything about what was going on. Look, I have a ship in a clearing just a little way away. If we hurry, we could make it before more Geth show up."
Jack thought the forest was a strange place to leave your ship, yet he didn't have a lot of time to question it, "Thank you for the offer, ma'am. It's our mission to collect the Prothean beacon. You should also stay grounded for now; we have no idea what kind of air power the Geth have around here."
Her eyes filled with tears, and she sounded rather desperate, "I don't want to die here, what if they come back and I run out of ammo and places to hide?" Jack had seen people desperate before at the same time something seemed off about this. She was too upset when most people would just be numb at this point.
Richard stepped forward so he could look at Jack, "Let me stay with her Commander while you move ahead and get the beacon. The city center is a straight shot from the path you can't-" A loud bang cut Richard's sentence short as a bullet flew right between his eyes.
Jack turned to see the woman who had just been crying seconds earlier had drawn her weapon and fired with the accuracy of a highly trained marksman. Richard fell straight to the ground having died instantly; the particulates of his brain matter was trapped within his helmet making a mess of his face. Before the three of them could pull their own weapons up at her, six more drones came zipping around the tree line forcing them to scatter for cover. The woman was disappearing fast behind another tree line to their right while the drones moved to fast to get a clear shot at them. Even though he wanted to stop her to avenge Richard, the beacon was more important right now. Playing a pure numbers game was something Jack hated doing, in this situation though it was necessary. How many more Richards could they prevent if they got the beacon rather than getting revenge? As bullets started flying it seemed as though the three of them were in agreement, getting into cover to fight the drones.
Kaidan was the closest to him providing covering fire while shouting over the noise, "What the hell do we do now Commander?"
Ashley was glaring at the trees where the woman ran off towards saying, "Screw the beacon, I'm going after that bitch."
Jack was too far to physically grab her, so he just yelled, "You heard the Captain, I order you to stick to the mission, we'll get her another time."
She was determined to act though and soon Ashley was sprinting out of cover behind the rocks and into the woods following the other woman. Jack grunted in anger unable to stop her, so he focused all his energy on killing the drones. When their fast weapons overheated, he stood up using his biotic energy to grab one drone and send it flying into another. The momentum of the pull sent both of the drones crashing into a nearby tree giving Kaidan the opportunity to shoot three more out of the sky. With just one left, Jack grabbed Richard's assault rifle on the ground next to him and unloaded the clip into the drone. It spun around in the air for a few seconds trying to stabilize itself before crashing onto the ground with a puff of dust flying up from the impact.
Kaidan stood up and walked over to Richard kneeling down in front of him, the blast from the shot took away any chance of closing his eyes so Kaidan just sighed, "I'm sure he's in a better place now." He looked up again towards the trees where Ashley disappeared following the other woman, "What do we do about them Commander?"
In a normal situation like this, Jack would've been asking that question himself to the Captain but with communications down it was up to him, "We need to keep moving, otherwise we leave Nihlus hanging, and he might need help. Ashley can handle herself, I'm sure when she's done with that, she'll catch back up with us. I need you focused on the mission, understood?"
Kaidan obviously wanted to go after Ashley, though unlike her, he respected the chain of command so, after one last look back he grabbed his weapon looking ready, "Understood, let's get that beacon and then get the hell off this rock."
Jack chuckled weakly glad the lieutenant could still make a joke out of this situation but the way he saw it, there was nothing to joke about. Not thirty minutes into the mission and one of his soldiers was dead and another was MIA. If he made it out of this, he doubted Nihlus would see his performance very positively. A Turian raised to be the best possible soldier from birth in any military situation would no doubt view him as a worse failure than the forces in charge of protecting Pearl Harbor. Maybe that was a good thing though, he didn't want to be a SPECTRE to bring more attention to his private life anyway. Now he just had to reach Nihlus and warn him about the Geth, so this mission didn't go any worse.
_o0o0o0o0o_
Ashley knew on some level Commander Shepard was right and the mission should come first. Prothean beacons weren't something to sneeze at especially considering everything they learned on Mars from the Archive. However, she had never left a man behind during her campaigns in the Blitz. If a Batarian dared to kill someone on her team, she made damn sure they got what they deserved. The way she saw it if she didn't kill the bastards who could butcher her friends without a second thought, then who would? More importantly to the situation at hand, Jack Shepard was a veteran with more experience than her and Kaidan combined. If any one of them could afford completing the objective alone it was Jack. Meanwhile Ashley was going to make sure Richard Jenkins got the justice he deserved.
The woman who just blew his brains out was a fast runner and most certainly not a mere secretary that she portrayed herself as. First of all, she could run in heels through a dense field of agricultural crops. Having grown up on a farm Ashley knew how easy it was to fall over in the middle of cornstalks. The only reason she was doing so well was that her heavy armor could crush any vegetation under her feet without affecting her balance. Secondly, the woman could fire her pistol over her shoulder in Ashley's vague direction in a surprisingly accurate manner. A farmer on an out of the way planet like Eden Prime had to be trained in some marksmanship, due to wild animals or foreign invaders like the Batarians. That said farmers did not have to learn advanced maneuvers to avoid being pursued. Taking all of that into account Ashley was going to have to treat this woman as a far more dangerous opponent than the average criminal mercenary.
She decided to stop and train her rifle on the woman's ankle, "Stop now or I will put you down!"
The woman slowed to a halt turning to face her, "No, you won't Williams. I know you enough to know that at the end of the day you won't do anything that goes against Humanity's best interests."
Ashley proved her wrong immediately squeezing the trigger to put a hole in her leg, "The best interest for humanity isn't to kill soldiers trying to help you in cold blood. So please, spare me whatever speech you had prepared and stand down."
The woman fell to the ground with only a slight groan while returning fire in a desperate attempt to stop what was coming. A part of Ashley debated whether or not there was anything to be gained by questioning this woman. Someone as professional as she appeared to be wouldn't kill an Alliance soldier during some sort of attack for no reason. She might have more information on the Geth that they could act on in the future. Unfortunately, from their interactions so far Ashley was under the impression this other woman wasn't going to talk without some serious persuasion. The type of interrogation that couldn't be conducted in the middle of a field during a ground operation. Usually that would mean Ashley would secure this unknown secretary for extraction back to base. Problem there was the death of Jenkins proved she was an unreliable prisoner at best. Despite not being the most morally sound option, Ashley was willing to kill her right now to get it over with.
"I was trying to make sure that the Prothean data got off the planet before the bloody Geth could get their synthetic hands on it. You four stopping me jeopardized more than you could ever imagine." She claimed confidently as though she hadn't just been wounded.
Ashley tensed slowly approaching her with extreme caution, "Give me one good reason to believe you."
The woman smiled reaching into her pocket, "I only need one." She pulled out an OSD drive extending it towards her, "This is everything we were able to gather on the Protheans. Take it and get out of here before the Geth find it."
Like a fool Ashley reached out to grab the OSD only to get punched in the face with her free hand. A punch to the face with a helmet on normally wouldn't cause much damage, which was why Ashley was surprised when she went flying through several cornstalks before landing on her ass. This secretary wasn't just a special op officer that went rogue, she was a biotic like Kaidan and Shepard. She was way out of her league dealing with a biotic on her own running away from her squad. Ashley snatched her assault rifle off the ground as soon as she got to her senses to fire blindly in the other woman's direction. Her frustration was coming up to a boiling point as no matter how much of her clip was unloaded upon the secretary, her biotics brushed them aside harmlessly into some corn behind her. As she pushed herself to her feet a biotic blast tripped her off her feet back to the ground. It wasn't long before her rifle was out of ammo and the only sound that could be heard was the clicking from her empty weapon.
The woman finally lowered her biotic shield with a tired slump of her shoulders, "I'm disappointed in you Williams, your whole career has been trying to redeem yourself after the sins of your father. One day I assumed you could join us for the betterment of humanity. Turns out you swallow all of the propaganda that the Alliance throws at you like everyone else."
Ashley used the assault rifle as a bat trying to hit the woman in the face, "I will not be lectured about my patriotism by a fucking terrorist!"
The first strike was dodged with ease only for the second to blow to be caught in her grip, "Fair enough, if you want to keep getting in my way, I'll get rid of you like I did Private Jenkins."
With her good leg the woman kicked Ashley's calf to get her to loosen her grip on the rifle and make her eyes water. Not a second later the butt of the gun smacked against the side of her face making Ashley collapse on the ground in pain. The hit was going to leave a bruise yet thankfully she was used to getting into brawls on the farm, so she wasn't going to be that easy of a kill. Before the rifle could connect with her skull a second time Ashley slammed into the leg gunshot wound, she delivered a moment ago. Luckily, the kick was enough for her to be rewarded with a yell in pain and now both women were on the ground panting heavily. She lunged forward to get her hands around the secretary's throat only to be shoved aside with her bare hands. Even though her face was in the dirt yet again, Ashley was satisfied with the fact that she wasn't using biotics. That meant she was getting tired, and Ashley potentially had a chance to finish this.
Ashley slowly dragged herself up to her feet sporting a wild grin, "Biotics failing you huh? Looks like someone isn't used to their implants, or you haven't met a real Alliance soldier before. We don't give up easily."
Before the woman could reply, a massive explosion shook the ground beneath them coming from the settlement in the distance. No doubt it was Shepard's doing in his battle with the Geth to get to the beacon. For a second time now, Ashley was torn on whether or not she should keep fighting this bitch or try to get back to her squad. She said she had information on the Protheans but that didn't mean she was telling the truth. How many lies had she already told today for her own advantage? Maybe she should just cut her losses to get back to the squad she dropped here with. Unlike the Batarians who had diplomatic immunity after the Blitz was over, this woman would be hunted to the ends of the galaxy for killing a member of the Alliance. At the same time, if she really did have Prothean data and Ashley let her go her family's legacy would be ruined beyond repair.
The woman decided for her using one last biotic blast to knock her off of her feet, "It's your lucky day Williams, Shepard's shenanigans normally get his team killed. We won't meet again, just know the Prothean data you so desperately desire will end up in the right hands."
Ashley was forced to watch helplessly as the woman disappeared deeper into the field of corn. For a few seconds all Ashley could do was wonder what the other woman meant when she talked about Shepard's 'shenanigans' as she called it. The Blitz may have been hard on everyone but, political beliefs aside, Jack was a war hero. He single handedly ended the fighting on Torfan yet the bitch had the audacity to try to sow division between them. What could she possibly know about Jack that Ashley didn't? Deciding the answer had to be absolutely nothing, Ashley picked up her assault rifle and started making her way back to the spaceport. Jenkins' death was going to have to be avenged another time. She just hoped she could get back before she was too late to actually make a difference.