...
"My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here."
(Jim Henson)
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Imaneya, March 25th, 10:48 AM, 2186
...
Walking carefully in the middle of our team, we proceeded deeper into the facility on high guard. Main power seemed to be disabled, leaving only red emergency lights. Our… previous encounter had proved there was a serious threat here that needed to be dealt with, especially if we wanted to acquire all the Cerberus data that was stored here. Hopefully, with any luck, these husks managed to overpower the staff here before they could delete any vital information. We still had no idea where they came from or how deep into the facility they went, but in the end it mattered very little.
I was only worried about Cerberus or worse, the Reapers, arriving. Lockdowns like this were usually accompanied by an emergency distress signal on a secure channel, likely through a QEC, meaning there existed the risk of them arriving to clean this mess up. The presence of fully-functional Reaper husks also suggested a Reaper signal was in close proximity. Our snoopers weren't able to detect a "wide-band" indoctrination signal yet, one capable of directly influencing us, though the corpses did confirm a connection was being made.
Either way, I didn't want to be here too long.
I stepped into one of the side rooms, checking for any activity as I scanned the darkness with my thermals, knowing there'd always be a chance another one of those cloaked bitches might try to jump me again. I wasn't willing to get into a fight like that again. It was a utility room, with lockers, tools, and other miscellaneous materials used by a support staff. Interestingly enough, a body was slumped against the lockers with the back of its head missing, a handgun still held in its hand. His uniform bore a Science Team patch, signalling that this wasn't his work area.
My first thought was to mentally call him a coward, taking the easy way out instead of facing these monsters with dignity, but then I remembered what Old Dan had told me about my… alternate self, immediately quashing any further thoughts I could imagine. I had no right to judge him, especially if I had been capable of doing the same to myself. The mere thought of it sent shivers down my back.
"Damn, hell of a w-way to go." Dan shook his head, walking past me and kneeling down next to the body, checking it's pockets. "You think the Reapers d-did all this, or that they've been experimenting on people again?"
"If the Reapers had attacked this place, there'd be nothing left but a smoldering crater." I pointed out, looking back into the hallway. "No… this is definitely another one of "those" projects."
"Agreed, there'd be far more collateral damage if direct Reaper involvement had occurred." Lydia added, supporting my thoughts as she gave me a nudge. "This way, if my hunch is correct, there should be some kind of control center ahead."
"Lead on." I urged, wanting to get the image of that body out of my head as quickly as possible.
We ventured deeper, eventually coming across a cafeteria where much fighting had obviously taken place. There was a single overhead light working here, leaving us with very little visibility against the red emergency lights. We were about to walk through before I heard a distant screech, immediately turning my blood to ice water.
"What the hell was that?" Dan whispered, looking towards the source of the noise, which seemed to be a nearby connecting hallway. The hallway was completely dark, so much so that even it's emergency lights were out. The shrill sound rang out again, growing closer.
"Get ready, they're coming." I ordered, pushing over one of the tables to use as cover as my friends and squadmates did the same. The shrieks continued, getting louder until several husks emerged from the darkness, running towards us as fast as they could.
We fired on them together at a team, cutting them down rather easily due to the narrow hallway funneling them in. One of my squadmates threw a grenade down the hallway, blowing three to pieces. Before the smoke cleared however, a blue flash of some kind pulsed through the smoke, appearing almost instantaneously on the other side.
It looked even uglier than the Human and Turian husks. It looked like a bloated, mutated Asari with elongated limbs, especially the fingers, which appeared claw-like. As we fired on it, it let out another one of the screeches we heard before, shaking the floor panels and pushing away tables and chairs as it did so.
"Move back!" I yelled as it pulsed again, appearing even closer.
Before we could move back the way we came, it appeared all the way behind us, blocking our path. It used its long arm to slap Lydia and one of the Marines away, throwing both against the wall as it fired a biotic blast at the rest of us, sending us careening over the cafeteria counter and into the kitchen. If it weren't for the exo, the impact surely would have broken several of my bones.
"Son of a bitch, that thing's chewing us up!" Dan yelled, leaning against the counter as the creature screamed again, moving back towards us.
"Watch out, it's doing something else!" I shouted, watching it charge another biotic attack. We all jumped back further into the kitchen, barely dodging a ball of energy as it tore apart the counter, causing damage to the nearby stovetop and creating a secondary explosion.
"Sir, how do we stop this thing?!" One of my Marines asked, obviously just as panicked as I was.
Before I could respond, I saw Lydia leap onto the creature's back, wrapping her legs around its waist to cement her grasp. She drove her knife into the monster's neck several times, trying to kill it as it tried to claw at her.
"You...ugly… BITCH!" Lydia screamed, enraged as the thing tore apart her hood with her claws. She pulled back on one of its "horns", pushing the knife even deeper as she hit the bottom of the hilt with her free hand, driving it deeper.
The husk screeched one last time before Lydia pulled back on it's head with both arms, sending out a loud "SNAP" as its neck and spine both shattered, finally killing it. The thing slammed to the floor, writhing on the floor for a few seconds before the body began to glow, breaking down at an advanced rate. After only a few seconds, the creature had been reduced to a puddle of steaming sludge.
"Fuck me… what the hell were you thinking?!" Dan exclaimed, walking over to Lydia and pulling off his helmet. "Have you gone completely insane? That thing could have killed you!"
"It was about to blow you guys apart." She defended, having switched over to her mask speakers as she held her knife up against the solitary light. "I'm fine, in case you were wondering."
"That's not what I meant!" He immediately shouted back, not at all amused. "I… for fuck sake."
He walked back into the remains of the kitchen, picking his rifle back up as I stood next to her, taking my mask off and putting my hand on her shoulder.
"Seriously though, are you OK?" I reiterated, wanting to clear the air.
"She managed to knock the proverbial wind out of us for a few seconds, so I was pretty… annoyed." She answered, using a nearby napkin to wipe off her knife. "I'm fine."
I nodded, turning back to my Marines as I glanced back down the hallway, pondering the fact that their bodies weren't disintegrating like the Asari husk had. It was an… interesting little detail, one that suggested they were considered more important compared to the others.
"Anyone injured?" I asked, looking at the three of them as they shook their heads. "Good. We're going to keep going. Check your weapons and ammo, and be prepared to run into more... like that."
We made our way down the remains of the dark hallway, using only our night vision to move forward. It appeared we had cleared everything out, with more evidence of fighting the deeper we went.
"Admiral, we've found what appears to be a control center." My platoon leader chimed in, getting me to stop for a few moments. "Should we attempt to access the computer systems?"
"Negative, hold there and set up defensive positions. We'll take care of the computer systems." I replied, running ahead of the group as we searched for the control center.
Luckily, we ran into the rest of the team pretty quickly, having set up makeshift positions around the vicinity of the area. Plenty of husks littered the area, having attacked this area several times from the looks of it.
"Good to see you, sir." My platoon leader greeted, leading us inside the rather-spacious control center. "Our teams are all still reporting normally, and we've encountered only minor resistance."
"Understood. Have any outside communications been detected?" I asked, focusing hard on him.
"Negative, nothing internal or external. We've been monitoring their comm station just to make sure." He replied, stopping at the main computer.
"Ah, here's what I was looking for." Lydia rubbed her hands together, pulling off one of her gloves and removing a small cap on her wrist to reveal a port. "I should be able to bypass any physical safeguards with this."
She opened a small panel on the console and pulled out a three-pronged connector, jamming it into her arm. Though I did find this weird, the screen immediately began to flash as Lydia stared into space, "putting herself" into the computer and brute-forcing the system.
"Bypassing the lockdown… ooh, it looks like we managed to find a goldmine here." She spoke, sounding excited. "Nothing's been deleted or modified the last twenty-four hours..."
"Fantastic!" I grinned, giving Dan a high-five.
"Strange, there are still living signatures coming from one of the labs, all with scientific signatures." She commented as she continued to stare into space. "However, their vital signs are… erratic, almost as if they're dead and alive at the same time."
"Can you access and download all of the base's data from here?" I refocused, knowing I'd much rather have access to concrete data than a few uncooperative scientists.
"I can, but it'll take me awhile to crack this encryption, thirty or so minutes at the most." She turned her head to the side. "I'd recommend trying to find those scientists, see what they're doing down there."
"I suppose we have no choice." I grumbled, turning to face the platoon leader. "Get some men down there to find out what's going on. Tell them to be careful, and to try and take the scientists alive if possible."
"Yes'sir." He quickly nodded, leaving the control center to talk to his men.
"Don't you think it would be a be...better idea to go down there too?" Dan scrutinized, sounding a little put off.
"Don't worry, we'll check it out once we have a better idea of what we're dealing with here." I reassured, getting a priority ping off my omni-tool a few seconds later. "Michaels here."
"Sir, we've got a developing situation up here." Dixon informed, sounding worried. "Several Cerberus ships just jumped into the system, and they're approaching fast."
"Any communications?" I replied, knowing things could get ugly fast.
"Negative, complete comms silence." He said, taking a deep breath. "Sir, I recommend we extract. We estimate they'll be here in seven minutes."
"Dixon, we've got to hold this facility for at least thirty minutes." I shook my head, knowing we'd have to make a stand. "You've got to coordinate with the other Captains and mount a defense, I can't do it from down here."
There was a momentary pause before Dixon finally came back, sounding much more determined.
"Yes'sir. We'll fight the bastards back, but I can't guarantee." He agreed, getting me to smile as he cut the line, forcing me to turn back to Lydia.
"Can you access the surface sensors, maybe get some defensive countermeasures up and running?" I asked, getting her to finally look back at me. "We might be getting some uninvited guests."
"I'll do you one better. They've got twenty remote guns placed all around the perimeter of the facility, along with what looks like a missile guidance jammer." She boasted, sounding quite pleased with herself. "It'll only take me a few moments to bypass the safeties."
"Good, do it." I nodded, turning to face Dan again. "Looks like you might get that fight you were looking for after all."
"Lookin' forward to it." He smirked, managing a rare smug look as he hefted his pulse rifle.
This was certainly quite the situation we found ourselves in. We were about to have a major fight right above our heads, and I wasn't going to be there to direct it myself. While I trusted everyone in orbit to fight to their best ability, I knew I had made my choice and it was out of my hands now. All we could do now was defend what we had just taken long enough to steal every little bit of information Cerberus had stored here.
"Admiral, we've reached the lab doors with no incident." One of my platoon sergeants announced over the radio, giving me yet another pressing distraction. "They're completely sealed, so we'll need to cut through."
"Got it. Start cutting, we'll be down there in a few moments." I finished, nodding to Dan before looking at Lydia one last time. "You gonna be OK here?"
"I can handle myself, just go." She reassured, quickly jerking her head towards the door.
Dan and I ran past the Marines deeper into the facility, following the green markers they had left behind. A minute later, we reached the doors, seeing they were still trying to cut through.
"These doors aren't budging, they're reinforced… bosh'tets!" One of the Marines, a combat engineer, yelled, tossing his plasma torch to the side.
"Does anyone else hear that noise?" Another one of the Marines, a Raloi, asked, looking around. "It sounds like some form of static."
"No… I don't." The engineer replied, sounding confused as I stared up at the door, examining its construction.
"Those are heavy blast doors, still in lockdown mode without power." I observed, looking down the enlarged hallway. "Whatever they're keeping in there, it must be important."
"Sean, over here." Dan called out, waving me over to a panel he was prying off the nearby wall. "This d-door has an independent power supply, look."
He completely removed the panel to reveal a small battery bank, connected to a large breaker box. It looked remarkably similar to one of the old Westinghouse SPB-65's, most notably used in the original Jurassic Park. It included both a manual charging handle and several labeled buttons.
"It's large, flat, and grey." Dan quoted, getting me to crack a quick smile as he connected the batteries, creating dull humming noise.
"You noticed that too, huh?" I joked, pushing the charging handle up four times to put tension back on the spring inside. "Alright, if I remember this correctly, one of these should say… there it is! "Push to Close", that's the one."
I pressed the green button, causing a loud "snap" as the spring inside slammed shut, reconnecting the circuit. The door's lights lit up as it automatically began unsealing, the Marines shouldering their rifles as we did the same. The inside, unlike the rest of the facility, had proper, working power. Lights illuminated the interior, revealing something I hadn't expected to see.
A large black and purple device sat in the middle of the lab, glowing with energy. Spikes protruded off the object, several people impaled on them. Holding cells lined the room, many torn open from the inside from the looks of it. Bodies were sprawled out on the ground in front of the device, but one, a woman, was still alive, kneeling in front of it rocking her head back and forth.
"Sir, I've got a positive Reaper signal now. That object must be the source." The combat engineer spoke, holding up his Snooper as it made clicking noises reminiscent of a geiger counter.
"That noise is getting louder." The Raloi marine complained, as I too heard what sounded like CRT static in my ears. I knew it must have been an indoctrination signal.
"We gotta destroy that thing." I remarked, pulling two prototype plasma grenades off my belt as I prepared to chuck them at the Reaper device. "You! Get away from that thing unless you want to be vaporized!"
The woman stood up, turning around to reveal her face. She appeared to be half-"huskified", implants covering the entire left side of her face. She took several staggered steps forward, seeming quite weak. I mentally prepared myself as she stopped ten feet from us.
"You... aren't the Dir...Director." The woman spoke with a noticeable electronic twinge, struggling to enunciate as she scratched at the skin peeling away from the implant sites.
"Who are you?" I questioned, knowing something different was happening with this woman.
"I'm… Doc...Doc… agh!" She struggled before hunching forward, freezing and straightening herself up, her eyes glowing a bright blue. "Human… you seek to destroy that which would evolve your own existence. An exercise in futility."
"You're a Reaper." I finally put together in my head, watching it take another staggered step forward, my Marines training their rifles on its head.
"An irrelevant label. Many have been used by those in previous cycles to give voice to their destruction. Your cycle will be no different." It gloated in a thoughtly unemotional tone, managing to send a shiver up my spine. "You, like countless others, pointlessly fight against something you can't hope to survive, but you are different. You, like Shepard, are an anomaly."
The fact that the Reapers were personally aware of my own existence was enough to instantly make me break out in a cold sweat. I knew, despite the possible danger, that I had to push this… development.
"I'm an anomaly?" I repeated, squinting my eyes.
"Your civilization is based on the technology of the Mass Relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire." It explained, putting special emphasis on "our" and "we" as it spoke. "You and those that follow you are a hindrance, seeking to bring imbalance to our carefully maintained cycle. It will not save you."
"Heh… hearing th-that would have brought a smi...smile to old Jack's face." Dan countered, thinking the same thing I was.
The Reapers knew who we were, and must have also known about the Gravity Drive. The fact that we didn't rely on the Relay network for travel… annoyed them. In all the time I had spent wondering how a moment like this would go, I never imagined a Reaper expressing annoyance, especially with me personally.
I felt both incredibly smug and scared.
"I don't care how many times you've done this or how many of you there are, we'll find a way to beat you." I boasted, trying to goad the Reaper into providing more information. "Entropy conquers all, even you."
"Confidence born of ignorance. The cycle cannot be broken. This conversation is over." It dismissed, the rumble from an explosion shaking the facility as it closed its eyes and doubled over, falling straight to the floor.
We watched carefully as it started crawling towards us. The woman's eyes no longer glowed, though tears flowed from them.
"P-please… kill me..." She begged, reaching out towards me as I focused on her for a moment. I took the Carnifex off my hip and aimed at her, putting a single round through her head. She died instantly, the implants along her face going dark.
With nothing left to hold me back, I signaled for everyone to move back to the door as I armed both plasma grenades. I tossed them at the glowing device, quickly turning my head as they detonated, sending out their characteristic, blinding flashes. Less than a second later, another larger explosion rocked the room, sending debris everywhere and nearly knocking me to the floor. Looking back, the device was thoroughly destroyed, much of the room had been lit on fire.
As I stopped and listened, I was thankful that I no longer heard any static, but my relief was quickly replaced with a new sense of worry as another deep explosion could be heard above us, vibrating through the glacier.
"Sounds like we've got company." I remarked, running back towards the door as I took one last look at the body of the woman I had killed, taking a deep breath and shaking my head.
Several more explosions could be felt rocking the facility as we ran back to the control center, seeing Lydia was still hooked into the computer system.
"What've we got?" I asked, walking over to the platoon commander who now stood at one of the consoles.
"Cerberus are attempting to saturate the area with missile strikes, but they can't hit anything accurately while we've got this guidance jammer working against them." He explained, showing the jammer on the screen, along with a map of the whole compound.
"Just one of those missiles could gut the entire facility… they're not worried about recovering anything if they're using those." I mused, rubbing my chin. "What's the current status of the teams?"
"I've deployed my men to these strategic positions… here, here, and here." He pointed at the large monitor, highlighting the perimeter sensor stations, the top of the ridgeline, and several smaller positions near the facility itself where covering fire could be given if retreating was necessary. "Twelve teams, all with standing orders to fall back if they're at risk of being overrun. We're as ready as we can be, given our location."
"And not a moment too soon… Cerberus dropships inbound, ETA two minutes. I count at least twelve, though the atmospheric interference is making it difficult to tell." Lydia announced, still staring straight ahead.
"I don't want to get bogged down here. How much longer on that decryption?" I asked, walking over and looking at her.
"It shouldn't be much longer, I just need ten or fifteen minutes." She said, squinting her eyes as she continued to stare into space. "Give me time."
"You'll get it. Just be ready to go the moment you've ripped the files from their mainframe." I warned, turning back around to face the blurred radar screen. "Are the Cobras safe for now?"
"They should be, I had the pilots reposition themselves another mile away." My platoon leader answered, getting me to nod and sigh in equal order. "They'll fly in to evacuate us either when we trigger the facility's emergency beacon or we tell them to come ourselves."
"Hopefully we won't need them to provide air support, they might be our only rides out of here." I remarked, crossing my arms.
"That w-won't mean much if they manage to overrun us before ge...getting here." Dan brought up, getting me to shoot him a glare. "What the hell's ha-happening in orbit anyways?"
"Not entirely sure, looks like Cerberus is jamming all long-range comms, and the sensors are useless in this storm." I answered, testing my communicator only to get nothing but static on my LRR channel. "All we can do is hope that our flotilla is more than a match for their ships, and hold them off here."
Another explosion could be felt coming from the surface, this time much closer. A thin layer of dust fell from the crags in the ceiling as the lights briefly flickered, leaving us in partial darkness as several went out.
"Here they come…" Dan mused, leaning against the console as the exterior cameras highlighted several dark figures walking through the storm, keeping track of them with infrared. There were several dozen of them with more on the way, and all appeared to be wearing the new armor.
"How close do they have to be until they're within optimal firing range for those perimeter guns?" I asked, looking back at the sensor field lighting up on the screen.
"They need to be within three-hundred meters at the very least." Lydia answered as I watched dozens of signatures cross into the field, lighting up the board like a Christmas tree. "Closing...closing…"
As they crossed the imaginary line Lydia had drawn, the automated guns popped up out of their hidden compartments, immediately targeting the Cerberus commandos. Watching it on the screen was almost fascinating in a way, looking down the barrel of each of the twenty guns as they fired on the intruders. At first they panicked, attempting to find cover in the flat, icy tundra as several were mowed down immediately, their plasma-resistant armor all but useless against the heavy guns. It didn't take long for them to spot and target them, however. One by one, the commandos following behind targeted the stationary guns, knocking them out with grenades and carefully-placed gunfire.
"Well, it was nice while it lasted." I lamented, switching back to the external cameras as I called up the team leaders. "Team Nine, you've got foot mobiles approaching. I want you to hold that position. Lay down suppressing fire and a barrier for defense. Teams Six and Ten, provide overlapping fire once the enemy has closed the gap."
I watched as the alerted commandos ran much harder and faster through the snow, struggling to maintain their footing as the storm obscured their long-range visibility. Team Nine, posted in the exterior sensor station, began firing on them with their new Pulse Rifles while their Raloi teammate projected a biotic barrier for protection. The commandos, seemingly unfazed by their awful position, continued to push through the snow, firing grenades at the station with a reckless disregard for concealing their movements.
"Good God, h-how many of them are there?" Dan exclaimed, watching the thermal signatures as they continued to blink into view. "They must have a whole g-goddamn company out there!"
"Team Nine, retreat to fallback positions!" The platoon leader yelled into the communicator, getting them to move back under a wall of covering fire.
"Looks like we might need those Cobras after all." I remarked, pulling up the channel on my omni-tool.
"Sir, I'm obliged to remind you that if you put those ships in the air, any Cerberus ships above may detect them." My platoon leader warned, giving me a moment of pause.
"That's a risk we'll have to take. We don't have the defensive posture needed to hold a front line out there, and this might be our only chance to hit them while they're still out in the open." I rebuffed, getting a patchy connection to the Cobra pilots. "This is Admiral Michaels to flight Alpha, can you read me?"
"Loud and clear, sir!" The response quickly came, though with quite a noticeable drop in interference.
"We need all of you in the air now, ready with weapons hot." I explained, highlighting the frozen tundra outside of the facility. "Saturate grids 13 through 19, we have heavy enemy movement in those sectors threatening to overrun our forward positions."
"Understood sir! ETA four minutes." The line went dead, leaving us with a less-than-desirable timetable.
Before I could do or say anything else however, the external cameras all violently shook, knocking their orientations off. A split second later, we felt the ground below our feet shake violently as several impacts could be felt, explosions being faintly heard through the walls around us.
"What the hell was that?" Dan asked, none of the cameras aimed even remotely near where they were before.
"Ground sensors are detecting high-yield kinetic impacts… those were mass accelerator rounds." Lydia quickly chimed in, sounding just as surprised as Dan.
"Were those fired at us?" My platoon leader asked, sounding just a little shaken.
"I'm not sure… though I'm not detecting any impacts directly on the facility itself." She shook her head, attempting to refocus the cameras. "My best guess… hold on…"
One of the thermal cameras refocused on where it had before. Instead of the several dozen Cerberus commandos it had shown before, it now had a large crater surrounded by a massive cloud of dust and debris.
"No hostile movement detected… they're just gone." Lydia said with astonishment in her voice.
"Dixon… Dixon, can you hear us?" I quickly asked on the LRR, realizing he must have heard us and saturated the grid coordinates with the Saint Luke's 406mm guns.
"Yep, we read you, sir." He answered, filling me with one of the greatest senses of relief I had ever felt. "Sorry for not warning you, but we only just now eliminated the jamming signal."
"I don't think you'll get any complaints out of us, that couldn't have been more perfectly timed." I congratulated, feeling ecstatic. "Fleet status?"
"All ships accounted for. Only minor damage to the Saint Luke and Endar. All enemy vessels... have been eliminated." He said with what I could only imagine was a smug, dirty grin.
"Great, that's fantastic." I sighed, feeling very tired all of the sudden. "Um… hold your present position, we'll be back soon."
"Understood, sir. Looking forward to seeing you back up here." He finished, a brief clack being heard as he hung up the phone in the CIC.
We did it. We had really won this day.
…
A/N: I'd like to apologize for this chapter taking so long to come out, I've been busy with a ton of overtime at work the last few weeks, and this pandemic hasn't been making things any easier when it comes to writing. I honestly hope it hasn't affected the quality of this chapter in any way, it took me way longer to finish it than it should have.
With that being said, I hope all of you are safe and well, and hope you enjoyed this chapter. As usual, please let me know what you think with a nice review, each one means a lot to me.