A/N - There are terms and acronyms in here that may be unfamiliar; each chapter has a glossary at the end so you can flip down to the bottom, find out what it is, and then go back. (I tried it with the full name in parentheses, but it was too distracting to the scene and dialogue flow.)
This chapter is rated MA for death, a firefight, and language.
*** Nihlus Kyrick ***
Shepard stayed at 2x acceleration, set his sensors to maximum, jogged over to the lefthand module. The door and windows were wide open. It looked like a stateroom space for two, open to enjoy what would normally be beautiful weather; a pair of chairs and bunks with a couple of displays each, plus some storage. The airlock, fully collapsed into a niche on the wall opposite the door, looked like it had never been used.
Kaidan, Ash, and Richard stepped in behind him. Shepard looked around for a working GPC or VI terminal. "Alenko, find me the local network and see if there are any users still online. Williams, do you know any of the scientists here? Any names I can start looking for when we connect?"
"Doctor Warren was in charge of the dig, she's an archaeologist from…uh…Cornell? Cambridge? I forget. The three other researchers…uh…two humans and an alien…I don't know their names."
"Got it; we're connected to the net," Kaidan said, "I'm logged in to their DCE, but I don't see any other active users."
"I suppose we shouldn't be surprised," Shepard glanced out at the rest of the camp, "Do we know how many people were here?"
"Normal complement has been the four original researchers, they bunked in the main building." Ash pointed out the windows at the fallen and smoking structure. "They had just brought in four more full-timers, and the 212 helped them set up these units. They have some local contractors that come out and do some of the administrative stuff. I think they have a local chef, too. Doctor Warren is afcRNA-resistant GFCF, and she likes talking menus. I think that's just because she could pull strings at the university, though."
Shepard walked out as she was talking; Ash and the rest of the team followed. As they approached the second prefab, she pointed, "That door. It's closed. Security lock's engaged." She traded her assault rifle for her shotgun, raised its muzzle to the magnetic lock.
"Wait," Shepard said, "The world doesn't end today. This might be usable later if we don't blow the lock off." As he stepped up to the door, he replaced the geth rifle on his back and raised his left arm to the lock. "Don't destroy what you can still use." He switched to a remote hardware mode, and held his left hand to the side of the controller.
A green diode lit as it connected, and he touched the ENTER key. A circular array appeared on his ARO, and highlighted the four keys that showed any wear. Shepard clicked his way through them until he had discovered the code, and when the indicator switched from red to green, he tapped it.
The door grumbled open, and something inside rustled.
Shepard put a hand near his face, gestured the command to crack the seal on his helmet, but left his visor down. "Hello? Anyone here?" He peeked his pistol around the corner slowly, seeing what it saw: humans. He pulled the weapon back quickly, stepping out where she could see him.
The red-haired woman slowly put down the makeshift club. "Humans! Thank the Maker."
A hoarse whisper followed from the shadows behind her, "Hurry! Close the door...before they come back!"
"Dr. Warren…you're safe!" Ash looked more than relieved, like she wanted to hug the other woman, but was managing to restrain herself.
The initial relief at seeing Ash was quickly replaced by caution. "Who are you?"
"I'm Commander Shepard of the Alliance SSV Normandy. This is Lieutenant Alenko, Corporal Jenkins…and it seems you already know Chief Williams."
"Yes, she was in charge of the volunteers from the base who have been helping us."
Shepard turned to Ash. "That CID you mentioned?"
"Yes, sir."
Shepard asked Warren, "Are you injured? How did you get here?"
"The soldiers who were here…if they hadn't been, we'd have been killed, too. We hid here during the attack. They…whoever brought those mechs…must have come here for the beacon."
"Did they get it?"
"No," Doctor Warren looked at Manuel as if with a newfound respect. "Luckily, it wasn't here. Manuel insisted, so it was moved earlier this morning. Manuel and I stayed behind to pack up the camp. These modules are from the colony's General Pool, not the university, so they were to be transported to their next assignment." She looked down, spoke more slowly, "When the attack came, the marines held them off long enough for us to hide. They…the four of them...gave their lives to save us."
"Saved?" The man seemed shocked, "No one is saved. The age of humanity is ended. Soon, only ruin and corpses will remain…!"
Shepard ignored him. "What else can you tell me about what happened?
"It all happened so fast. One second, we were gathering up our equipment, the next, we were hiding in the shed while those things swarmed over the camp."
The man kept muttering to himself, "Agents of the destroyers…bringers of darkness…heralds of our destruction…!"
Doctor Warren glanced at him, then continued, "After we got in here, we could hear the battle outside…gunfire, screams…I thought it would never end. Then, everything went quiet. We just sat there, too afraid to move. Until you came along."
"Can you tell me about this thing you discovered? Williams said you were calling it a beacon?"
"It's a type of data module, from a galaxy-wide communications network. Remarkably well preserved. It could be the greatest scientific discovery of our lifetime. Miraculous new technologies…ground-breaking medical advances…who knows what secrets are locked inside?"
Dr. Manuel gibbered, oblivious of anyone else in the structure, "We have unearthed the heart of evil…awakened the beast…we have breached the darkness!"
"Manuel, please. This isn't the time."
Shepard studied the man. His ARO switched to Analysis and covered the man with callouts about his left-handedness, the fact that he had taken several falls, blood pressure and pulse, and the fact that he was telling the truth with almost 94% certainty. "I've seen shell shock, and battlefield panic, but your…ah…associate there seems unusually disturbed."
Dr. Warren looked pained. "Manuel has a brilliant mind, but he's always been a bit…unstable. Two of the marines…who were protecting him. They were killed right in front of him."
"Is it madness to see the future?" Manuel had his hands to the sides of his head, "To see the destruction rushing towards us? To understand there is no escape…no hope?! No…I am not mad…I'm the only sane one left!"
Dr. Warren shrugged. "I gave him an extra dose of his meds after the attack…just a few minutes ago."
"You gonna be okay here?"
She pointed to her omnitool. "The cargo hovers are on their way; they should be here in an hour. They'll take the intact modules out. I expected to ride out with them."
Shepard looked over his shoulder. "The whole colony's been disrupted; they might be delayed. But I think you'll be safe here if you stay locked up." He glanced out the door. "We've still got time to make up. Williams, get us to that spaceport." Ash nodded, led the way out of the module.
As Richard and Kaidan followed her, Shepard turned to the civilians and said, "We'll stop this. Stay safe."
Manuel continued, "You can't stop it. Nobody can stop it! Night is falling…the darkness of eternity…!"
"Hush, Manuel, go lie down. You'll feel better once the medication kicks in." She turned back to the team, looking almost apologetic. "Good luck, Commander."
"Luck won't save you," Manuel rasped quietly as Shepard exited the module.
And don't I know it, Shepard thought.
Ash had turned to the right as she exited, had taken only a few steps to the east before speaking. "We can get to Douglas faster by the maglev. Come on, it's this way." She led the way around the corner and up a slight rise. "Crap, that guy was always kind of weird. But now he's over-the-top nuts."
"With a cherry on top," Kaidan agreed. He stopped suddenly, "Hey, there's some biotic effect here." He waved his omnitool past his weapon, held it up for Shepard to see.
Shepard was just catching up; he looked at Kaidan's holo interface. "What?"
"I'm a biotic, right? Don't want to render my sidearm useless as a side-effect. So I have a sensor that lets me know if there's something detectable…you know, like thermal tolerances that keep parts from moving correctly."
"You can render your own weapon nonfunctional?" Richard seemed incredulous.
"Not only can I…over time, I will. This is my eighth pistol in as many years; the Kesslers seem to last the longest for me. Anyway, the effects are measurable, and this is showing signs of having walked through an east-spin biotic field."
Richard walked back to where they were standing. "What does that mean? One of us is biotic? And doesn't know it?"
Kaidan chuckled. "Keep dreaming. No, it just means that we might have just walked past or through a biotic field. It could be one of the workers is a biotic, and did something highly energetic here. Or it could be the bad guys are using biotics, and did so here, too. All it boils down to is that I don't know what caused it...so keep your guard up."
"But the bad guys are geth robots. They couldn't be using biotics." Shepard looked from Kaidan to the ground, "What even gave you a clue about this?"
Kaidan shrugged. "I felt it. Here." He put a hand to the back of his neck. "It's not uncommon, but I wanted to make you aware."
Shepard nodded. "Good work, Alenko. Williams, you have any ideas about this? Any biotics in your unit?"
"No, sir. This…uh…isn't a high profile installation."
Richard was prowling the local network for his family, and didn't look up from his omnitool. "Well, it wasn't an hour ago."
Shepard gestured for the map on his ARO and added, "Okay, seal up your suits again; we're still in a fight. Williams, how fast can you get us to the spaceport?"
"We can take the maglev; the station is just ahead. We can be there in thirty minutes, tops."
"All right, Chief, get us there pronto."
Ash snapped into command mode. "Double-time it to the station, let's go!"
# # #
Even with two platoons of fully armed geth, Saren had been unable to find where the humans had hidden the beacon. There had been no interrogation, they had simply been slaughtered. As far as he could tell, this was at the direction of Sovereign; Saren considered it a mistake to kill all the humans before the necessary information had been extracted.
He stalked across the terminal's dock, looking for some sign of the beacon.
Although no explanation had been given, Sovereign had impressed upon him the importance of finding the beacon, and Saren only partly trusted the ancient intelligence that inhabited the vast starship. It had guarded the galaxy for millennia against some threat Saren did not yet understand. Although it remained something of a mystery to him, Saren was quite sure it was responsible in some way for the creation of the Citadel. Anything with that sort of capability demanded respect, of course…but no more respect than an antimatter weapon.
His full-time Augmented Reality Appliance (ARA) alerted him to the walking approach of an unknown; the display showed it was not one of the geth. Rather than kill the new arrival, Saren hoped he would be able to get some useful information. He kept his back turned, but his ARA made it as clear as if he'd had eyes in the back of his head.
Nihlus Kryik, the ARA informed him.
Saren watched with something like amusement as Nihlus flattened himself against cover.
Nihlus glanced down at his in-suit display, looked at Saren, and again at the display. He leaned out, and then stepped completely out of cover. "Saren!?"
"Nihlus."
Nihlus' reaction was at first confusion, "This isn't your mission, Saren. What are you doing here?"
So they sent a Spectre, Saren thought. The Council must have some sense of the importance of this, but he clearly knows nothing about the location of the beacon. Saren approached his fellow Spectre, touched his shoulder reassuringly as he stepped behind Nihlus, then armed his pistol with a thought. "The Council thought you could use some help on this one."
With relief at being able to share the burden of a mission gone spectacularly wrong, Nihlus turned and looked almost irresistibly at Sovereign, parked in the distance. "I wasn't expecting to find the geth here. The situation is bad."
"Don't worry. I've got it under control."
A single shot to the upper kavori silenced the turian Spectre. Saren felt a rush of approval. Of course, a Spectre would have no backup.
THE BEACON IS FOUND, Sovereign informed him.
WE DEPART.
DESTROY THIS PLACE.
Saren unconsciously tilted his head back and clenched a fist. If the beacon was still here, he might be able to find out why Sovereign wanted it. He had hoped to find the beacon first, activate it in the way Sovereign had shown him, and get its message. But now that it had been found, Sovereign only wanted it destroyed.
But why? Saren had wondered, What don't you want anyone to know?
He gestured a link to the geth at his command. "Purge this place," he ordered, "Kill anything that moves, then join us at the spaceport in 45 minutes. Units unable to depart will self-destruct."
His geth acknowledged the message.
# # #
As they jogged toward the maglev station, Shepard heard a single gunshot in the distance.
His ARO identified the shot as having come from a Carnifex. "That wasn't a geth weapon," he said, "Someone's in trouble." As he reached for his rifle, the stock extended into his hand. "Get to cover; keep 'em at range. Sniper rifles; hilltop ten and two, give me intel. Come on!" He noticed there was no return fire, nor a second shot. It may already be too late, he realised.
The air started to shake; in the distance, something black and knifelike rose on a red plume into the sky. It was too big to miss; an enormous ship, easily the size of a dreadnought, had somehow landed on the surface of this one-gee world, and now it was lifting off. It appeared to be using chemical rockets, which seemed absurdly inefficient, but the ululating wail was simply wrong.
Kaidan slowed and stopped. "What…is that? Off in the distance?"
Ash switched to her rifle's scope view and sighted the thing, "It's a ship! Look at the size of it!"
Shepard's ARO added, Range: 13 km
"It's at the spaceport!" Richard sounded panicked.
Warning, flashed in front of them, callouts highlighting the geth. Three more spikes retracted with their distinctive squeal and grisly payload. Shepard grimaced at the sight of them; it took almost a full second for him to recover. "Bad guys at twenty meters, get to cover!" He replaced his sniper rifle on the SmartPak, drew his pistol. "Short range; shotguns if you got 'em!"
"Bad Robots at fourty meters," Ash added, "Stay in cover!" Shepard's ARO only showed the approaching husks, but as he extended his pistol out for its view, he saw Ash stand with her shotgun and blow the zombies away with a trio of quick shotgun blasts. Geth snipers coordinated fire on her, but only gave their positions away to Richard and Kaidan; as the first tumbled out of cover from a biotic Throw, Richard put a bullet into a component more critical than he'd guessed; the geth exploded, an arm flying out of the cloud and bouncing to a stop. Richard let out a whoop, "Gotcha!"
A tech relay slipped into Shepard's palm; he dashed across an opening and lobbed it toward the second sniper. A bolt of blue destroyed it as the nearest geth leapt to new cover, but found itself lifted into the air; a second shot from Richard ended it noisily.
"Watch for a third!" Shepard stayed focused on his ARO for any motion.
Seconds ticked slowly by.
"They can wait all day for us." Ash stood again, walked toward the station's unfinished foundation.
"Careful, Chief," Kaidan warned, "Just because you know you're walking into a trap doesn't immunize you."
"You're preachin' to the choir, LT."
Shepard used his pistol's electronic sight as his suit VI switched on every other medium of sensor he had. "Still can't see 'em," he said, "Be careful."
Ash walked slowly forward, looking left and right into cover. "Come on, you bastard," she murmered, "Just poke your little flashlight head out where I can see it…"
More tense seconds as she tried to draw fire or find the last geth – preferably both – before realizing she had walked past where she'd seen motion.
She bent around a final rock and stood up. "I don't get it."
"Do we have any way of detecting them?"
Kaidan, his back against a rock, didn't look up from his omnitool. "Workin' on it…"
"Are you using your sensors, ma'am?" Richard asked, "You might be able to see metals or whatever they're made of…"
"I'm looking all right, but not seeing anything."
K. Alenko: It feels like they're just waiting for us.
"Maybe there were only two of them?" Richard sounded like he didn't even believe it himself.
"Unlikely," Shepard wanted that thought out of their heads until they had data, "Jenkins, how fast can you deploy a microUAV?"
"Armed?"
"No, just for sentry. Camera and sensors."
"Uh…just a minute, sir."
"Launch when ready. Find me that bad guy, or confirm there are no others within a hundred meters."
With his sensors in Combat mode, he could hear the faint buzz of Richard's omnitool as it stopped, and a cha-klik as he snapped a power cell into place.
"Drone aloft," Richard said with an upward sweep of his arm. The drone's camera appeared as a translucent inset on all their displays; the fisheye view was momentarily dizzying as it climbed to about 20 meters while staying centered on Chief Williams.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Richard sang softly.
A geth staggered out from behind a wall to their left, Richard sprang up and sighted in on it.
Ash's weapon chattered as she turned, already firing on the motion she saw to the right. The geth, with just its rifle and scope peeking over a rock, exploded sideways.
Richard fired, and the first geth, unarmed, collapsed with a second hole in its torso.
Ash was suddenly angry, "That was bait, and you fell for it! If you're hunting them and they know it, and you know they know it, you never shoot the first obvious target!"
"Steady, Chief," Shepard said, "This is his first fight."
"Well it'll be his last if he isn't careful!"
"Sorry, ma'am. Sorry, sir." He reached out a hand and caught the drone as it fell toward him. "Hey, look. Another camping module. Looks locked."
The rest of the team turned to where he was pointing. There was indeed another P8 container, and the control pad was glowing red. As they approached, Shepard thought he could see between the slats; there were people inside.
He touched a key on his forearm and switched briefly to PA mode; he rapped on the door with armored knuckles. "Hello? Anyone in there?"
Ash and Richard kicked dirt on the burning shipping container as Kaidan stooped to inspect a small canister nearby.
There was no answer from inside. Shepard brought sensors to bear; his ARO showed three infrared sources. He banged on the door again. "Are you okay in there? We're Alliance, offering aid. Hello?"
The fire had been reduced to smoldering as the other soldiers gathered at the door. Kaidan offered a fresh grenade to Shepard. "Thanks."
Kaidan nodded, turned away quickly.
Shepard raised an arm to the door control, made short work of the lock.
Apparently this was enough to get some response from the people inside; a man's voice said, "Everybody stay calm out there. We're coming out, and we're not armed!"
Three people came out the door; the one woman asked, "Is it safe? Are they gone?"
Shepard held up his hands to reassure them, "You're okay…we took care of them."
The older man glanced nervously around, "Those things were crawling all over the shed. They would have found us for sure. We owe you our lives."
"I still can't believe it," the woman was nearly frantic, "When we saw that ship, I thought it was all over."
Apparently his nerves were making the older man chatty, too; he pointed with one hand, drew a line across the sky where he had seen the enormous black ship. "It showed up right before the attack. I knew it was trouble as soon as we saw it, so we made a break for the sheds."
Shepard nodded. "Tell me everything you remember about the attack."
"Me and the rest of the Day Crew were working the crops when that ship showed up. We just saw it and ran." He hesitated, looked guilty. "I don't know what happened to the rest of the crew."
The other man gestured, "They were by the garage over near the spaceport, right where that ship came down. No way they survived."
The woman was emphatic, almost hysterical, "You don't know that; we survived! If they made it to the garage, they could've had a fighting chance!"
Shepard continued, "Do you know anything about the Prothean beacon they dug up?"
The man shrugged, "We're just farmers. We heard they'd found something out there, but it never really mattered to us. Not until now."
"What else can you tell me about the ship you saw?"
"I was too busy running to get a clear look at it."
"Tell them about the noise, Cole…that awful noise."
Cole looked back at Shepard, "It was emitting some kind of signal as it descended. Sounded like the shriek of the damned, only it was coming from inside your own head." He tapped his forehead with a finger, urgently, as if he could still hear it.
Shepard illuminated his omnitool gauntlet, held it up as if to show it. "You could hear it on your audio player?"
"No, it was actually in my head, not like listening to music." He held up a bare arm, "I thought there was something wrong, so I took mine off."
"It was exploiting neurotronics?" Kaidan took a step back.
"Whatever it was, it felt like it was tearing right through my skull. Almost made it impossible to think."
Not much useful info to be gained here, Shepard realized, "Thanks for your help; we have to go."
The younger man muttered, "Hey, Cole, we're just farmers. These guys are soldiers. Maybe we should give them th—"
Cole rounded on him, "Cheese us, Blake, you've gotta learn when to shut up."
Shepard waited until the man turned and faced him again; they met his eyes only briefly before the other man looked away. "There anything you'd like to tell me, Mister Cole?"
The older man sighed, "Some guys at the spaceport were running a small smuggling ring. Nothing major. In exchange for a cut of the profits, we let them store packages in our sheds."
Shepard pointed into the P8 shed, "You mean all the stuff in there is contraband?"
"No, no…not like that. It's all ICHUS hardware, but they have a tricked out fabber…some Super Whiz-Bang Whatchamacallit. They turned off the FRM chip or something. They can make some stuff before the licenses hit public air. Yesterday I got a pistol from them." He patted his pocket. "I figured it'd come in handy if those things came back."
"He said he took care of them, Mike," the woman swatted the back of his head, "Give it up!"
Reluctantly, he pulled the weapon from his pocket and held it out between finger and thumb.
Shepard's ARO identified it:
Devlon Stinger r8
Alliance Issue Only
Public Avail Pending
He took the weapon and passed it to Ash for inspection.
"That's an Eight, all right," she said, "Real good print, too. Prefer the Stiletto, myself."
Jenkins was looking at his own pistol, a Stinger r4. "Can I trade up? We can leave them with a way to defend themselves, and I get an upgrade."
Ash reached out her left hand, took Richard's pistol, handed the older Devlon weapon to the farmer. Focusing on the newer weapon, she clacked the ammoblock into place, snapped off the safety, turned and fired a round into the dirt to her right, refreshed the ammoblock. She regarded the pistol once more before clicking the safety back on and handing it to the Corporal. "Have that serviced with a VI," she said, "Or me, if we get back to base."
"We're risking our lives to save this colony," Shepard said patiently to the man, "You sure there isn't anything else that could help us?"
From another pants pocket, Cole produced an ammoblock. "Hammerhead rounds. State of the art. I'm sure they're worth a fortune."
"They are when you're trying to stop bad guys from killing you," Ash growled, "Who's your contact at the spaceport, Cole?" She wasn't actually shaking him by his lapels, but only partly because he didn't have them. "What's his name?"
"He's not a bad guy," Cole said slowly, "I don't want to get him in trouble. Besides, I'm not a snitch."
Shepard still found it trying to deal with people who didn't have the same information he did, but he had learned that patience got much better results long-term. "He might have something to do with this whole attack, Mister Cole. We need a name. It's important."
"Yeah, okay; you're right. His name's Powell. He works at the local dock…if he's still alive."
"Thanks, Mister Cole," Shepard nodded toward the other two in turn, "Ma'am. Sir. Be safe." Shepard turned quickly to the team, "Come on, we're getting later by the minute, and now I'm thinking those guys may have left with the beacon already."
The Gunnery Chief was a woman of action, and this order suited her just fine. She turned and jogged off, "Yes, sir! Come on team, double-time it!"
"So who was shooting?" Kaidan asked as they jogged towards the unfinished train station, "There must be someone here…"
"If you don't have your shields all powered up, do it now," Shepard said. "Williams, with your shields…well, frankly, you're a tank. You up for point? Can you get us on that train?"
"Yes, sir! Let's get the bastards!" She sounded angry…and unbalanced. She checked the settings on her rifle and raced ahead.
Shepard gestured for messaging. As the window opened, he subvocalised, Kaidan: You still have eyes on her chemistry? Can we even offer any help?
The two made eye contact. Kaidan nodded, then shook his head; Shepard's ARO displayed Kaidan's reply, Yes I'm still monitoring and No we can't help. He finished with a thumbs-up; She'll be okay. As he turned to look ahead again, Kaidan said, "Nihlus!" and broke into a run. "Man down!"
Shepard turned and followed the Lieutenant's path; a turian lay on the entrance deck, a spatter of blood around his head. He started to run; faster when he realized it was indeed Nihlus.
"Should we call Normandy? Sir?" Richard asked as he ran.
"Let's see how bad he is," Shepard answered, "You've already had a big day. You know what it's like."
Ash had stopped running when she saw. "A turian. You know him?"
"He's a Spectre," Kaidan answered, "He was…part of our mission."
Jenkins sounded like he wasn't quite sure how to feel about it. "I think he thought he was our backup."
Shepard ran up to the body and stopped as his ARO displayed a warning. "I have some first aid for turians in my Library, but it's a couple of months old."
Jenkins pointed, "Can you link into his library?"
"He's a Spectre. His VI might get unhappy and aggressive if I tried anything suspicious, but…" He worked his omnitool interface, found a p-net channel. "But he's a dead duck if we just let him lie there." He dropped a medigel packet in front of Kaidan, "Here, get that stuff in his head, I think I've connected to his VI."
Kaidan was kneeling, scanning with his omnitool's transopter. "It looks bad." He snapped up the medigel, ripped the top off, squeezed the contents into the open wound.
"Bad?" Ash was looking over his shoulder, pointed at the wound, "That's an assassination. Look, the entry goes up into the head through that…"
"Kavori," Shepard, accelerated to 4x, read from his display. "Williams, do you have any medi-gel?"
"Not anymore," she said bitterly.
"We can't let this guy stay dead," Shepard turned to Richard, "Not on my watch, anyway. Jenkins, how much omnigel do you have?"
"Ninety-four, sir."
"Give fifty to Alenko, go back up the hill and gel those bad robots. Gel the husks if you can. Use your knife to cut them up first, and don't get squeamish. Williams, go with him, I want you on High Sentry watch up to one hundred meters DMT. Stay in touch with each other and with me. Get moving."
As the younger man was handing over an interlocked stack of cookie-shaped omnigel units, Ash turned and clapped him on the shoulder, "Alright, come on, kid." She jogged back to the nearest geth wreckage, practically towing Richard along.
"I'm not a kid," Richard squawked, "Hey…go easy. Still healing here."
Shepard toggled his comm, spoke privately to Kaidan. "You have a second fabber that does molecular-resolution stuff, right? Can you make medi-gel with it?"
Kaidan looked startled, then seemed to get over it. "Yes, but it's slow. It'll take maybe eight to twelve minutes to make one medi-gel pack."
"Get started. When they come back, be on the other side, using your transopter. Nihlus' VI is telling me he'll need four packs, and I only have three left. Which leaves us no room for error in completing this mission without getting shot at…unless you can make some more."
"I'm on it."
"Victor Indigo, sentry mode," Shepard started to sit down where he could work easily on the turian, "Switch back to normal comm. Give me helmet views for Williams and Jenkins. Update link to Nihlus' VI."
The response message from the Spectre's suit was surprisingly fast: Medical emergency. Assistance required.
"Nihlus' suit, tell me what to do," Shepard said.
The VI displayed concise instructions, as each step was finished, the next was displayed. Shepard thought the turian's suit might be using his camera under a First Responder protocol, but didn't take the time to check; it was enough that the thing was helping him.
A few minutes later, when Shepard pulled his hands away, the suit collar closed an opaque dome over Nihlus' head. Indicator lights switched on, first red, then green.
Return body to Spectre Office. Well done, Alliance Commander Shepard.
Kaidan could not see the text messages, but the suit sealing itself was easy to understand. "Well…thanks for caring," he said with a shrug.
Shepard looked up. "Yeah…that's almost exactly what it said. We gotta drag this guy along now?" He shook his head, gestured the message window closed, put two fingers to his ear, "Williams, Jenkins. Talk to me." His VI identified the named parties and toggled back to LOSI before transmitting.
"I gelled two of them and maxed out," Richard answered, "So I gave as much to…uh…Chief Williams as she could take, and I'm working on number three."
Shepard pointed to Kaidan's left legpocket inquisitively. The biotic raised the single, finished medigel pack.
Shepard nodded, gestured for him to get started on a second pack. "All right, we've wrapped Nihlus up, but we'll have to find a way to get him aboard Normandy. Get back down here."
"On our way, sir," said Ash, "Never saw any sign of hostiles."
"Thanks; good to know."
Shepard gestured again for a private channel to Kaidan, "Can you let that thing run while we're heading for the spaceport?"
"I left it running already. It's slow, but not power-hungry."
"Expert choice," Shepard nodded approvingly.
Ash and Richard came trotting down the hill and across to the platform. "How's Mister Nihlus? He gonna make it, sir?"
Shepard looked at the body and shook his head. "I don't know. The suit VI gave instructions, and when it was done, it sealed itself up. I assume he's in stasis or something." He worked the omnitool controls.
Richard walked around Nihlus, looking closely. "Is that his helmet?"
"It closed over him after we had done all the VI asked," Kaidan shrugged. "It probably wouldn't have bothered with medigel if he was a corpse."
"Then why isn't he awake?"
Shepard nodded at his omnitool. "Seems turians estivate when they're severely wounded. They also have some requirements about waking him back up. I think it's religious. Twelve stages of Death, and apparently he's not all the way there." He lowered his omnitool and sighed. "Crap. Now we gotta drag this guy along and still try to finish—"
Something to their left shifted and crunched on the ground; Ash spun, weapon up. "Halt! Who goes there?"
*** Glossary ***
afcRNA: active fast-coding RNA. Therapeutic fcRNA designed to alter one's personal genome permanently, but to do so fast enough that the autoimmune system doesn't have time to react adversely before the change is complete.
ARA: Augmented Reality Appliance. Implanted form of Augmented Reality system most often used by people with disabilities; more expensive, but uses BMI (Brain-Machine Interface) that requires user training, and sometimes interferes with the autoimmune system.
ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay; an implanted Augmented Reality system
BMI: Brain-machine Interface
CID: Colonial Infrastructure Detail
DCE: Distributed Computing Environment
DMT: Doppler Motion Tracker. Remote, relatively close-range motion and mapping system.
FRM: Fabrication Rights Management
GFCF: Glucose Free Casein Free. Lifestyle choice for people who are allergic to casein and glucose.
GPC: General Purpose Computer
ICHUS: International Council on Home User Safety. An Earth-based NGO focused on 3D printer safety, but largely controlled by product-development groups like Matsushita, Foxconn, General Electric, Caterpillar, and others.
neurotronics: neurological electronics, usually with a suite of apps that include telecom, media playback, medical monitoring, navigation, and a BMI for most DCE.
PA: Public Address
