Interloper Rewrite: Chapter 22
Affecting Repairs
Wind whistled through the cracked outer doors of the Peak 15 facility. The fury of the storm outside was muted here, a shadow of the blizzard that raged against the spire of steel. Dancing, shimmering light peeked past us to dapple the snow with a soft glow.
"Lights?" Commander Shepard's vocalization was transmitted on external speakers, an entreaty to the facility's VI systems. No answer returned but the echo of her words off cold metal. "Lights." At her second command, the bright beams of our helmet lights flickered out, hard and sharp where the outside light was diffuse. They reached out to reveal a metal cavern rimed in bright frost. Boxy, empty but for scattered crates. Outside of the mournful whistling of the wind, the room was silent. And cold. The room was filled with a deep, penetrating chill that raised the hair on my skin even through the thick insulating padding. The suits of each party member ahead of me emitted little puffs of visible condensation with every breath.
"Reactor's dead," Garrus noted, "we'd hear it from here. Someone, or something, shut everything down before they left."
"If they left," Tali responded, "A full shutdown out here is a death sentence the same way it would be on a ship. Perhaps there was an accident." Something chirped in the darkness.
"Movement," Garrus whispered, bringing up his Omni-tool. The party froze, weapons out. "Hmm, a lot of movement. None on this level, but there's a lot of something moving around below. It's... erratic, though. Potentially sensor ghosts or baffling. If there was anywhere on this planet shielded from prying eyes, it would be here."
"Keep an eye on it," Shepard commanded, "I want to be the first to know if it starts erraticcing in our direction. We go forward. Take it slow, people. Something has knocked out the life support in here and I aim to find out what. Keep your eyes open, I don't want to run into another ambush.
Garrus nodded. He stalked forward, silent but for the soft tapping of his motion detector. No, not completely silent. There was another sound, hiding right at the edge of hearing. The tip tapping of something on metal, out of step with the footfalls of our turian companion. Like the dripping of water on floor grating. Or the clatter of claws. The hair on the back of my next tried to crawl up my scalp. Ahead, Garrus reached the door to the next room. He grunted as he pried it apart. With practiced smoothness, we ducked past him into another, even larger chamber. By the looks of it, some kind of hanger, though it contained no vehicles. The room was tall, wide, and once again empty but for a few stacks of crates and an overhanging catwalk. Here the storm was completely blocked out, the frost on the ground thinner. My light beam played over the back wall, searching for the Geth that my memories told me were there. It revealed squat rectangles marked in red.
"Commander, "I'm seeing weapons lockers on the far wall."
"I see them too. Liddle, move forward and secure those lockers. We'll cover you. Watch for hostiles, everyone. Tali, there's a terminal on the wall over there. See if you can't power it up and glean something from its memory." Shepard's rapid-fire orders sent us into motion with hurried 'Ayes.' I crept forward, eyes and ears strained for any sign of the ambush. I heard nothing but the faint moan of the wind, the maddeningly quiet tapping in the distance. That and the pounding of my heart in my eardrums and the rush of hurried breaths. I eased into the cover of one of the looming crates and took a deep breath to steady my nerves. The racing thump slowly receded. Only to spike again as a clattering sound rang out in the empty room. The party whirled on the stairs up to the catwalk. Something small was bouncing down the steps, each impact sending a fresh peal of metal on metal through the space. It clattered to the floor and rolled to a stop at my feet.
"It's... a helmet?" I said, reaching to pick up the empty globe of an enclosed pilot's helmet with glass bubble visor. I glinted, dull and black in the dark hall. I gently placed it back on the ground and began my advance again, this time to a juddering accompaniment to my adrenaline-soaked heart. My breath was rough, ragged. It fogged up my visor. I closed the final distance to the weapons locker and hugged the wall. I could barely see. With a hiss, I cracked the seals on my visor and yanked off my own helmet. The rush of cold air stung my face, but my vision was blessedly clear. The increased clarity of hearing let me catch the faintest rattling sound high above. I turned my flashlight upwards to see a shadow detach itself from the wall. My eyes snapped up. A shape unfolded from one of the upper catwalks. The shape of a Geth. Before I could bring my gun to bear, Garrus yelled out.
"Movement, all around us!"
I fired at the Geth, staggering it. I turned to the locker and jammed the opening keys. The locker slid open neatly to reveal a rack of low powered assault rifles. Behind me the team opened up on their attackers. I dropped my shotgun and grabbed two of the rifles.
"Shepard!" I tossed the rifles and turned for two more. The lack of clunks indicated they had been caught. Something grabbed me roughly by the shoulder. It whipped me around and brought me face to face with another Geth unit. The white armoured shock trooper shrieked at me and tossed me aside. I hit the ground hard, dropping the rifle. The Geth rounded on me and made to grab me again. I drew my pistol and fired. The shots skipped off of the shock trooper's barriers as it advanced. It reached out its metal fingers to grab at my neck.
"Liddle, cover your eyes!" Tali's voice rang out. I did so, leaning as far away from the Geth as I could. The characteristic sound of an overload firing accompanied a wash of static electricity that sparked across my own shields. I looked up to see the Geth writhing as lines of electricity arced across it. I shuffled backwards and fired at it. Without its shields I was able to drive three rounds into its chest. It screamed and fell to the floor. I leapt to my feet as the war cries of angry krogan filled the room. I dashed for my shotgun and whirled towards the sound. Already the rest of the team was firing at the hulking alien, Liara's biotics mixing with the tech powers of Garrus and Tali. The expected three attackers turned out to be five. As the closest to the foot of the catwalk, I found myself facing down a charge of teeth and muscle. Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, I ducked behind the lockers and hoped the krogan wouldn't follow. They didn't, the fire of the team distracting them. I stepped out and picked up my shotgun, hitting them in the back. Between the pressure from in front of them and my sneak attack, the krogan went down one by one until the last one fell to a burst from Shepard.
"Are we clear?" she asked. The group had kept a roughly circular position in the middle of the room, using some abandoned crates for cover. Garrus was bleeding pretty badly, but Liara was tending to his wounds.
"No further movement, Commander," Garrus coughed, "make of that what you will." The Turian waved off Liara's aid.
User Alert: All Peak 15 Facilities have suffered a great deal of damage. Biohazard materials present throughout facility. Virtual Intelligence interface is offline.
"That alarm, it sounds like something got out of the labs," Garrus commented, "that would explain the heating being shut off, some kind of containment feature."
"Perhaps Benezia unleashed something on the scientists," Liara said harshly.
"Whatever happened, we're not going to find out what's going on from here. The krogan came from somewhere up on that catwalk. If they were with Benezia, I'm going to bet that's the way to go. And Garrus, pay a little more attention to those movement readings next time."
"I'm sorry, the Geth must have stayed stock still. I don't know how I missed the krogan though; I doubt they could have held their breath to save their lives," Garrus said, scratching the back f his head ruefully.
"Perhaps they masked their own movement with whatever is moving in the lower levels," Tali said helpfully.
"Perhaps," Shepard interjected, "We should move." This time I was first up the ramp. The team picked up weapons from the dead as they passed. We reached the security checkpoint without incident. The inwards facing security turrets swiveled as we approached, but held fire.
"Why would they point the turrets in?" Tali asked. "Shouldn't they be trying to keep intruders out?"
"They must be part of the containment measures," Shepard said, "Keep moving."
"What was that?" Liara asked. I heard the skittering too, but kept quiet. At the end of the checkpoint we came to a security office. Shepard drew a sniper rifle from a locker on the wall, along with a handful of grenades.
"These might come in handy," she said, passing one to each of us. "Don't go wasting them; we don't know if we'll find replacements."
I tucked the grenade into my launcher and wandered off towards the elevator in the back of the room. Its doors slid open smartly.
"I guess the base's containment procedures didn't include locking down the elevators," I quipped.
"I guess they were banking on the fact that viruses can't work the controls," Shepard said, "Can you get it working?"
I punched the up arrow and the elevator chimed. I quickly found the hold key and kept it pressed.
"Express elevator, going up."
Shepard nodded and signaled for the team to enter the lift. I released the hold key and the doors closed with a swish.
The elevator doors opened slowly, as if stuck slightly. Our light beams played over the walls of a two-story chamber with glass walkways bridging the space above. White, barrel like panels covered the walls, broken only by sturdy looking doors marked by orange emergency holograms. Somewhere deeper into the complex, something clanked repetitively in short bursts before stopping for brief seconds, only to start up again. I panned my light down the length of the hall and started as it landed on something green, glittering in the dark. I whirled my light back into that dark corner and saw only rounded steel. All the while, the VI continued to announce the various damages that had been inflicted on the facility.
"Garrus?" Shepard asked.
"Definitely a lot of movement. Whatever's in the next hallway sure isn't holding its breath," Garrus replied. The team slowly stalked down the hallway with weapons trained at the door at the end. Again, we heard the skittering within the walls. My heart pounded in anticipation, the Geth and then the krogan had left me shaken. I gripped my shotgun tightly and steeled myself as I reached the door. The door slid silently open.
Something slumped through the door, clattering to the deck. It was a body. Or, more accurately most of a body. The corpse was missing a head and a good portion of its right shoulder. The white armored figure spilled into the central station chamber, spattering the ground with thick, dark blood. I clamped down on my rising gorge.
"Oh, Goddess," Liara uttered, "What do the Geth have that could do this?"
"I don't think this was the Geth," Garrus replied. He set his rifle aside as he crouched by the corpse's side. "Look at the edges of this armor plate. Almost looks like... tooth marks. And look at this, acid burns."
"Teeth marks?"
"What were they working on down here?" Tali asked the open air. The only answer was a fresh wave of clattering from behind the wall panels. "And what is that noise? It sounds like pipe knocking or..."
"Bugs." I couldn't stop myself from commenting. A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck, chills raced each other down my spine. The clattering stopped suddenly, plunging the hallway into sickening silence. I brought my shotgun up, following the nervous jittering of my spotlight. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, whirled, and saw nothing. Then again, on the other side. I turned just in time to see a looming, dark shape emerge from behind a twisted wall panel on the second floor. Slothfully, it slumped down the nearest staircase and into the light.
"What the hell is that!" exclaimed Garrus. At the foot of a set of stairs, a monstrous insectoid creature reared up at us. Its body was fat and curved, terminating in a beaked head with beady black eyes. Two pods opened and closed on the end of whippy tentacles. The thing howled a challenge and snapped its split beak, sending long streamers of thick spittle flying. The Rachni.
"Assume hostile! Take this thing down!" Shepard yelled as she shouldered her rifle. We unleashed a hail of shots into the angry insect. The penetrator rounds fired by the rest of the team past neatly through the beast, causing minimal damage. My own shredder rounds ripped ugly gashes in the rachni's abdomen. It gave a last, haunting shriek and collapsed.
"I've got more movement!" Garrus warned. We swung around, looking for the source. Tali was the first to spot them.
"They're coming out of the walls! Look!" My eyes flicked upwards. A swarm of the smaller worker drones were making their way out of vents and pipes, some skittering across the wall surface while some simply dropped to the ground with a sharp clap of chitin. Their fat bodies roiled as subsurface fluids undulated hideously.
"Don't let them touch you!" I yelled as I took aim at one of the nearest. It became a greasy stain on the metal floor.
"We need to keep moving!" Shepard yelled, "they're just going to keep coming!"
"Commander, we've got more of the big ones!" Garrus called as he fired at the new arrivals. I turned my own gun on one of them and moved up the hall. The Rachni shrieked and whipped one of its tentacle pods at me. The pod unleashed a torrent of greenish goo which left a burning trail across the floor where it fell.
"Since when did they spit acid!?" I ducked away from the sizzling furrow in the floor and continued shooting. Behind me, Liara unleashed her biotics on the wounded insect. It writhed, as if in pain, as it was lifted from the floor.
"They seem to be sensitive to biotics," Liara said as she sent the lifted Rachni flying with a well-aimed throw. It hit the wall with a splat and lay still. She repeated the maneuver on another, and then another Rachni. Seeing the warriors killed one by one, the workers skittered back into the tunnels and vents.
"Everyone alright?" Shepard asked after the last parting shots petered out.
"My amp is hot, commander, it will be some time before I can attempt to use my biotics again," Liara said groggily. She slumped a little. I jumped to her side, catching her under the armpit. Liara leaned heavily into me, wrapping arms around my steadying hand.
"I think that acid put a hole in my boot," Garrus commented, "no harm to my foot though." The voice of the VI rang out again. "That is really starting to get on my nerves."
"I suggest we take the next elevator, schematics I pulled from the security office say the VI core should be accessible from the next level up," Tali said.
User Alert: All Peak 15 Facilities have suffered a great deal of damage. Biohazard materials present throughout facility. Virtual Intelligence interface is offline.
"We get it!" Shepard cursed as we put down another warrior Rachni. The hallway we had exited onto had swarmed with more of the large insects. From cover, we had managed to kill most of them without the help of Liara's overtaxed biotics, but the last few were being tricky. One had taken cover behind a rib that stuck out from the wall and was lashing our cover with thick strands of its acid.
"I think this might call for a grenade!" I called over the insistent voice of voice of the station VI. The Commander nodded. I whipped the grenade over the cover, landing it just behind the hiding insect. The blast blew the Rachni out into the middle of the hall, where it was mowed down. "Looks like the last of them, Commander."
"Looks that way. Maybe now we'll get some answers." She walked up to the elevator helpfully marked 'VI Core.' "There isn't room for the whole team on this thing, Tali is coming with me, the rest of you keep watch." The two descended into the bowels of the facility's computer core. I walked over and took a seat next to Liara, who was cradling her head in her hands.
"You okay?" I asked, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"I should be. I don't think I've ever exerted myself quite that much." Her voice sounded less strained now, and more alert. "I switched out my amp, which helped a lot. I should be ready if we are attacked again."
"Don't overexert yourself, its better if you rest up and give 110% later, than get yourself hurt here." I echoed Commander Shepard's advice. Liara smiled at me.
"Someone's been spending too much time with the Commander."
I laughed quietly. "Maybe. She knows what she's talking about though." We were interrupted by a new VI announcement.
User Alert: Hardlines to the Rift Station disconnected. Generator Helium-3 lines have been disabled.
"That sounds like progress," I said cheerily. I stood as the elevator returned to our level. The Commander looked confident.
"You heard the VI?" she asked. We gathered around and muttered our agreements. "Here's how we're going to play this, the VI says something broke out in the Hot Labs over at Peak 15's Rift Station. That's where Binary Helix runs their biological agent testing. She doesn't know what these things are, and she can't tell us anything more before we plug the hardlines in. And, as I'm sure you've noticed, it's getting very cold in here. If we don't fix the generator soon, we'll end up freezing alongside these bugs. Liddle, you and Liara are going to the roof to plug in the hardlines. It should be pretty easy and there's a VI terminal to assist you. I will take the rest of the team down to patch the Helium-3 lines. We meet back here once our job is done and take the tram into the Rift station. Move fast, the VI said there may be survivors in the labs, time is key if we want to rescue anyone." I nodded and followed the signs for roof access. The elevator ride up was even colder than the rest of the base. I reaffixed my helmet before reaching for the door.
"You ready?" I asked Liara.
"Yes, I am ready," She replied. She readied her pistol, and I readied my shotgun. The doors opened to a roar of sound and snow. We leant heavily into the gale as we stumbled across the blustery rooftop.
"I think the hardlines are over there!" I yelled, pointing past the great cylindrical tanks and array of ductwork. I threw my leg over one of the great pipes and wrestled my way towards the hardline junction. The junction itself was a great tangle of cables. Where the incoming line and the outgoing cabling met, a large boxy socket sat suspended by motored arms. The arms held the connection open. "This is it; I think we just push it closed." I hazarded. I leaned on the connection box. The arms gave a little but an already thick cover of ice stopped it from closing all the way. "Damn it."
"I could use my biotics to weaken the ice." Liara suggested.
"No, I don't want you hurting yourself," I said, offhandedly. I wracked my brain for a solution. Try and use that flamethrower program I picked up? No, that would probably just backfire. Try and chip it out? That would take too long. Just shoot it? No that would break something. Unless…
"I've got an idea!" I lifted my shotgun into the sky and fired a few quick bursts. Once the gun began to beep an imminent overheat warning, I lay the weapon alongside the hinges and squeezed a shot off into the nearby rock face. The gun bucked and vented hot air over the connection box. I repeated the steps twice while Liara threw her weight into the box. Finally, with a squeal of protest, the box snapped shut. The nearby terminal began to glow brightly, signifying a connection.
"I think it's time to go!" Liara yelled, "I'm beginning to lose feeling to my…" behind her, shapes emerged from the snow.
"More Geth!" I yelled, diving for cover. The Geth platforms peppered the ducting with holes. Steam escaped, which must mean Shepard had succeeded in getting the power back on.
"Where did they come from? They couldn't have followed us up, could they?" Liara dropped in beside me and aimed a quick shot to the head of the nearest platform. It didn't penetrate the barriers, but the squash-head rounds the Asari had found knocked the Geth down into the valley below.
"Maybe there's a dropship hiding out there." I scanned the sky. The clouds yielded no answers.
"I certainly hope not." Liara replied. She knocked down another Geth. The remaining Geth charged and fired. A stray round caught me in the shoulder, bypassing my shields and burying itself deep into my shoulder. I went down clutching at the wound. The raw cold stabbed like needles at the deep cut in my undersuit.
"Michael!" Liara threw the last Geth out into the gale with a burst of biotic thunder. She clutched at her head and dropped her pistol. "Here, let me help you." She reached to pull my hand away from the wound, but I kept it tightly gripped. Exposing the gash to the wind hurt too much. "I said, let me help you." Liara's eyes flashed to completely black. The wind seemed to die down, leaving only the voice of the Asari in my headset. "I'm going to take the hand away. I need to apply medigel. Will you let me do that?" Against my blind reaction to the pain, I nodded. Liara gently lifted my arm. The icy cold was covered by a warm feeling of liquid binding itself to the cut, sealing against the wind. Liara's eyes snapped back to their usual deep blue and the wind came crashing back.
"What the hell was that?" I spluttered.
"I am sorry," Liara looked abashed, "It is a technique for dealing with squabbling children. I shouldn't have used it without your permission."
"S'alright." I slurred; the blood loss was making me dizzy. "I wasn't thinking. Help me up?" the Asari threw my arm around her neck.
"Let's get back inside; the Commander must be waiting for us."
