A/N: Sorry for the protracted delay. A trip to India ended with a visit to the ER. As a form of apology, I promise to finish another chapter this week.
*** Therum, Incursion ***
"That can't have been all of them." Shepard put two fingers to his ear. "Normandy, are you still reading geth between us and the university dig?"
"Yes, sir. But they seem to be in groups. And they're really hard to spot in the buildings. It looks like the university has sublet some of the Eldfell-Ashland infrastructure, and the geth have begun infiltrating it since you landed."
"Infiltrating? But they're software. Are they going to turn the facility itself against us?"
"Hard to say, sir. But they're fabricating weapons in place. It looks like they're trying to defend the dig site, or at least slow you down."
"All right; thanks, Normandy. Mako out." Shepard frowned at the sensor displays. "I'm not seeing anything from the omnitool locator. I don't know if that means we're looking in the wrong place, or if we're too late."
Garrus operated his own omnitool locator. "In either case, why would the geth be here?"
"They might be fighting a delaying action, keeping us from figuring out where they took the asari," Wrex suggested.
Ash continued to scan the horizon for enemies. "Does this thing have any OTH weapons?"
"Nope," Kaidan said. "Costs too much mass doing ordnance dumps on the way back. But we have Normandy, and can call down fire from heaven any time we need it."
Shepard continued to monitor the Mako's sensors. "True, but that's a card I don't want to play until we seriously need it. Every time they have to fire, they give away where they are, and the performance envelope of that new high-tech ship becomes more known to potential enemies." He adjusted the viewer as Kaidan let the Mako roll to a stop. "Looks like we found the front door, though."
"Incoming!" Kaidan hopped the Mako, and backed up once they were on the ground again.
Nearby rocks exploded, hit by incoming fire. "That door's got turrets," Ash said. She thumbed the trigger, and the cannon fired, shaking the entire APC. "We should probably peek and fire."
Shepard didn't look up from the console. "Looks like at least two turrets here, and about…a thirty or fourty mechs on the other side of that gate."
Kaidan was already retreating the Mako behind a rock formation. "We gotta get through there somehow."
"If you can't get through the door, try a window," Tali said. "Is there another route this thing will fit through?"
"There's a path to the right," Garrus said. He had begun using the Mako's external cameras as soon as he found out Kaidan had made them available. "It's tight, but I think we can fit."
Kaidan looked at Shepard. "What's the word?"
"Not much room to maneuver," Shepard agreed. "But the map says we can do it. I still want some CYA. Garrus, Wrex, get out there and defend our flank; I want the turret firing forward. Tali, go with them; let's find out how well your cracking tech works. Use channel Bravo, scrambler synch on Detective…uh, on Garrus."
Garrus had lifted his restraint and was securing his weapons to his armor. "On it."
Wrex had grabbed his weapons and was already moving to the starboard door. "Don't take too long, princess." He bashed the Door Open stud with the butt of his shotgun, and jumped into the space under and to the right of Ash's gunnery chair, clattering his way through it.
The turian waved toward the door, spoke to Tali. "This could be a lot easier if you can turn them against each other; I'll keep you covered while you're working."
"Thanks," Tali said, fitting her weapons to her suit's hardpoints. "This should be interesting." She jumped down through the tiny Kiggs field at the starboard door; Garrus followed.
"They're out," Ash said, reaching for the door control.
Kaidan checked a camera view to confirm the three contractors were not between the wheels. "And they're clear." An aft camera showed them scrambling up the side walls for high ground.
"Comm check," Shepard said, "You all receiving?"
"Yeah, I hear you," Wrex's voice said over the Mako's internal speaker.
"Radio check good," Garrus added.
"Tali'Zorah here."
"Engage at range," Garrus said, "We don't want friendly fire once they're cracked. Tali, follow me up and left. Fireteam, switch to channel Bravo."
Shepard pointed ahead through the artificial windshield. "Let's go."
Kaidan rotated the Mako in its own length, then raced across the opening that faced the main gate; Ash got off a single shot from the cannon, scoring a hit one of the turrets.
They could hear the geth turrets firing after them as they crawled along the narrow passage. It was slow going.
Kaidan scowled. "What's that scaffold thing? You think they were building something here?"
"We've got signals in front and behind," Shepard read from the sensors, "Gunnery, can you handle them?"
"If we don't get stuck here," she replied. "I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Incoming," Kaidan said casually. "Rocket launcher at twelve o'clock."
The vermilion geth in front of them fired a missile and ducked behind cover. The missile exploded against the Mako's kinetic barriers, but the force shoved the Mako backwards.
"Shields at 96%, regen active," Shepard said. "The geth that were behind the gate are now coming around both sides," He looked up from the sensors. "They can't move those turrets, but there are mobile launchers on this side." He glanced over his shoulder.
"Got targets ahead," Ash said, "Can I have the tank?"
Kaidan added the sensor data to his windscreen simulation. "You got it. You see something I don't?"
"I want that scaffold out of the way." She backed the Mako up a few meters and held the left trigger; the 5mm spat fire, but the scaffold persisted. "What the hell's this?" She fired the cannon again; still no reaction.
"The geth have Impervium?" Shepard was impressed…and concerned. "I thought we were still trying to figure the stuff out."
"Thought so, too," Kaidan squinted at the display.
"This is the same problem we had on Eden Prime with those spikes," Shepard remembered.
Ash turned and fired again. "It's a trap! They've positioned it so we can't kangaroo from cover!"
"They can't have already put that up after seeing us do it to those walking artillery units." Kaidan turned to Shepard. "Can they?" The 5mm began firing continuously.
"Sure looks that way." Shepard held fingers to his ear. "Fireteam, sitrep."
"They're wall to wall back here," Garrus answered, "But they're – unh! – they're packed so tight that Tali's hack is working on multiple bad guys at a time."
The 5mm "machine gun" did not stop firing as the 10mm cannon thundered again; there was briefly a hole through the crowd of robots ahead of them, but parts scattered as the relativistic bullets tore through more of them.
"Still plenty of 'em on the edges," Wrex said over the comm. "Am I going to do this all myself?"
"It's almost like they're trying to use a swarming attack," Shepard thought aloud. "Their numbers probably let them use that effectively on Eden Prime."
"Fireteam, watch your backs; they might try to crawl over the rocks," Kaidan said.
Ash continued to follow the Target Designator on her HUD, "Damn, how many of these guys are there?"
"Keep it up, they're getting thin," Shepard said. "Fireteam, we have cleared the courtyard and are advancing into it. We're going to try to open the gate from this side."
There was no reply.
"Fireteam, are you there?"
Garrus sounded strained, "Yes. Affirmative." He sounded out of breath.
"Are you okay?"
"We had a rush; Wrex took some fire. Tali's keeping them busy."
"I'm fine," Wrex snarled. "Hit doesn't mean hurt."
"They nearly blew your head up," Tali sounded as if she were explaining to someone who hadn't been there.
"Krogan are naturally armored, I just head-butted a missile, that's all. Look, the bleeding's almost stopped."
Shepard paused, then asked, "Are you still fighting geth?"
"Not anymore," Tali's voice answered from the speaker, "I cracked one of the turrets. It took down everything else and then blew itself up."
"It was actually rather impressive," Garrus added. "I thought a turret would be harder to hack."
"It's only hacking if you don't know what you're doing," Tali added. "Cracking is a science, and much harder than random hacking."
As the Mako rolled to a stop in the courtyard, the gate to their left clunked noisily and retracted into the barricade ramp. Tali said, "Hah! That was easy. Come on, you two! The gate's open!"
"Rocks, dirt and lava. Reminds me of home." Wrex jogged through the opening. "It looks like there's a garage on either side of this thing. Might be some stuff we can grab."
"Negative," Shepard was looking ahead. "Get aboard the Mako. The geth know we're here, and they might have left booby-traps. They've been here a lot longer than we have. I don't want to spend any more time here than necessary."
As Wrex clambered noisily aboard, the speaker crackled, "Mako, Normandy sensors. Watch out, sir; there are more of those walking artillery units on sentry, in your path and within a kilometer of you."
"Two just ahead over that rise, and two around the next bend in the road," Shepard read from his displays. "Thanks, Normandy. We've got 'em."
Garrus was boarding, but Tali was standing with one hand on the oversized tire forward of the hatch, pointing ahead. "I told the controller to open all four gates," she said over LOSI, "I didn't encounter any resistance from the geth. I thought they were already getting into the systems."
"Great, let's get moving before they change their minds," Garrus extended a claw down to help Tali into the Mako.
"You bet we got 'em," Ash said. She slid her thumb back and forth across the firing control. "I'm rackin' 'em up today." Once they were aboard again, Kaidan rolled the Mako through the next gate.
They hadn't gone even fifty meters before slowing again; the ground had almost dropped away below them and the road – what there was of it – seemed to be at the edge of a cliff that formed the edge of a lake of molten sulfur. Three-meter supply pipes blocked their way on the other side. Kaidan pointed to the right; the displays showed one of the big, four-legged cannons panning its head back and forth as if checking for targets. "There they are, on sentry. Looks like they haven't seen us yet."
Ash manipulated the sticks; the turret whirred as it turned. "I've got a good lock, I might be able to take it down before it knows we're here."
"Take the shot," Shepard said.
The cannon fired, and an explosion erupted on the walker.
Before the fireball had cleared, a blue bolt emerged from it, headed for the Mako.
"Look at that." Kaidan shook his head. "Whatever it's firing is slow." He rolled the Mako back slightly. "I mean really slow. And it looks like it's LOS…and unguided."
"And damn, it's tough." Ash fired the cannon again; the walker's "head" exploded.
"Doesn't even look like a munition, it looks like a directed energy weapon," Shepard added as the blue bolt finally reached them, exploding nearby rock.
"There's another one," Kaidan said.
"Yeah, I got it," Ash nodded. "But I'd rather be in closer."
Kaidan drove forward. "Got those two on the left," he said, "I can just crawl forward; that other one over this hill is moving too slowly to get a lock on us anytime soon."
With Kaidan rolling the Mako ahead a few meters at a time, four shots from the cannon demolished the two walkers on the other side of the glowing orange lake. "This feels too easy," Ash said. "But I still can't take 'em down with just one shot, not even when I hit the neck directly. I'm telling you, these things are tough."
"Only one left is just over the rise," Kaidan said. "You want control, or can I run past them as you take 'em out?"
"Let's go for speed this time," Ash studied the images on her HUD. "The stabilizers on this are way better than a Grizzly. I want to see how well they let me track when I'm the moving target."
The geth walker made no effort to anticipate where they were going; it still took two direct hits to bring the thing down.
Ash growled in irritation.
"Good work, Chief," Shepard nodded with satisfaction as the Mako made the turn. "I don't care if it takes two hits; you brought 'em down."
# # #
The New Consensus noticed the human assault vehicle making short work of the ground forces sent to retrieve the asari's daughter; the second unit of infantry platforms had been destroyed before landing by a human starship, presumably the one that had brought the APC. New platforms were already under construction, runtimes had been restored from network mirror instances.
Sovereign had not been forthcoming about the technology behind its energy weapons; over the five years since they had begun to attempt developing similar weapons, progress by the New Consensus had been slow. Armatures had been equipped with the current technology, but the results had been suboptimal.
Orbital strike timing failure
Earth assault vehicle progress may be halted by blocking road
Dispatch platforms with explosives to collapse granite outcropping [location coordinates encrypted]
Prepare to defend subterranean dig site access against ground assault:
Armature H5L8972VV6E with 19 runtimes
Armature 4145RJ8GRX-90 with 18 runtimes
Sniper 6UEW229U5.W with 7 runtimes
Sapper R83V5LQX303 with 6 runtimes
Troop S5VP9QQ3F with 4 runtimes
Troop I1LU3893-665M with 5 runtimes
# # #
"Keep an eye out for more geth," Kaidan accelerated the Mako, reading from the augmented windshield simulation. "I don't like this bottleneck; this tunnel thing crosses over an unstable area. I'd guess they're guarding the entrance because there's no other way past."
"There are civilian warnings all over it," Tali said. "It looks like there's an active lava field, with molten sprays and all kinds of hazards. I'll bet it's really beautiful…and dangerous. Oh! There are windows if you want to stop and look…but…I suppose you don't want to do anything except get past it."
"The number of geth we've seen so far has me worried about whether this asari is still here. And I've still got no signal on the locator. We'll have time for science and sightseeing later," Shepard agreed.
The Mako raced past the two fallen walkers and climbed the low rise to the tunnel entrance. Tali kept her suit's sensors focused on the two geth, hoping for some critical data, but didn't get it.
"Chep," she muttered as they raced into the covered bridge. "I hope we can go back and look at those two units after this is all over."
"No promises," Shepard answered. "Primary objective is the asari, and at this point, we might need to start tearing the AO apart for clues. These might be troops they left behind to slow us down, though. If the geth have already left, we'll have to get back to the ship and configure for tracking."
Tali frowned to herself silently as they raced along the covered tunnel. "My people have searched many generations for a world to call home. If we landed on this planet...weeee'd just keep searching."
"Hell of a place," Kaidan agreed, "But at least it's a dry heat."
"Even the geth wouldn't want to live in this."
"Someone is just around the bend there," Shepard said.
"Yep, got 'em," answered Ash.
"Check your targets, remember we're looking for civvies here."
"Whatever it is, it doesn't read like an organic."
"Good," Shepard agreed. "Just remember to check. It's a lot harder to unkill a colonist."
She grinned. "Copy that…but this isn't a colonist; this ass is grass." She thumbed the firing stud, deliberately hitting the far wall of the covered bridge; the explosion blew farther back into it and effectively "around the corner" at the two closing geth.
"They're still moving," Tali was focused on her reinterpreting the Mako's sensor data. "But you did knock them both down."
"Steer left, will you, LT?"
The Mako swerved to the other side of the covered bridge, offering the turret a direct shot at the geth. Another round from the cannon dispatched the two androids.
"Looks like two more of them just beyond the end of tunnel," Shepard said, "Gunnery, you got 'em?"
"I got 'em."
The geth had set up freestanding barricades of Impervium; though the Mako's cannon could not destroy them, the force of the impact destroyed the androids behind them easily.
Tali piped up, "Did anyone else just read that seismic disturbance? But it's…wait…I think something big just hit the ground. Like something crashed."
Shepard put two fingers to his ear, "Normandy, Mako. Did you just take out a bad guy?"
Gladstone's voice answered from the overhead speaker, "Affirmative, Mako. Two geth ships, about 37 kilotonnes each."
"One of them just hit the ground a few kliks from here."
"Affirmative, Mako. That was a bad guy. Current track says second one should be about fifty seconds behind it, but it should land even farther away from you."
Joker's voice added, "Hey, always nice to know gravity still works."
"Good to know. Thanks, Normandy. Mako out." Shepard continued to operate the sensor suite. "Gunnery, four more on the ground. Looks like two mobile launchers, a single trooper, and one of those big walkers."
# # #
"An heir and a spare?" The Illusive Man studied the holographic image of Henry Lawson.
"Well, let's just say I'm not sure she wants what I've given her. I keep trying to steer her, help her, show her all that she can do, but I think she's just…" He stopped, looking faraway. "I think she thinks of it as control."
"Didn't you, when it was your parents?"
"That's different," Henry waved dismissively. "They didn't have the same plans I do, nothing like the same goals."
Though it was still under construction, The Illusive Man paced the length of his office. High-resolution displays were being laminated on the wall – not quite art for art's sake, but close enough – that would look like a window on the universe. The terapixel display would be almost sharp enough that he could walk up to it and inspect it with a hand lens and fail to see that it was not a window.
Walking under the scaffolding, he took a drink from his glass, swirled the cubes in thought. "I'd sure like to help you. But it does sound like you want the control. Maybe even need it. Otherwise, anyone could take over for you."
Henry nodded, looking at him again. "Exactly. That's why it was important for her to not have her DNA randomly mixed up with a mother's. She'll have the same neuro tendencies that I do. She'll be as much like me as possible. At least, that's what I'd hoped."
"Still, it's no guarantee. It's just a starting place. Her behaviors have ultimately been shaped by her interactions with the world, including you."
Henry scowled. "Right. It's the No Guarantee part that I forgot about…or didn't want to acknowledge. At least not at this stage. When I made her, I made as many as possible…just in case. For spare parts, or for…replacement."
The Illusive Man tilted his head. "Isn't it a little late for that?"
Henry smiled confidently. "It would have been, but I had them incepted at three year intervals. And Miranda doesn't know about Nefertiti or Oriana yet."
Jack – who didn't think of himself as "illusive" – paused to consider the names he had just heard. "M…N…O…how many zygotes did you have made? And did you lose that many just getting to this stage?"
Henry folded his arms. "Nobody's ever done this before. Of course I've made some mistakes. But if we let a failure stop us, we'd never get anywhere." He scowled. "I don't know how many are still in cryo, but I'm sure it's over a hundred. I didn't know what the learning curve would look like."
Jack nodded agreement as he walked across the room. "Of course." He paused, in case Henry still had more to bewail. "So…the reason for my call. Did you get a chance to look at the Andromeda Initiative data I sent you?"
"Yes, and I don't mind telling you it seems awfully expensive and short-sighted. D'you realize that only one percent of the stars in this galaxy are readily accessible by mass relay? We don't need to go a million light-years to get more resources, we just need to open more mass relays, or start building them ourselves."
"It's not about resources for use here, it's about establishing a human presence someplace safe and far away. As a backup, if you will. There was a time when we used to think that just having humans on another planet was sufficient. But now that there are aliens all over the galaxy, even that second planet would be only a faint hope." He continued walking as he spoke, "No. The goal here is to send people to a place that has plenty of resources, and is most likely to be able to support them. Create a new foothold for humanity, not just on another planet, but in another galaxy."
"Surely there will already be life there, too. We don't want to get into a fight at that distance. You'd be sending our people to their deaths."
"Not if they're careful. The rise of life is always a crap shoot. But if we can establish a beachhead, on just one world, we might have a whole galaxy to ourselves."
# # #
As the Mako raced up the ramp of a second covered bridge, Shepard worked the sensor array controls. "Two more MMLs and a trooper at the end of this bridge."
"Got 'em locked in," Ash said. "Stop before we get to the end of it, will you?"
"You bet. Want the tank?"
"I have control."
Ash hopped the Mako, firing at the barricades. The geth troops and missile launchers burned as they disintegrated, bouncing and skidding along the red-brown basaltic landscape. Kaidan drove over the wreckage and around the toppled barricades, heading toward the dig site.
Garrus wondered aloud, "If they already have the asari, why are they working so hard to defend the site?"
"Conquest," Ash replied. "They take what they can get."
"That's your theory," Tali said. "It's more likely they're trying to wipe out all organic life, like they did to us."
"I know what that's like," Wrex rumbled. He glanced sideways at Garrus.
Garrus noticed. He paused to think before answering, "Nobody's committed genocide except the krogan, when you wiped out the rachni, and that was just because they couldn't be stopped any other way. Your people did the galaxy a great service. But when Kreddik and his armies just decided they needed more garden worlds, we fought them until they stopped. And then we stopped."
"We weren't making them leave," Wrex turned his left eye toward the turian.
"But you were burning up all the resources, the water, the arable land."
"We just used it better. Survival of the fittest."
"All right, knock it off," Shepard said. "Stay focused on the mission. We're trying to get Saren. This isn't the time to hash out this sort of stuff. It's especially not the time to start fighting with each other."
They rolled along in silence for a moment, until the found themselves approaching a pile of rubble, mostly large stones about 30-60cm across. Kaidan slowed and stopped the Mako. "Hm. What's going on here?"
"Nav shows this is the service road," Shepard adjusted the display. "But this looks deliberately collapsed. And recently."
"We're kicking their robot asses, and they know it," Ash said. "C'mon, LT, let's hop that thing and get this show on the road."
"They're jamming our sensors, but it looks like they have a few troops on the other side," Shepard hadn't looked up from the console. "Probably the demolitions unit."
"Don't underestimate them," Tali cautioned. "Remember, geth are software. The androids are just tools. As soon as the charges were set off, they probably replaced the demolitions software with sniper or infantry software."
"Get over that hill too slow or too fast, and you'll be exposing the soft underbelly of this thing," Wrex warned. "They may be trying to stop the tank, but they've also set themselves up to hit you where you're weak."
Ash looked down and right, toward Shepard. "We've got combat-grade shields, sir."
"Yeah, but he's right; the emitters are on the top and sides. We're like a turtle."
Garrus continued to use the exterior cameras to look for threats. "If they're trying to slow us down, it's working."
Kaidan nodded to himself as he looked up from the Operations VI display. "If we get a running start, a one-second burst from the return booster can give us enough extra thrust to get over it, and I can time it to keep the nose low. That'll keep the shields where we need them."
"We'll still have plenty of boost to get back aboard Normandy, right?"
"Sure thing, sir."
"Good. Then let's hop this fence and keep rolling."
Kaidan put the Mako in reverse, backing up about thirty meters, then raced forward, jumping over the makeshift barricade. Two shots plinked off the Mako's shields as they hurtled over the top of the ridge.
"They saw us again," Kaidan said.
"Oops. Didn't expect six of them," After a blast from the cannon, Ash began firing continuously.
Kaidan steered left, hopped the Mako, and backed up. "We've got no easy retreat, there's no room to maneuver, and no cover!"
"Shields at eighty percent," Tali said. To her, that was a good number.
Kaidan continued to drive crazily across the landscape as geth fire hammered at the Mako and its shields.
"Bad guy at five," Shepard said.
"Got him," Ash replied, "Great work, LT; just give me a few more seconds!" With a final blast from the cannon, a 4-meter geth appeared to fold in half and collapse. Seconds ticked silently by as Ash watched her display for more enemies.
"Field looks clear," Shepard said. "What was that, six of 'em?"
Ash smiled to herself. "Six it was."
"Good work, Williams, Alenko. All right, let's keep moving."
"Moving out, sir."
They went another 80 meters before reaching another obstruction. The service road led to a mining pit, but the Mako would need to hop the pile of rubble without seeing what was on the other side first.
"Smells like a trap to me, sir," Ash said. "Want me to go glass the area first?"
"Negative, you're our gunny. Vakarian, you up for a scouting task?"
There was a clank and rustle from behind, and then Garrus' claw was on the gunnery cage by the starboard door. "I thought you'd never ask. What's the task?"
"I want to look before I leap." Shepard switched the view on his console to a map of the area. "We're here. Here's the rubble pile. I want to know what's in the mining area before we hop into it. I want you to climb the rubble far enough that you can periscope the area. Stay on LOSI, but use the scrambler just in case."
"LOSI, synch on me," Garrus nodded as he worked his omnitool.
"Good hunting."
"Thanks." The turian bopped the hatch stud with his right claw, swung down and out while holding a crossbar with his left.
Kaidan adjusted the camera view of the artificial windshield to tilt up, showing the turian climbing the rubble. "Look at him go. Wow, he's a climber."
"Can I go with him?" Tali was at the door. "I want to see how well my cracking works at range."
Shepard held two fingers to his ear. "Garrus, I'd like to send Tali out with you to field test her cracking."
"Sweet," came the reply. "Always appreciate the opportunity to watch an artist at work."
Shepard looked over his shoulder to see the quarian disappearing down the hatch.
"I know…synch on Garrus," she said as her feet hit the ground.
"But stay behind me until I get into position. I want to know where they are before I expose you to their potential fire." Garrus' claws had given him an unusual advantage climbing the rubble pile, but there were a lot of loose stones; a largish one tumbled down behind him. "And there are going to be falling rocks. You might need to wait until I'm up before you follow."
"That'll give you a chance to use your periscope, right?"
Garrus' pace slowed as he approached the top of the rubble. "Eeee-xactly. Okay, I'm secure here, you can come up."
"On my way." Tali had been climbing slowly, but picked up her pace.
"You might be able to patch into my scope view, Mako," Garrus drew his pistol and switched it to periscope mode, "I don't know if LOSI has enough bandwidth for it, or if the devices will talk to each other."
"Aaaah, it looks like we have the bandwith, but the protocols are differerent." Kaidan leaned back in his seat.
"Tell us what you see," Shepard said.
"Looks like a mining pit, all right. In fact, it almost looks like it had been in operation until very recently. They've got it all carved out for tailings removal, though I don't see any vehicles or conveyors. And there's somebody. A geth. Looks like a regular troop. There's another one, in a tower at 200 meters. But he's watching this area unh!–"
"Garrus?"
Something thumped on the Mako's hull.
"They shot it right out of my hand! How did they even see it?"
"They're machines," Tali explained as she climbed. "If you put a sentry on an area, all it has to do is watch for differences. As soon as something different shows up that's not part of your mission, you know you've got a potential threat. And only one hexel has to change for them to notice."
"It's not safe here," Garrus said, "Be careful."
"Of course." Tali slid up alongside the turian. "Did you get locations on them before they shot you?"
"My suit VI probably has a lock, but –"
"Good." Tali lowered her head and worked her omnitool.
A pop-up appeared on Garrus' monocle: "Tali" would like access to your suit's medical telemetry ACCEPT/DECLINE/MESSAGE. "What's this? You want to control my temperature?"
"No, it's just the easiest channel to move large, live datasets. Tell it OK."
Garrus did so. Tali worked her omnitool some more.
"Good. I have range and direction on three targets." She held up her left arm, showing Garrus what she saw, and pointed at part of the holo. "Is this the one you said was in a tower?"
Garrus looked at it and blinked in surprise. "Three targets? Uh…yes. Yes it is. But how did you…"
Tali had picked up a medium-sized rock and handed it to him. "See this rock? Traverse over to the left, and find one about this big. When I tell you, hold it up over the top of the ridge. Don't let your hand show."
"It's a claw," Garrus started to make his way across the ridge, away from Tali. "But I know what you mean. How far do you need me to go?"
"As far as you safely can." Tali hadn't stopped interacting with her technology.
There was about three minutes of Garrus working his way across the ridge while staying in cover. "Okay, I think this is it," he said.
"Okay, lift the rock like you did your pistol."
Nothing.
"I don't think they're going for it."
"Are you sure it's visible over the ridge to the one in the tower?"
"Not really. This is a rock, not a periscope."
"Can you make a periscope with your omnitool?"
Garrus placed the rock on the hillside. "Sure. Give me a minute." He folded the fabber out of the armor's gauntlet, spun and flicked his way through the interface, and waited. His omnitool fabricator whirred softly, extruding a 3-cm wide periscope.
With the device in hand, he clicked it out to its full extension, and then raised the end overhead.
"There he is, the dirty scumsucker."
"Are you looking at the one in the tower?"
"Yes."
"Good."
They waited.
"What's supposed to happen next?"
"They're supposed to shoot your periscope," Tali said uncertainly. "Try wiggling it a little bit."
Garrus tried to draw attention to the periscope. "Still no good. Maybe they're only worried about a weapon. Want me to scope through my assault rifle?"
"I don't want to make you lose it."
"I'll just pick it up at the bottom of the hill with my pistol."
Tali still sounded dubious. "Well, okay…"
Garrus collapsed the periscope and shoved it into a pocket. He pulled his Thunder-VII off its hardpoint and triggered its decompaction, and then slowly lifted it until he could see over the ridge. "There they are. And there's the tower." Garrus waited. "You know, if I switch over to my sniper rifle, I can drop this guy."
"I don't want you to shoot him, I want you to trigger him to shoot. Once he shoots back, I can lock on him and take him over like I did with the turret." She paused, considering whether to admit she wasn't 100% sure it would work. "I think."
Garrus began to pan the weapon left, looking around at the rest of the site. "What if I shoot and deliberately miss? He'd almost certainly shoot back." He stopped as he noticed the third geth platform, standing with its back to them. "Ah, there you are."
"I want to hack the one in the tower because he's almost certain to have the best view. He knows where all his geth friends are, and should be able to take them down quickly."
Sparks flew off Garrus' assault rifle. "Unh!" He slipped partway down the pile of rubble, scrambling for a better grip. "I'm okay…okay. I think they overloaded it."
Tali hadn't waited, assuming the turian would be fine without her help. One of the three geth signatures had changed subtly, and she locked in on it, inserted a binary wedge where the signal switched back, waited for it to reprocess, and then expanded it. Four other such "wedges" sprang from the first, securing the remote operand into the geth datastream like pitons in a mountainside, each anchored to the others.
Tali gestured to close the web by closing her own hand, appeared to pull something off of her own fingertips; the web expanded again, now with a second web cloning itself from the first. They were her hands within the geth; she immediately reached for system control and inverted the IFF values.
But no purely organic intelligence can operate as fast as a cybernetic one; once her operation was in the buffer, she gestured to execute it. In less than a millisecond, the geth in the tower knew that the other geth were hostile, were part of the Alliance incursion, and had to be stopped.
A gunshot rang out.
Garrus looked up toward Tali through his monocle, which had provided an analysis of the weapon fired by its sound. "Tali, stay down! They're using anti-materiel rifles!"
Another shot rang out, echoing around the open mining pit.
"Don't worry, I've never seen them, and they can't see me."
Another shot, with a metallic clang following.
"Three? What...ergh...what's he shooting at now?" Garrus had to attempt docking his assault rifle three times before it took.
"Want me to go look?"
"No! Stay there, I'm coming back up."
"I could use your periscope," the quarian said. "It would be fun to watch."
"Fun? Are you crazy? Those are dangerous robots firing high-powered rifles!"
"And he's under my control, shooting other geth. This is great!"
"But there might be others! Stay down!"
"Oh, please, Mister Garrus vas KnowItAll, I wasn't born yesterday. Always wait until the shooting stops before exposing any body parts you wish to keep."
Another shot.
"Four? Spirits, what is he shooting at?"
Shepard's voice sounded over LOSI, "Hey, you having problems up there? You want some artillery? We can have a mortar unit ready to go in ninety seconds if you can paint the target."
Another shot.
"Don't bother," Garrus said. "This show will be over by the time you get out there. The geth sniper in the tower must be just mowing 'em down. But it looks like he's shooting ahead of us–"
The tower exploded brilliantly, hurling flaming debris across the landscape.
Tali jumped. "Keelah! What was that?"
"Must have been what our sniper was shooting at," Garrus said. "I suppose it shoots back. Since he just got blasted into last week, it might be one of those walkers we'd seen earlier; did you see a blue projectile? Never mind, let's get back down to the APC." He began to back down the hill, moving almost as fast as he had when ascending it.
"Ooh, I'd love to crack one of those." She noticed Garrus was moving very quickly. "How are you so fast at this? Are you one of those rock-climbing zaxes?"
"This is terrain very typical of Palaven. Besides that fact that every youth gets a training in climbing safety, we've been doing it for millennia. My legs bend a little bit forward, which makes it a lot easier. We still lose the occasional adventurer to mishaps on the trails, but I suppose the danger is part of the appeal. Never been much of an adventurer like that. Climbing rocks does nobody any good but the climber."
"Or the rescuer."
"Mm. Point taken." Garrus jumped down the last two meters, and began surveying the area around the Mako for his sidearm.
"Get in here," Shepard said. "Whoever blew away the tower must know we're coming."
"But we didn't fire a shot," Tali said. "Only if they have eyes in the sky would they know, and I haven't detected any airborne drones."
"Then would you get your butts on board in a hurry because I asked you really nicely?"
Garrus found fragments of his pistol just as Tali jumped down to the ground. He picked them up and looked at them sadly. "Guess that's what happens when you hit a pistol with a half-gram slug." He reached out with his free claw to the Mako and triggered open the portside hatch.
Tali had opened the starboard hatch, but couldn't reach the crossbar. Fortunately, Wrex had suspected this might happen, and had moved forward to lower the ladder for her. She stepped on the lower rung before it had even fully descended, and Wrex flipped the toggle to UP; the ladder ascended with the quarian.
"Thanks, Wrex!"
"Sure. Always glad to help you out, you little fighter."
The ladder reached the top of its throw, and Tali stepped off. Garrus had just yanked himself into the Mako, and so both hatches closed at the same time.
Shepard pointed ahead. "Let's go."
Kaidan backed up about thirty meters, and checked over his shoulder to be sure the rest of the team was secure before racing ahead and briefly engaging the return booster to throw the Mako over the six-meter pile of rubble, and between the two cliff faces.
He even used the jump jets to slow their descent right before they hit ground.
Ash noticed. "Nice one, LT."
Kaidan smiled without taking his eyes off the artificial windscreen. "Thanks." Nothing else in the mining pit moved, or had an energy signature. "Looks like we're clear."
"Gunnery concurs."
"How far to the dig site entrance?"
Kaidan reached ahead, pulling the windshield view into 3D. "We're here. We just need to get across this pit, and up the other side. Then it's maybe 100 meters to the entrance."
"Almost there, team. Pilot, let's roll. Gunnery, stay sharp. Tali, monitor sensors with me."
"Sure. Just log me in," she said as they started across the vast, open pit mine.
Shepard gestured to a holographic pull-down, flicked his finger at Tali's ID. "Right. Sorry about that."
*** Glossary ***
AO: Area of Operations
APC: Armored Personnel Carrier
Chep: Mild quarian curse referring to fecal matter (non-canon)
CYA: Cover Your Ass
FCO: Fire Control Officer
LOS: Line of Sight
LOSI: Line of Sight Intersuit, a laser-based communications protocol less subject to interception
OTH: Over the Horizon
req: requirement
rock-climbing zax: while related to the north-going zax and south-going zax, rock-climbing zaxes are renowned for their ability to…uh…I think you can figure this one out for yourself.
