Interloper Rewrite: Chapter 28

Durand


The deck plates rang like gongs under the massive footfalls of the running Krogan as he surged ahead of me. I gave chase, my own ringing steps slowly gaining on the lumbering alien. Wrex wove back and forth through the ship, ducking into side passages and crashing through thin dividing walls. The thin drifts of ash coated my throat and made each breath harsh in my lungs.

"Damn it, Wrex," I hacked and coughed, "We are leaving!" The words fell on deaf ears, or were completely ignored. He turned again, this time headbutting his way through a blocked door. The metal of the blockage squealed and flew off its rails. The debris that had piled against the door frame fell away as I skated to a halt next to his elbow. "Oh." The bottom fell out of my stomach and a chill, clammy feeling crept up my face. Eggs. The chamber beyond was piled with slimy yellow egg sacs, piled up as far as the eye could see in the ship's cavernous hold. There had to be hundreds of them, each one burst open to reveal its fleshy interior and spill its contents over the floor. The entire hold had an acrid smell that burned the nostrils. All empty. Weak light streamed in from rips and tears in the ceiling where the "cargo" must have escaped out onto the volcanic surface.

"Little bastard's not getting away from me!" Wrex rounded on something in the back of the hold. It scrabbled into a beam of ruddy light. A small, quick footed rachni warrior raised its tentacle pods above its head in challenge. It chittered madly and moved as if to launch its acidic threads. Wrex blew it away with an evil chuckle. He turned to me with a glint in his eye. "You still here?"

"I gave you an order, Wrex. Guard the back door. Not go running off after the first thing you see move, guard. The. Door." I stepped closer, as close as I dared with Wrex's shotgun still in his hands.

"And you think I trust you to give me commands? You're more foolish than I imagined." The big krogan huffed. "For the last three hundred years I have served no master but myself."

"So maybe you don't trust me, but I'm pretty sure you trust Shepard. You know, the one who put me in command."

"Ha, Shepard's a strong warrior and has done many great things, but I can't claim to agree with her every decision. Present company included. And unleashing the Rachni on the galaxy again…"

"Shepard killed the new queen," I said quickly.

"Don't feed me that." Wrex stomped closer, looking me straight in the eye. "I'm not the dumb monster you assume me to be. I may not have been down there, but I could see it when you returned. There is a queen out there, and I'm going to kill it." He brushed past me, knocking me aside. I turned and watched him walk from the hold. I kicked the broken Rachni in frustration. At least Wrex was pointed in the right direction again. I hefted my weapon and left the dark room, tracking back through the ruined ship. I moved quickly from the room and found myself thinking over my next move. The flight recorder hadn't told me anything I didn't know, but the sight of so many egg sacs up close worried me.

"Deputy? You lost down there?" Rahna's voice caused me to jump.

"Negative, Lieutenant. Anything going on up there?"

"Forrest picked up gunfire in the direction of the listening post. We need to move, Deputy," the woman said, "also, Wrex just stormed out of the ship. He's not going to be an issue, is he?"

"I'll be there soon," I said, cutting off the communication.


The Mako engine roared. Forsaking the cover of the ridge, I drove straight for the post at full speed. The black gravel pattered against the underside of the speeding tank in a steady rhythm that only underlined the silence in the troop compartment. The thought of several hundred rachni weighed heavy on the team's mind, especially Liara, who had seen the bugs first hand. She sat towards the back with a worried expression etched onto her face, hands twisting together. Beside her Wrex held the opposite attitude, a wide, grim smile spread across his face. His hands held his shotgun ready and he was possessed with an energy, as if he was ready to leap from the tank at a moment's notice.

"There's that gunfire again," Rahna noted. We could all see it now, quick flashes in the ash cloud that whipped across the planet. "Looks like it's getting heavier."

"That must be what's left of the 10th Frontier," Forrest said. He cradled his rifle as a mother would a child, but his eyes were focused more sharply than ever "the volume of fire they're putting out, they must be fighting something big."

"Or a lot of really little things," I said, "When we hit the post, we need…" I struggled to think of all the things that needed to be done. If the post was swarming with hundreds of wild Rachni, they needed… "to disembark quickly. Wrex and Isik, cover the survivors as best you can. We know from Noveria that those strands go straight through kinetic barriers, maybe biotics will have more effect. Liara, do you think you can project a barrier around the tank from the inside?"

"I think so," Liara said in a strained voice. She made a few motions with her hands as if practicing. "Yes."

"And me, sir?" Forrest asked.

"I want you to take all the grenades we have stocked. You're going to keep an eye out for tunnels under the post. If you see any, plug them with a grenade."

"Aye sir." Forrest turned and gathered explosives from the others in the compartment. From the rear view monitor, I saw Wrex relinquish what I knew was only half his compliment of grenades. The ash cloud began to subside as we dashed across the plain. The flash of fire grew closer.

"Tanrim…" Rahna sat forward. On the monitors, we all saw the scope of the battlefield. Behind a set of steel barricades, a handful of marines fought desperately against a veritable carpet of rachni warriors. The large, prawn-like aliens stormed across the rapidly filling no-man's land from a ring of circular holes in the ground.

"Someone get on the gun!" I yelled back. Seconds later the gun chattered, blasting apart the rachni in droves. But it wasn't enough. We could only concentrate fire on one section at a time. "Liara, now would be a great time for those barriers!" the world disappeared behind a translucent blue curtain. "Hold on, this is going to get messy!" I brought the Mako about, aiming for where the hoard seemed thinnest. The back row spun about and threw their fiery strands across the path of the Mako. The barrier held, shrugging off the worst of the barrage. "Here we go!" the first rachni squealed as the forward-most edge of the bubble impacted it.

"Gah!" Liara grunted and clutched her head as more and more rachni were crushed under the bubble. "My amp wasn't supposed to do this kind of heavy lifting!"

I threw the Mako into a skid turn to avoid a denser pocket of the aliens and slipped sideways around the barricade. I yanked on the brake, bringing the tank to a screeching halt in the middle of the defensive ring.

"Go go go!" Forrest popped the hatch and leapt into the battle. He was followed by Isik and Wrex. They fired into the maelstrom of angry rachni. Forrest took aim with a handheld grenade launcher, popping round after round past the line of insects. The tunnels collapsed with puffs of ash and dust.

"Liara, let up on that barrier and get on the gun, I need to speak with whoever's in charge here." The asari looked relieved to drop the biotic field, but her eyes jerked up to the gunner's seat.

"I don't know…"

"Talk to the VI, you'll get a tutorial!" I yelled over my shoulder as I jumped out into the heat of battle. Ash whipped around in thin wisps. I took aim at a rachni as it peeked over the barricade. The dot of the sniper rifle's scope wobbled across the target, but at such close range, it didn't matter. The slug tore the head right of the attacker. It flopped uselessly over the barrier. A nearby marine in grey armour, the same shade as the Commander's, stomped down hard on the wretched creature. I moved up, firing two more shots. They both went wide as I tried to control the sway of the heavy gun.

"You'd have better luck shooting from the hip." A new voice, female and sarcastic, spoke in my earpiece.

"You in charge?" I asked in reply.

"Yes, Lieutenant Durand, acting commander, 14th Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 10th Frontier Division. Are you our relief?" she looked behind me as if to look for an army.

"I'm Michael Liddle, Spectre's Deputy. We're here with the frigate Normandy on recon."

"Recon? I need an extraction or an army. My troops are exhausted and our supplies are low. We can't survive on half measures."

"Look, Lieutenant, my team is all we've got for now." I motioned towards the line, where Isik and Wrex tore into the approaching rachni with powerful biotics.

"All we've got? You get on that horn and call down your Spectre, and your frigate, and the wrath of God down on these creatures or we will be overrun!"

"It's not that simple!" I got defensive. "We're here tracking a possible rogue admiral. Total radio silence."

"Then I hope you like fighting bugs, kid, because here comes another wave."


"They're retreating!" Someone yelled hoarsely. They were right; the rachni scurried back under the fire of the Mako's turret. The fight had been long, and hard. Twice the rachni had almost gained the barricade. The second time, one had managed to get its claws on my rifle. In the brief struggle, the powerful rachni had managed to crack the rifle's casing and rip the scope right off the weapon, exposing its workings.

"They won't be gone long," Lieutenant Durand said tiredly, "everyone take a drink, watch those bugholes." She turned to me and let out a long, harsh breath. "I'm, sorry about my shortness earlier. I understand operational security as much as the next soldier. We've been under a lot of stress recently. But my people, they need more than a pair of marines and an angry krogan."

"I understand that, Lieutenant. Do you know where the Rachni have set up? If you can maintain a perimeter, my team can move in on their nest and flush them out."

"Rachni? Nevermind. These things are coming from a maze of tunnels under this whole area. That's how this whole mess started, one of our mining teams busted through into one of them. These things just boiled out of there like termites from a kicked nest. I lost half my unit the first day."

"I'm sorry," I said, "these mining tunnels, are they close?"

"Just beyond the ridge," she pointed, "but my marines are tired, we won't be able to hold if another wave comes through."

"Then we'll have to hold position. If we can drive the rachni back again, they should be few enough in number to clear out. Do you have anything big enough here to collapse those mining tunnels?"

"Yes, my marines managed to secure our listening post's self destruct charges before we retreated. They're stacked up over there."

"Good, I'll have my team load them on the Mako." I gave the order through text command. Wrex looked over angrily in the background, but still moved towards the stack of explosives. "Is there anything we can do to shore up your position?" I looked over to the tall, upright towers of the automated defenses. The Lieutenant followed my gaze.

"They're out of juice; one of the bugs got our generator. They're useless without it."

"Could we use the Mako's power?" I asked.

"Alliance standard power circuits, should work, I'll get a man on it." Durand turned and began to address her marines. I moved away, towards Forrest. The marine stood watch with his rifle slung across his arm. The grenade launcher lay useless on the ground at his feet, ammo expended. He had plugged about half of the tunnels, focusing on creating as wide an empty front as possible. The dead zone had allowed the surviving marines to focus on one side of the compound.

"What do you see?" I stood next to him. He was busy scanning the low hills in the distance. He held up a hand. I peered past him. Then I caught it too. A glint of something in the distance, like sunlight reflecting off glass.

"Someone's watching us, Deputy."