Interloper Rewrite: Chapter 27
Pandora
I took a brief, steadying breath and punched the glowing red button in the dark cabin of the Mako. There was a grinding sound and a sudden shaft of dull ruby light as the cargo bay ramp descended. The cabin was briefly lit in red before the white-blue lighting flickered on. The engine roared to life beneath me as my feet found the pedals. The APC slipped into gear and lurched forward as the ramp reached level. The Mako launched itself out into open air. For a moment, we became a pure white dart against the dark sky, locked in a noseward plummet towards the night black ground. I flipped the cover on the jump jets and the Mako bounced on a cushion of air. The little tank juddered as we continued to fall. Dust clouds whipped around us in thin streamers and on the landing scopes the earth below boiled as thick black gravel cascaded away from our landing spot in waves. The tires touched down with a crunch, the shock running up through the suspension. The tires bit deep into the gravel and the Mako rocketed forward. I griped the yoke with white knuckles, fighting to maintain control of the skid. We slipped sideways down a scree before managing to stabilize halfway down. I pulled the Mako to a stop and blew out my cheeks as gravel continued to patter down on top of us. "Made it." As the first words of my first mission, I supposed I could have chosen a more historical set of words.
"I give you a 10 for the leap, but a 5 for the landing," Joker quipped over the radio, "the Normandy's sensors have picked up some strange reading ahead of you at bearing 43.57. Just letting you know, also, I suggest you maintain radio silence from now on."
"I'll keep that in mind, Normandy. Ground Team out." I flicked off the transmitter and switched over to the internal channel. "Everyone alright back there?"
"All clear, Deputy," Forrest replied in clipped military tones. It was a stark contrast to the more relaxed attitude of Shepard's personal squad.
"Yes, we made it," Wrex added. There was that familiar casual reporting. "Shook us up like a bottle of snack bugs, but we made it." I flipped the channel back off and brought up the map. The holographic image flickered in the dim cabin. The rocky, broken ground stretched away from us until it flattened out into the ashen plain that held the listening post. I mentally plotted a path that would bring us on a close approach to Joker's mysterious reading. If I took us south, I could keep us behind this ridge. From there I could carefully probe forward under the cover of the smoggy haze of volcanic ash. My route set, I put us back in gear and set off. The tires crunched over gravel as we ate up the kilometers. I turned up the outside channel to listen out for a hint of rachni song. The feed revealed nothing but the hiss of steel on stone and of the constant flowing ash. In the near-blind conditions, all I could do was follow the little red blip on the HUD and keep the Mako level.
We had not been running long when something loomed out of the storm.
"What is that?" Liara exclaimed, her voice crackling slightly over the internal radio.
"Looks like someone crashed their ship," Wrex responded with a grunt. As we drew closer, he was soon proven to be right. The dark outline become the curved shape of a ship, a freighter by the size of it. Formerly white paint had scorched and blackened from the heat of reentry, crisped up in little curls that made the hull almost look organic, like the stippled hide of a fallen star beast. At first it looked a total jumble, but as we drew closer and the swirling ash was parted, I saw pieces I recognized. The once proud spine, now twisted and buckled, its broken back canted at an extreme angle. To either side, several of the cargo pods had burst, their now burnt petals shriveled somewhat. I pulled us close alongside, close enough to read the name stenciled on the side.
"MSV Sulaco," I read off the peeling nameplate, "this must be our anomalous reading." I threw the Mako into neutral and engaged the console locks. "We're going to investigate this wreck before continuing on to the post. I want everyone to do a wide sweep of the area before stacking up on that breach there." I shone an exterior spot light on the great rift in the ship's side where the boxy hull had cracked on impact. "Forrest, lead the sweep." I added on second thought.
"Yes Sir." The hard-faced marine rapped on the outer door. The hatch rose smartly. "Alright, people, fan out on exit and move forward in pairs. Isik and T'Soni, you're Team 2, Wrex, you will be Team 3. Deputy, you and I will be Team 1. Go, go, go. Team 2, take the lead." Rahna and Liara gracefully dismounted and ran forward, taking a knee as Wrex pounded ahead of them. "Our move, Deputy." Forrest hopped out and covered the breach with his rifle. I popped out behind him and was immediately assaulted by a flurry of tiny black flecks of stone that rattled against my helmet. I pulled my rifle up, peering through the ash. Outside of the steel shell of the Mako, the crushed side of the broken freighter yawned, impossibly huge above me, the rift in its side a black and toothy maw.
"Deputy."
I pulled my eyes away from the breach and nodded. We shuffled across the burnt plain, leapfrogging into the shadow of the Sulaco. Forrest dropped to a knee without a word and raised a hand. At the signal, the two biotics moved past us quietly. The ash flecks fluttered around them on their electrostatic coronas. Their boots left tracks in the gravel that were swallowed up before the next footfall fell. Their leg of the leapfrog brought them almost to the stricken ship. Wrex was the first of us to reach the hole. He leaned in, red-eyed death mask glowing.
"Looks clear," he said flatly. The rest of the group looked to me.
"Move in, carefully," I said, "Keep your eyes peeled for survivors or intel. I want to know where this ship came from, what it's doing here, and if it had anything to do with the Listening Post going silent." The team nodded and slipped one by one into the crevice. The inside hallway was dark, only the diffuse light of the spot light to brighten the ashen metal. The floor creaked and groaned under our footsteps. From the thick pattern of ash on the floor, the ship had gone down days ago. "Lights on." I said. Bright spots of light fell on the grating before us. They illuminated a skewed and broken corridor, canted down ahead of us where the nose of the Sulaco had buried itself in the ground. "Move forward, watch your footing." The words echoed tinnily down the broken hallway. I silently cursed myself and cut my suits external speakers. If anything was hiding down the slanted path, it knew we were coming. I picked my way slowly down the grating into the darkness. I passed my light over doorways and turnoffs, but the vast majority of them were either blocked off by buckled hull plating or jammed closed. Further into the belly of the wreck, the air cleared and we got a better view of the space around us. I quickly wished we hadn't, the walls held a red stain too dark to be simple rust.
"Whatever happened here was messy," Wrex said with a dark chuckle, "This kind of splatter doesn't come from any gunshot." His words set the party on edge. Deeper into the ship, we found our first open door.
"Stack up, Lieutenant Isik and Chief Forrest, move in and clear the room on my signal," I whispered over the link. Boots clomped on metal as the team maneuvered past one another in the dim and cramped passageway. I gave the signal, a short chopping motion that I'd seen the Commander make in this situation. Both marines surged forward into the room with mechanical precision.
"Clear left."
"Clear right."
I moved in behind them, my own rifle up and ready. The camber beyond was narrow, its ribbed walls holding foldaway crew bunks. Something had torn through the small crew berth with gale force, leaving the walls painted with the same dull rust color of the passage. Some of the thin mattresses had been torn, others hung limply from the wall by twisted chains, their frames shattered. Wafting in the slight breeze of our passing, the tattered shreds of what appeared to be a uniform sleeve hung from a jagged rip in the ceiling.
"Goddess, these poor crewmen." Liara exclaimed.
"Deputy, look at the uniforms, you see the logo there?" Forrest fished the rags from the hole with the barrel of his gun. Embellished on what used to be a lapel, was an image of twin strands wrapped around the letters "BH." The insignia didn't leave much room for interpretation.
"Binary Helix," I said.
"You don't think…" the Lieutenant started to ask before being cut off by Wrex.
"It looks like a Krogan will get a second shot at the Rachni after all." He readied his shotgun dramatically. According to the rumor mill, the battlemaster hadn't been too happy to be left out of the action on Noveria.
"We need to be sure before we go charging into battle. If this was the Rachni, that listening post is in even more trouble than we thought. We need to get to the bridge and find out where this ship's been, maybe figure out how many Rachni were aboard, and…" I said hesitantly, "If there's a queen involved."
The doors to the bridge were buckled inwards, as if they had been battered open. I peered into the cramped cockpit. It looked clear.
"Chief, you and Wrex cover the hallway. I'm going to try and find the freighter's flight recorder." The two nodded and dropped into position. I slipped sidelong into the space and swung my light around. The walls had the same unpleasant stains as the hallways, as did the smashed consoles. I walked over to the sputtering light of the pilot's controls.
"Something really didn't want this ship flying again," Liara noted as she slipped in behind me, "I think this class of freighter keeps the flight recorder under the center console." I slipped her a questioning look. "I've traveled in my share of bulk freighters; grants don't always cover transportation." I nodded and slipped under the twisted controls. I left my shotgun at my side and popped off the flashlight, clenching it between my shoulder and jaw. The underside of the console was smooth and flat. I fired up my Omni-tool and ran it over the metal. A panel popped open and slid to the side. The inner compartment was dark and full of cabling. "The flat, oblong one in the back," Liara noted helpfully. I dragged out the component to find it intact.
"Time to find out what's going on around here." I hauled myself out from under the console. "Do you think you can fix this console up enough to display video?"
"I've got you covered, Deputy." Rahna had entered the cabin now too. "Took a turn on Maintenance duty back on Arcturus." The marine snatched the flight recorder from my hands and ran a hand over the flickering orange light of the console. "I think I can get something out of this. Give me a few minutes."
"Try to hurry, this place is giving me the creeps." I left her to her work and went to check on the guards. "Anything of note?"
"Forrest here thinks he saw something." Wrex rumbled, jerking his head in the general direction of one of the half open doors further down the hall.
"I saw something, Deputy," Forrest said, bristling, "There's something on this ship."
I peered past him, my light catching on the faint stream of dust that trickled from the ceiling. The shadows seemed to skitter across the walls before the bright beam, but nothing solid resolved out of the darkness. The crashed ship seemed to be holding its breath.
"Deputy, I've got it working," Rahna called.
"Keep your eyes peeled, okay," I said quickly before slipping back onto the bridge. "What have we got?"
"See for yourself." Rahna jabbed at the stabilized console. The forward displays flickered on. "This is the latest entry." The screen showed a disheveled and panicky face of an older man. His eyes were ringed with deep dark circles and at least a week's growth of white stubble dotted his chin.
"…I've sealed the door, but they keep scraping at the walls. I had to leave the crew behind, God help me. The scientists said… They weren't supposed to get out." The man's voice was shaky and strained; his eyes darted from what had to be the camera and the door behind him. "It started in the hold, the cargo… started to hatch, the Rachni swarmed the ship. They've knocked out the engines… the conn says the Sulaco's going down, I…" the recording cut out, leaving the bridge silent. I looked at the faces of my team. Liara was worried, but pensive. Rahna also looked thoughtful. She spoke in a guarded tone.
"Deputy, the Rachni are dead, right? I mean, you and the Commander burned them down on Noveria."
I looked away awkwardly. The Commander had taken us all aside and sworn us to secrecy after we had returned from the planet. While the official report to the Alliance mentioned the survival of a Rachni queen, the entire affair had been declared classified.
"Yes," I lied, "but I think this freighter's been out of port for a while, possibly before the destruction of Peak 15." Rahna looked unconvinced. I fished through the flight recorder's data and threw up the ship's previous flight path. The ship had taken a long path through a number of relays before popping out in the Acheron system. "Look at this, the Sulaco set off about a week before we touched down on Noveria. Binary Helix seemed to be moving a lot of their stock off planet."
"Perhaps at the order of Saren," Liara posited.
"That makes sense. He knows we're onto him, so he unleashes a bunch of angry bugs on our far-flung bases to distract us," Rahna said.
"The recording says that they weren't supposed to hatch, is it possible this was an accident?" Liara asked.
Out in the hall shots rang out. We all turned as one to see Wrex barrel down the hall. "Forrest, what's going on?"
"I winged it, Deputy." The sharp-eyed marine peered into the shadows. "It skittered off down the hall there."
"Great," I said, angrily, "Forrest, get the team back to the Mako. We've got what we need here. I'll fetch Wrex."
"Yes Sir," Forrest snapped. He rose and gestured for the team to follow. As their footsteps faded, I turned to the side corridor Wrex had taken. I steeled myself, and set off into the dark.
