Castle of Doom
Blacksite Science Section, Minas-Kito System, March 30, 2193
The man awoke to the sounds of alarms blaring, explosions rocked the ceilings above him as the hovering metal slab he was restrained to suddenly powered down. The man felt weightless for a moment as the slab fell down onto the ground with an audible thud. His whole body was hit with a massive jolt of pain as his back impacted the ground and his body rolled of the slab. The various wounds he was only recently subjected to still burned and bit at him without rest, but that only served to awaken him further from his medically induced delirium.
Ignoring the pain which burned through every inch of his wounded and battered body, he got up from the floor and winced as he stretched his muscles. Every single minute movement sent searing pain through his body, warning him to stop. He couldn't afford to do that right now, he had to figure out just what in the actual Hell was going on here. choosing between two directions, the man decided that the direction the slab was already going was the best choice. Running down the hall, he grit through the pain, struggling to balance his body as he stumbled on his wounded legs. He could barely even stand on his own legs as he turned the corner when he saw them.
Aliens, a whole lot of them, all bearing down on him. The aliens caught him by surprise and he lost his footing. He fell down onto the floor on his back, reopening some wounds and smearing blood on the cold metal floor.
He turned and tried to get up to run away but he slipped on his own blood and fell again face first. After crying out from the pain and wincing from being covered in his own blood, he looked up and saw the aliens had surrounded him and had all their weapons trained on him. The man closed his eyes and braced himself for the worst. He was fully expecting the aliens to just riddle him full of bullets immediately, but was confused to see that they didn't.
The man reopened his eyes to see that one of the aliens were arguing with the others and was pushing down their weapons. It was shouting loudly and it looked like it was one of the aliens in charge. Why it wanted to keep him alive was beyond him, perhaps they haven't ran out of uses for him yet and intended on cutting him up all over again.
Whatever it was, they were speaking in their alien language -they were incomprehensible to him. The man was helpless, unable to do anything to defend himself. He was at the total mercy of whatever these aliens wanted to do.
One of the aliens, the one that told it's friends to stand down, he pressed a few buttons on his helmet and the black reflective material of the T-shaped visor faded to provide a clear view of it's face. It looked nothing like the aliens that abducted him, it looked more avian, with hard scales and jagged teeth. They were nothing like the four eyed humanoids that attacked Shanxi, or the slim and slimy newt looking ones that have been holding him prisoner.
"What in God's good Earth are you?" The man rasped out, genuinely confused.
The alien knelt down so that he could be closer to the man. With a clearly digitized flanging and translated voice, the alien spoke to him with a tone that sounded almost like it cared about him.
"I'm a Turian." The Alien said. "My name is Saren Arterius. I'm here to help."
To say that the man was shocked would be understating it. He wasn't sure what was going on, but he had to stay guarded.
"You understand me, of course you do." The man interrupted himself with a nasty cough. "Poking around my brain for that long would have thought you as much."
"Calm down," this Saren character tried to reassure him. "we're not the ones who held you prisoner. We're here to get you out of here."
"Yeah." The man rasped out as he feebly attempted to move away from the alien. "I'm not falling for another one of your alien tricks."
One of the other aliens was becoming restless, but Saren told it to hold off.
"You say you aren't here to cut me up." the man said. "Then how come you can translate my words to your language, and yours to mine?"
"I helped your people fight off the Batarians, the aliens that invaded you." Saren explained. "I worked with the man in charge of the fleet defending the colony of Eden Prime, Captain Steven Hackett."
The name, Hackett, suddenly reminded him where... no, who, he was trying to run to in the first place.
"Hackett!" He suddenly exclaimed with sudden vigor, taking the Turians around him off guard. "I need to find... I need to... Agh!"
He tried to get up again as he spoke, but his legs faltered again. He stumbled, but Saren caught the man.
"Calm down." Saren said. "We'll help you out, but at least tell me your name first."
The man looked at the alien apprehensively, unsure of what to do. After a few seconds of struggling with it -an eternity in his mind- the man decided to take a leap of faith.
"I'm..." The man coughed out a blood covered phlegm out of his throat. He coughed a bit more before finding the strength to continue.
"My name is... Shepard."
-000-
Kangl was startled by the rapid knocking on his door. He quickly checked on one of his cameras and saw that it was the Turians, one of them was supporting a Human, curiously enough.
With a flip of a switch, he opened the doors and let the Turians in. They rushed in, securing the room and afterwards setting their sights on him.
"Easy, Turians. I'm with you." Kangl told them as he raised his hands up.
"That remains to be seen." One of the Turians said.
Another Turian, the one supporting a Human, turned to him and ordered.
"He needs medical attention." The other Turian barked at him.
Kangl saw this as a chance to prove that he was working with them. He rushed to the Human and ushered him to his desk. The Blackwatch operators threw all the stuff from Kangl's desk to the floor, clearing it up for the Human to use.
The Salarian security chief had paid close attention to the reports from Saleon's work, so he somewhat understood the parts of the damage that happened, though he hesitated to give an educated guess as to how extensive it went.
"Ugh, Saleon outdone himself." Kangl muttered, disgustedly.
He pulled up a standard issue STG medikit. Though he wasn't sure if he could deal with the internal damage, Kangl was confident that thhe surface wounds could be managed easily. He pulled out some Kolto gel, suture needles, and sterilized medical string. These he was certain would work -he had used the same items on an Asari some years before, after all.
It took him almost half an hour to close and clean up the various wounds on the Human's body, but eventually he finished up with a universal anti-septic spray to stave off any infection which may fester on the wound.
"This is the best I can do." Kangl told the Blackwatch operators.
One of them looked over the Human, then looked to each other. They seemed to look satisfied, so they lowered their weapons, though they still gripped it tightly.
"Start explaining, fast." The one that helped up the Human said.
Kangl nodded and activated the holo-projector on his office. When the display only came back with an error message, he balled his fist and took a deep breath. Looks like he'll need to explain all of this manually.
"This is an STG blacksite, as you probably have already figured out."
"Get to the point." Another Turian barked at him.
"This blacksite is built to study and create things that are meant to change the tide of the war." Kangl began explaining. "A lot of research happens here; some of them successful, many more aren't."
"Just how long has this facility been around?" The Turian watching over the Human asked.
"Too long, obviously. I'm not made aware of much that happened before I was assigned here, only that a lot of important research is made here."
"What kind of research are we talking about?"
"Technical, biological, artificial intelligence... whatever can give Citadel troops the edge in the war."
"Artificial intelligence? I thought that the Council had it outlawed after the Geth Uprising with the Quarians?" One of the younger Turians questioned.
"It was, but my superiors could hardly muster up the will to care. Their only interest is in maintaining the Council's supremacy over the galaxy. This means new weapons, new armor, advanced personal VIs... You know that miracle medicine we started deploying to our troops two years ago?"
"Kolto Gel? The one that heals Levos, but is poisonous to Dextros like us? The same one that has been impossible to reverse engineer even today?"
"That was first made here, in this very facility." Kangl told them, then pointed at the Human. "Kolto is created by reverse engineering a medical psubstance that we've found on one of their worlds."
The Blackwatch operators all looked at the Human, though only one of them understood what it meant. Kangl assumed that he must have been one of the few Blackwatch operators that had made first contact with the Humans.
"You reverse-engineered the Human's Medigel." Said Turian stated.
"That's right. It wasn't easy and the complexity of Medigel still surprises us today. Kolto is a bastardized version of Medigel, only half as effective as the original."
The Turians looked among each other and realized just what they had stumbled into.
He now spoke up again.
"What about the rest of the Humans you captured? Where are they?" He asked.
"That's what I need your help with." Kangl told them. "The facility is running on backup generators. I can't override the containment facilities from my terminal in this current state. I need you to restart the power from the generators to the facility. None of the systems the Dalatrass calls non-essential will work unless we have the whole place back online. I can only begin working then."
"Wait a minute, what about our people? They're why we're here in the first place!" One of the younger operators asked.
"I'm afraid you're too late for them." Kangl told them regretfully. "They were shipped off world recently."
"Where did they go?" The young operator asked again, this time he was clearly angered.
"Not even I know. The Dalatrass suspected there was a leak and decided to start scattering what assets she could. I wasn't made aware of their destination."
"Fucking dammit." Another Turian cussed out.
"We'll just have to do what we can." The Turian who helped the man said. "We'll help these Humans, that'll push them further towards helping us. At least with Human help, we can stop more Turians... and Humans, from ending up like this."
Kangl looked around at the Turians, and neither seemed to like the turn this operation went. They were soldiers though, and they all would do whatever was needed of them.
"Sir, I don't feel comfortable leaving the Human alone with the Salarian." A Turian then said.
"We should leave a team here to secure the both of them." Another one said.
The others agreed on the next course of action and set off to their missions. One of the Turians that stayed behind stood uncomfortably close to Kangl craned his head down so that it was level with the Salarian's own.
"This better pay off right, sleemo." He whispered threateningly. "Otherwise, no one will be able to identify your body."
Kangl gulped at the threat. Threats from Blackwatch operators are never anything to balk at. He better make sure things ended well, and fast; he didn't like having 5 guns trained at him for prolonged periods of time.
Enough people have died because of this facility. Kangl needed to make sure that it won't be able to take anymore lives...
Permanently.
-000-
Saren's team was on the rear guard of the group as the large group of Blackwatch operators descended deeper into the complex. Every now and again they'd encounter the odd security mech or two, though they were easily dispatched. It wasn't until they started finding the husks of already destroyed mechs that things started becoming suspicious.
"Hax, did any Salarians escape to the lower sections?" Nihlus asked over the network.
"Can't say for certain." Aqui team's leader, Force Commander Hax, answered. "Cameras on the lower sections seems to be down."
"The sensor network isn't getting enough power." Kangl chimed in. "I can't see what'a going on down there until the power is rerouted."
The sound of falling debris alerted Saren.
"We should keep going." He said.
The other Blackwatch commanders nodded and the group pushed on further. After a few more minutes of walking, the lights all over the complex suddenly turned on.
"Was that your doing?" Commander Hax asked over the comms.
"No, negative." Saren answered. "We haven't even reached the generator room yet."
"It looks like someone manually reactivated the main generators." Kangl reported. "My sensors are reactivating... hang on... what's this?"
"Salarian, what's going on?" Nihlus asked into the radio, clearly concerned.
"My security pass is... it's being overwritten. Someone's activating the system reset from the generator room!" Nihlus' eyes widened.
"Someone's down here!" Haliat realized. "We need to get to the generator room, now!"
The Blackwatch operators rushed down the hallways as the hurried to get to the generators. They entered the room and found it to be occupied by armed people of all sorts of races and affiliation. One of the aliens in there, a Krogan of relatively moderate size, noticed the Blackwatch operators. He shouldered his large shotgun and aimed right at the operators.
"Hostile contacts!" Saren called out.
He threw out a Biotic warp straight at the enemy's general direction, though it failed to hit anything important. Everyone in the room scrambled into cover as a firefight erupted.
"Kryik, Arterius, Caius, what's going on down there?" Hax asked over the network.
"Hostiles, various races, affiliations uncertain!" Nihlus responded. He tried to take a peek at the enemy, but was forced back into hiding as a hail of bullets hit the cover he was hiding behind. "Heavily armed and well trained!"
Saren blindly shot his rifle from behind cover, desperate to try and interrupt the enemy. He pulled his gun back to cover as a stream of bullets nearly cut off his hand.
"We're pinned here!" Saren reported.
The sounds of gunfire started getting closer, accompanied by heavy footsteps. The enemy was advancing on their position.
"Enemy is moving in!" Nihlus called out.
"Ready grenades, throw on my count!" Commander Caius yelled out.
He listened at the gunfire and tried to guess its distance. When he figured that they're about 3 meters away, he threw his grenade on a high arc, ordering others to do so as well. 6 fragmentation grenades were lobbed at the enemy. Explosions silenced some of the gunfire, but evidently not all the enemy had been caught in the blast.
They were smart, Saren would give them that.
Using the smoke and fire as cover, Saren rose up from cover and conjured a biotic barrier large enough for a few Turians to stand with him. He pushed forward and drew the ire and fire of his enemies. Mass Effect propelled projectiles slammed and ricocheted off his bright purple forcefield whilst his own allies fired away from behind him, completely unharmed. The biotic Force Commander felt each and every round that hit his barrier, his mind subjugated to increasing pressure as he strained to keep the barrier up against such overwhelming firepower.
Sensing his ally's growing weariness, Nihlus ordered his team to pop out of cover and open fire on the enemy. With most of their attention directed at Saren, Nihlus and the rest of the Blackwatch operators could now retaliate. A short exchange of fire ensued, but the hostiles were quickly neutralized. Fighting in the generator room stopped five minutes after it started.
Saren brought down his barrier, finally getting to rest his unnatural abilities. He looked around at the bodies that were on the ground around him. Only now did he notice that there were plenty of deserter Turian bodies strewn along with the Krogan and Salarian corpses.
"Sitrep!" Nihlus called out.
"4 injuries, none fatal!" Haliat replied.
Saren sighed in relief. It was always good to end a gunfight with no losses.
"Haliat, see if you can get access back to that sleemo friend of ours." Nihlus ordered, spitting at the mention of the Salarian.
"Alright... I'm regaining access... now!" Kangl reported. "Great, let's see just exactly what is going on around here."
"What have you found?" Saren asked between breaths.
"I... Oh no, that shouldn't be possible." Kangl muttered to himself. "No, no, no, they're too early."
"Early? Who's early?" Saren asked again.
"The mercenaries! They're not supposed to be making their move until at least another four hours, let alone have sent a team to infiltrate the facility... we need to move up our time table!"
"Looks like your Dalatrass has been keeping a lot more secrets that you know." Nihlus quipped.
"Clearly." Kangl replied, bitterly. "Come and help evacuate the Humans out of their containment chambers. We'll need all the help we can get to fend off the mercenary assault. At the current rate, they'll be here in two hours."
Nihlus looked over to Haliat, who nodded in confirmation that they were done here.
"Alright, lets get these Humans out of their tubes, then we dig in and wait for reinforcements." Nihlus told them all. "Here's hoping the Human navy doesn't decide to take the scenic route."
-000-
ASV Guiding Light, En Route to Minas-Kito System, Several hours earlier.
"We are dropping out of FTL transit in three... two... one." Aethyta announced as the Mass Effect field surrounding the Asari frigate dissipated, returning the ship into realspace.
"All right Aethyta, what do you see?" Tela asked, as she looked out of the forward viewing port.
"Running scans... wait a minute, that can't be right..." Aethyta remarked as she read the reports coming up on her screen.
"What is it?" Wrez asked, peeking over the Asari Matriarch's shoulder.
"There's two Turian frigates in geosync orbit right above the facility Valern told us about!" Aethyta told them.
"Turians!?" Tela remarked, mirroring her sister's surprise.
"Turians!" Wrex growled out.
"Dammit! Disable inertial dampeners and shut down engines!" Aethyta quickly ordered to her crew. "Lower generator output to EMCON 1, but prepare to refire the power plant as soon as I give the order to."
The Guiding Light's crew quickly complied. Not long after, the Asari cruiser's energy signature could pass as a hunk of asteroid drifting across space.
Aethyta gritted her teeth as she watched the Turian frigates hover in formation over the facility. Judging by their shape, she surmised that it must have been one of their stealth frigates, but their stealth suite was not active. They wanted to be noticed, probably to deter whichever local was stupid enough to interfere in their operations. Oh joy.
Asari ships didn't have the same luxury in regards of detection, unfortunately. The Salarians were too paranoid to share their technology, doubly so after the raids in Sur'kesh. This meant that they had to take drastic measures to avoid detection. Now, the Guiding Light steadily drifted towards the planet. It'd take them at least 10 more hours before they arrived at their current pace, that was time that Tela figured they didn't have.
"Prep the strike team, we'll have to take the shuttle to the planet." The Asari SPECTRE agent told Wrex. "A shuttle will be less conspicuous than a whole armed cruiser. Best if we go unnoticed."
Aethyta nodded and used the ship's PA system to call the strike team to prepare.
A few minutes later, the strike team had gathered in the cruiser's shuttle bay. Krogan Shocktroopers and Asari Commandos were arming themselves to face off against their Turian foes. Tela and Wrex had chosen to wear armor which didn't have the standard SPECTRE insignia on them. After switching the IFF transponder on the shuttle from the SPECTRE frequency to an independent one, they were ready.
The shuttle disembarked from the cruiser and made their way quietly and reached the planet within two hours. If the Turians noticed them entering the planet's atmosphere, then they didn't do anything. On the way down, Tela looked at the mountain facility and saw two more Turian frigates hovering over the ruined complex. The broken hulk of a Salarian Sur'ah class corvette lay on the foot of the complex, no doubt overwhelmed and destroyed by the two frigates. They landed on a settlement which lay close on the foot of the mountain, and quietly disembarked.
Tela looked around and saw people hustling around. They were generally going in two directions: towards the mountain, or away from it. Those who were headed towards the mountain were armed, obviously they were prepared for a fight. Tela grabbed one of them, a Turian, by the arm and questioned him.
"What's going on?" She asked him. "Where's everybody going?"
"The Castle's owner called for defenders, twenty thousand credits for everyone who comes to it's defense and makes it out alive." The Turian said.
"You're fine with shooting at your own kind? Wrex asked him, pointing at the Turian frigates.
"If the paycheck is good enough." The Turian replied. He left the two disguised SPECTRE agents and ran towards his group.
"So whoever is running that complex has enough money to pay for all these mercs and to run this whole covert operation." Tela concluded. "Either that, or they don't expect a lot of these guns-for-hire to survive."
"Well, the best way to find out what's going in that complex is to investigate the damned place." Wrex told her. "We should tag along with them, blend in between the mercs, and figure out just what the hell is going on."
Tela nodded. She rallied the rest of her cadre and followed the other mercs.
They were close to an answer, she could feel it in her gut.
-000-
Galactic News Update:
Citadel Broadcasting Center: With tensions and suspicions continuously rising with the Human Systems Alliance, JCF units being held in reserve have been deployed along the projected Human-Citadel border. Information leaks from JCF High Command suggest that the Humans may be doing the same as gravitic sensors mounted on relays leading into Human territory has been picking up increased activity as of the last few days. No real channel of communication exist with the Humans to verify these suspicions, and neither the Council nor the spokesperson for the JCF are willing to comment on the situation. On the next segment, famous actor and amateur political commentator...
Colonial News Center: Continued preparation for potential war with the Citadel Council goes on even as anti-war demonstrations rock the governmental district of Arcturus Station. Protests against conscription -which has only come into effect recently- as well as the increasingly strict rationing has made many grow more restless by the day. Joining us for this segment is Mr. Chandru, documentary filmmaker and former Alliance Senator over the phone...
A/N:
Happy New Year, and soon enough also a happy Chinese New Year folks, this chapter has been a long time coming.
Come January 25, it will mark 3 years that I've been working on this story. So many things have changed since when I was just a senior high school student trying to pass the time, it almost feels like another life entirely. Many plans and ideas were drafted and scrapped along the way and my writing has grown since. It's honestly been an invaluable experience writing this story and I'm looking forward to finishing it. Feedback these past three years has been better than I had ever anticipated and I'm humbled that people would even be interested in what I cooked up in my head as a bored teenager. Admittedly I've made a lot of mistakes and errors along the way, many of these mistakes were brought to my attention by you people, the readers. I cannot emphasize enough how grateful I am for all your continued support.
Come the next chapter, chapter 40, I will finally arrive at the crux of the matter and the very idea which sparked this idea in the first place. It took me long enough, to be honest, and I can hardly wait to finally get to the main course. I have a few story arcs I have planned which should lead into the larger story with the war, the galaxy, and eventually the inevitable war with the Reapers. Anything beyond that is still under consideration and has not yet been set in stone. It is likely going to be years away from fruition, and we're probably going to get another Mass Effect game by the time I get to that point.
Once again, I am supremely thankful for the support I've been getting these past three years. I can only hope to live up to all your expectations.
Review or PM me your thoughts as input is always appreciated, even if I don't reply to them outright.
Thanks again for reading. Good luck and God bless you.