*** Rescuing Liara ***

Though she had no way of knowing, Liara's VI-controlled biotech had been disabled by the Prothean stasis bubble. While her tech's failsafe mode had allowed it to keep her from being completely deprived of nutrients and water, it was unable to regulate her sleep cycle. At first, she had occupied herself with isometric exercises; if the field was somehow turned off, she wanted to be ready to move, not feeble and clumsy from inactivity. As the days passed, she had been drifting irregularly in and out of consciousness. But the stasis was more like sensory deprivation than she realized.

After an extended period of wakefulness, she had only been asleep for an hour or so when the sound of distant gunfire had awakened her; the softly flanging purr of the fields had almost put her back to sleep when a screech from the freight lift awakened her again.

Her call for help was finally answered by the most unlikely group she had ever seen: two humans, a turian, and a quarian. No, wait...three humans. And a krogan? Where had they come from? Some of them went away, and then the rest of them went away a few minutes later.

She dozed off, and woke again.

What happened? Was that a dream?

She called, "Are you still out there? Are you real?" She winced at her own foolishness. "Oh, no, don't be stupid, Liara. Humans do not come here. You're hallucinating…" She glanced around self-consciously. "And talking to yourself."

There was a subtle rumbling from behind her. Had the geth finally found a way through the barrier curtain? Should she tell them how to turn off the sphere? Or risk starvation, hoping her message had gotten through to someone?

Footsteps approached.

Liara could barely turn her head. "How…how did you get in here? I didn't think there was any way past the barrier!"

"Superior firepower," Shepard moved around in front of the asari and waved a thumb over his shoulder toward the main chamber. "You left the parts for one of the mining laser's generators nearby; we simply installed what was there and used it to burn a tunnel under the barrier curtain."

"Of course…yes, that makes sense." Liara looked at the other team members as they approached. "Please…get me out of here before more geth arrive. That console over there should allow you to shut down the containment field."

Shepard approached the console, then looked at Kaidan, pointed back to the platform they had just arrived on. "Alenko, get everyone else out of the immediate area; I don't want to accidentally capture all of us."

"All right, you heard him," Kaidan turned and waved forward. "With me, everyone. Out to the elevator."

Shepard looked up at the asari again. "What's next? How do we do this?"

"Ah…activate the console, I will direct you."

Shepard turned and faced the pillar, which had a yellowish holograph of a vertical panel on its near side. He put his hand through it, and it folded open like a book as the pillar itself was covered with cryptic Prothean information.

Shepard's ARO displayed an RTM: A. Williams: Careful, sir. Are you sure she's on our side? Her mother's working with Saren.

He looked back toward the platform, seeing the rest of the team had gathered there and was watching. Ash, standing with her arms folded, nodded subtly when they made eye contact. Shepard pointed to a single control that looked different from the others, and addressed the asari. "This?"

"To the right, and up. Stop. The slowly-cycling one, red and blue. Yes, that one."

"Touch it? Touch and hold?"

"Just break the field. A touch should do it…"

He did, and the console warbled in a strangely alien way; he heard a metallic kathump as he turned to look. The asari rose, dusting hands together, looking around. "Hm. That control turned off the barrier curtain as well."

Garrus had led the team back into the chamber, inspecting the tall, darkened atrium beyond with his assault rifle, looking for geth. "Any idea how we get out of this place?"

"There's an elevator in the back…at least…I think it's an elevator."

"Right, that's how we got here," Kaidan pointed out at the main chamber. "But the geth followed us down from there. We need another way out, and we need it now."

"And it's not that way," Ash pointed toward the chamber with the mining laser as a rolling tremble moved across the floor.

"The mining laser may have damaged the site," the asari sounded nervous, "I simply must get my research data."

"Are you crazy?" Tali pointed out over the campsite, "We had to fight our way through a platoon of geth already; we need to get out of here!"

"You don't understand; I'm abandoning massive, complex hardware so we can leave now, but the data cannot be recovered if I don't get it off the hub. It's priceless."

Another distant rumble; pebbles and dust fell from the walls.

"Wait here; I will return!" The asari was quicker than any of them had realized; in a blur of motion, the black-suited figure ran two steps and leapt away, through the opening and down to the floor distantly below.

Kaidan gasped in surprise; it had to be eight meters to the floor, and the asari was not wearing a jump pack. The Normandy team ran up to the edge of the containment cell in time to see a biotic field fading as the figure sprinted across the open space to one of the tents and disappeared into it.

"What the hell…?" Garrus made an adjustment to his scope to get a closer view of the tent.

Kaidan had a map of the campsite displayed on his ARO. "That's the data hub all right," he said, "I think she's serious."

"You bet she's serious," Wrex agreed, "Did you see that jump? That wasn't a dropsuit; that was all biotics."

Garrus continued to glass the rest of the site with his rifle's scope. "No, I don't mean…wait, here she comes."

The lone figure emerged from the tent and headed toward them as another rumble shook the chamber. A red glow filled the hole in front of the mining laser; T'Soni skidded to a halt, falling hands-first before reaching it, and then running away from the Normandy team.

"What the…" Kaidan stopped in mid-sentence; the glow in the hole became a quickly-rising pool of lava. "Oh, no! Help her…we've got to help her!"

Shepard looked around, hoping for inspiration, but geth started to appear on the scaffolding. "Geth! On the catwalks! Cover fire, twelve high! Open fire!" Wit that phrase from the CO, the team's helmets began to close into full-cover protection configuration.

Kaidan drew his pistol and shrugged a barrier into place. "Where'd they come from?"

"We checked the back of the chamber," Garrus fitted rifle to his shoulder. "Maybe they were hidden better than we realized." He fired one short burst; a geth seemed to crumple to the ground.

Tali said, "They might have just been waiting back there to see if we could solve the problem they couldn't."

As geth converged on her, the asari leapt from crate to mining laser; the geth opened fire on the Normandy team. There was no cover to be had in the containment cell; Wrex, the largest, had drawn the most attention, the rest of the team scattered and fell back toward the elevator shaft.

Wrex stumbled back under the withering fire, then rushed forward, raised his assault rifle hybrid and bellowed, firing grenades at the scaffolding. Explosions at the back wall started the weakened structure collapsing; rocks and shrapnel rained down first, the flat pieces of catwalk fluttered down like leaves. The closest parts of the scaffold collapsed last, dropping geth into the rising pool of orange-hot lava.

Ash yelped, "Wait! That's our way out!"

"Not anymore it isn't!" Wrex didn't look away from his targets. "Too many geth, too much lava!" His assault rifle blazed noisily.

Shepard ran to the edge of the containment cell; orange-hot lava had filled the entire sloping floor of the chamber. Three geth androids lay smoking on the ground, being slowly engulfed in lava, but others were coming down the catwalks from above. The asari clambered from the massive black cylinder of the mining laser to the scaffold, and ran across to the lift's framework as the remaining scaffold began to melt and settle into the molten rock. Leaping from the collapsing scaffold to the elevator framework with a biotic glow trailing behind her, the archaeologist began climbing at a rate that would have done credit to a commando. The framework also began to settle into the lava as it dissolved, melting faster as it did. It would not be long before it would melt faster than the asari could climb.

Shepard watched as three androids dropped from above, sprang to their feet and started firing into the chamber. He pointed up at the opening, "We've got geth at the back of the chamber, give me cover fire!" He dropped to his hands and knees, "Tali, help me lift her! Stand on my feet!" Settling his chest to the floor, he army-crawled to the edge of the cell and reached down as far as he could toward the blue alien. "Come on! Crawl over me!"

"Give him cover," Kaidan stepped sideways. "Prioritise the geth on the ground!" He raised his pistol and fired twice as he ran for cover.

"What?" The asari was within reach, but seemed uncertain of what Shepard meant.

Shepard felt Tali straddle his SmartPak, saw her extend one hand over his head toward the asari, "Here! Take my hand!"

The asari turned away from the framework long enough to reach for the quarian's hand, but was too distant; Shepard grabbed the blue alien's wrist in both hands and lifted so Tali could reach. As the asari and quarian gripped each other's forearms, Shepard lowered both hands and linked his fingers, "Step into my hands! Step into my hands with your foot!"

With the quarian's hand in her right, the asari grabbed Shepard's pack, put her right foot into the stirrup formed by his folded hands, and was lifted to the containment cell floor.

Garrus, Wrex and Ash continued to fire across the chamber as Kaidan emitted a Lift field toward the Commander, reducing his weight; Tali pulled him up into the containment cell and the two of them scrambled across the floor toward the back of the room.

# # #

The geth, now cut off by the lava, could only fire from the entrance, distantly above. But their efforts to cut off one of the two access points, and to drive the organics into the elevator shaft had been successful. Messages flicked between platforms:

South entrance damaged beyond usability
Organics inaccessible due to lava flow
Evacuate platforms
Reroute Grodis-contractor to northeast entrance
Reroute Combat platforms YYURYYU8 and ICURYY.4M3 to northeast entrance
(2) New platforms assembled K86MMD-RD and UJGTG518X, Runtime integration complete
Deploy to northeast entrance
Damaged platforms have been evacuated successfully.
Do not allow the asari-offspring to be significantly damaged or terminated.
No further access from south entrance.
New platforms deployed to northeast entrance.
Allow Grodis-contractor to make the capture.

# # #

"I like that outfit," Saren thought aloud. "Black suits you."

"It is a gown of mourning," Benezia fitted the sections of the headdress into place. "I wear it because it allows me to use a facecloaker without being obvious that I am doing so."

The turian Spectre – now an ex-Spectre – turned and looked over his shoulder at her. "But they've already seen you in the dock and the plaza, and untold other places. Why bother to wear it now?"

"At least two other reasons. I may have to kill the rachni queen."

"And…?"

"It will mean the end of a species." She paused, frowned at herself in the holo-mirror. "I may be on my way to commit genocide. This would be appropriate."

Saren waved a claw in a gesture of antipathy. "The rachni were a dangerous species to begin with. That we brought them back at all was remarkable. If their actual, final death results in saving millions of us, it will be a boon on both counts."

Benezia kept her expression unchanged. Then you have never known them.

Saren gestured at the console, waved a talon through the weather forecast on the holographic display. "I assume you have seen that there is a record-level storm expected in the next two days."

"Of course. But the queen will not wait patiently until it passes; a day here is almost twice as long as on Thessia. And if the storm remains after I am done – whatever the results – I can easily wait there until it passes. I do not know how long this will take."

Benezia adjusted the headdress. "And third, I wear it now because my presence on Noveria does not necessarily indicate my presence at Peak 15. If I can get there without it being officially recorded that I am there, we retain plausible deniability."

Saren saw her eyes dart as she read from her ARA, assumed the facecloak was now active. "And the other reason?"

She turned toward the airlock, briefly flashing some cleavage. "You like it."

Saren smirked. "Hm. Indeed."

In his decades as a Spectre, Saren had learned the art and importance of reading other species' non-vocals without relying on omnitech. It allowed him to understand what an alien might be thinking but not saying, and made it more difficult for them to manipulate him in a similar manner.

And yet he sensed there was another reason; something she was not telling him. She had been becoming increasingly serious over the past few months; this was out of character, a diversion.

My interactions with Sovereign are making me paranoid, he thought. As Benezia stepped through the inner airlock door, he wondered, But am I paranoid enough?

As Benezia exited the BSA-12 Musky, her thoughts were consumed with Liara. Will she be a mere shell of herself when I see her after Virmire? Am I really protecting her, or am I about to mourn my daughter, too?

# # #

The Normandy team collected at the back of the chamber and across the lift to the central column, far enough that the geth could not even see them; the room opened into a central shaft that reached up into darkness. Shepard put his hand in the UP arrow holo and the lift began to ascend.

Kaidan was standing closest to the asari. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

Garrus turned his head quickly. "Wait. This is still Benezia's daughter. Can we trust her?"

"If she was with Saren, the geth wouldn't be trying to kill her." Shepard turned to the asari. "Any idea why they're after you?"

Liara looked at the controls in amazement. "I thought there was an elevator in the core…how did you get it to function?" Rather than wait for a reply, she looked up to answer. "I still cannot believe this. Why are there geth here…looking for me? How is Benezia involved?"

Tali summarised, "Saren is looking for the Conduit. You're a Prothean expert. He probably wants you to help him find it. Or use it."

"The 'Conduit'? But that is simply the word Protheans use to…" A loud rumble interrupted; the floor shook and seemed to tilt.

Garrus looked around at the walls as more dust and grout shook loose from the walls. "Spirits! Aren't we in enough trouble?"

The lift platform continued to climb; the asari looked up toward the exit. "The mining laser must have triggered a seismic event. We have to hurry. The whole place could cave in!"

Still holding one hand in the holograph, Shepard put two fingers to his ear. "Joker, we need immediate evac. Home in on my signal and get us out of here!"

"Yes, sir. Just picked up the Mako, and were heading back to orbit. We're making a turn…aaand on our way to you now. ETA: Eight minutes."

"If we die in here, I'll kill him," Wrex grumbled.

As the platform finished its ascent, the tromp of heavy feet came from the single darkened passage.

"Surrender!" Lumbering down the ramp to one side, a krogan brandished his weapon, an oversized shotgun that could have served as a landing strut on a pocket starship. He added as an afterthought, "Or don't. That would be more fun."

"This whole place is caving in! Is there a reason you're in my way?" Shepard noticed Kaidan moving toward cover, pulling the blue alien with him.

"The same reason you're here. The asari. Thanks for handling those energy fields for us." The yellow-skinned krogan took a step forward, extended a meaty hand. "Hand the doctor over."

The asari was indignant, shouting from cover, "Whatever it is you want, you're not getting it from me."

"Fine by me." He turned to the geth. "Kill them. Spare the asari if you can. If not…it doesn't matter." He raised his shotgun as Shepard and his team scattered into cover.

"We don't have time for this shithead," Wrex's voice rose in volume as he lifted his shotgun, "Charge!"

Grodis looked quickly at the other krogan with his closer eye. "I like your attitude."

Shepard glanced toward the only exit, leapt to his right as a way of getting around the mercenary. "Are you insane? This whole place is coming down!" He gestured his ARO into combat mode, accelerated to 2x.

The krogan followed Shepard, swinging his shotgun in a circle as if it were a war hammer. "Exhilarating, isn't it? The atmosphere is perfect for a life-or-death struggle, don't you think?" There was a purple blur from the left, and the krogan slid sideways, almost losing his grip on the shotgun as he put a hand down to steady himself, sliding to a stop. He looked up and saw the human biotic returning to cover. Baring his teeth, the krogan used the crouch he was in to spring toward Kaidan.

The room shook; lights flickered. The geth motions looked chaotic; some turned and ran for cover, another raised a missile launcher, still another activated a cloak.

Shepard's awareness accelerated to 4x with a gesture, giving him a little more time to plan as he dodged a piece of falling rock, diving into cover behind the lift control pylon. Kaidan was in trouble, or about to be.

"Message to all: Coordinated sequenced fire on the krogan," Shepard barked, "Ash, me, Kaidan, Garrus. Go!"

The message appeared on the team members' various displays. Ash, sniper rifle out, saw Shepard's view of the target in slow-motion on her HUD, positioned her rifle, sighted and fired, then withdrew. Shepard popped up from cover, fired a dozen assault rifle rounds toward the krogan, and then dropped back into cover. Only then did he have time to gesture for 6x acceleration.

Kaidan leaned out from his perch and fired, then quickly returned to protection. Garrus, untrained in the human protocol, but distantly familiar with it, aimed his assault rifle through his visor while staying in cover, waiting to fire until after the biotic human had done so.

The krogan, with multiple centuries of combat experience, had paid close attention to the firing, and now knew where everyone was. When Ash appeared a second time, he shrugged a barrier into place and charged out of cover toward the next in sequence: Shepard. A well-placed swing of the shotgun should put a puny human out of the fight.

But Ash fired twice; her next shot dissolved before it could penetrate the barrier. Meanwhile, Kaidan noticed when the krogan had started to run; he leaned around the machinery, and hurled a warp that blew the krogan's barrier away in a blaze of white and violet. Another tremor shook grout and mortar loose.

And suddenly the krogan was floating.

He roared, twisting wildly; his gyro-stabilized shotgun seemed to right itself as Shepard became aware of Kaidan looking to his left with surprise. Following his gaze, Shepard saw the asari, bathed in the slowly-waving arcs of biotic discharge, teeth clenched, arms extended.

Before he could react, a shotgun fired; Tali had overloaded the circuitry of one of the geth and blasted it.

Then another shotgun fired; the krogan blew himself out of the Lift field and thumped to the floor. Ash fired again, but the round was slowed by the krogan's shields enough to be deflected by his natural skullplate armor. The impact only made Grodis mad: With a roar, he charged Ash from the prone position, all four extremities giving him purchase on the tilebrick floor.

Even to Shepard's 6x Firefight perception, he was insanely fast.

Shepard only had time to think, Ash!

Wrex leapt across the room so fast he could have been flying, colliding with the other krogan in a burst of light and thunder, taking them both farther from the exit; sparks bounced off the floor and wall as metal clashed and scraped. At first, it looked like Wrex's shotgun was smashed uselessly between them; he fired, and krogan brains exploded out the top of the mercenary's armor.

"RAAAAAARRR!" Wrex bellowed, pushing the limp body away.

147 dB peak, Shepard's suit informed him dispassionately. Even inside his armor, it felt like the air had shaken.

Shepard's ARO tagged something out of his field of vision, flashing the highlight urgently. Ordnance launch, it read. He turned to the right as fast as he could, but his 6x accelerated consciousness made the normal neural speed of his body seem too slow. Once again, he noticed, It may be an advantage, but it is not always helpful.

By the time he managed to get eyes on it, the geth had fired a missile at him; from his perspective, the top of the android had turned into a cloud of gray smoke, the center of which seemed to be a quickly-growing sphere (the neural frequency of his organic optics was subject to such illusions, and over the years, he had simply adapted to them.)

Luckily for him, it was not a smart missile; the requirement for on-demand fabrication precluded the addition of intelligence. This reduced the self-propelled projectile to an unusually large bullet with an explosive tip, a bullet that he just barely had time to dodge by pushing back from the cover he had taken.

Even as he fell backwards, he had time to notice the geth tracking him.

Though the Spectre-VII Assault Rifle would have hit harder, Shepard had been using a pistol for so long, it was what he had switched back to after noticing the assault rifle was harder to control; he brought it up, using the accelerated awareness to aim more carefully than an unenhanced human could have.

Which was enough of an edge to let him put a round straight through the geth's "neck;" the caliber and orientation of the round disabled the android, which stumbled backwards.

Wrex, by then the last standing krogan, tore the merc's oversized shotgun out of lifeless hands and whirled left, throwing it at the geth Shepard had damaged. The flying shotgun hit the geth like a wrecking ball, practically shattering the android, carrying the remains over the edge of the platform, and into the trapezoidal hole left by one of the failed panels.

Kaidan found himself the focus of a coordinated attack from geth on opposite sides of the room. Manufacturing a tech grenade and flinging it to the left, he noticed the quarian working her omnitool. One of the geth suddenly turned and fired on another; both exploded. The exosuited figure turned and looked at Kaidan, pinched a digit and thumb together. It took almost a second for Kaidan to realize he was being asked if he was okay. He raised a thumb on his left hand and nodded.

Wrex shouted, "They're dead!"

Tali had was already heading for the darkened passageway the hostile krogan and geth had just come down. She looked over her shoulder as she ran to the ramp, "Come on! Let's get out of here!"

"Right!" Shepard flicked his eyes at the ARO; all five ground team member names were displayed in green. "Everyone up and out of here, now! Move, move, move!" He pushed himself off the floor and ran after the quarian.

Ten meters along the wide, ascending corridor, they found their way blocked by another energy barrier. The blue-glowing field spanned the entire passage.

The asari gasped and ran up to the barrier to touch it. "Another barrier curtain!" Looking back at the control pillar near the center of the platform, she turned and ran that way. The ground was beginning to shake regularly; tilebricks and mortar were beginning to fall all around; a large metal truss clanged noisily as one side fell and fractured it.

"Maybe turning one off turns another on," Kaidan put a hand on the barrier, then summoned a wave of biotic energy and tossed it at the glowing field. The purple glow seemed to push back at him. "This is bad."

Wrex pulled his shotgun off his back and fired at the barrier, which glowed brightly in response.

"I can see light from the surface," Tali pointed ahead, "We're so close!" She ran to the wall, hoping this barrier curtain stopped short of it.

"Did the geth turn it back on from outside?" Shepard turned to look over a shoulder. Liara had reached the control pillar, and was inspecting it desperately.

Kinetic barriers only stop fast-moving objects, he realized. "Hey, this may be a kinetic barrier. Alenko, Williams, see if we can just push through slowly." Shepard pressed against it firmly with both hands; the barrier seemed to press back. Ash flipped her rifle around and slowly moved the stock toward the barrier as Kaidan leaned against it with his shoulder.

"It's acting like it has negative mass," Kaidan said. "It's not just resisting, it's actually pushing back!"

"Nothing's working!" Garrus pounded the barrier angrily.

Shepard leaned into it, positioning himself for better traction, but it started to glow where he pressed. He pressed harder as Liara found the control she was looking for and touched it. The barrier flared brightly, shoved Shepard backwards, and then disappeared in a brilliant flash.

Garrus had been standing closest to the barrier, and reached a claw forward again. "That's it! You did it!"

Shepard looked at his hands, and then over his shoulder. Liara was running toward them from the control pillar. The floor collapsed behind her as she ran; everyone could hear the destruction going on behind them.

"Run! Get out of here!" Turning forward again, Shepard checked for the rest of the team, made sure they were all headed up the ramp toward the light. Making sure Liara was ahead of him, he chased them up the tuberamp ahead of him, "Go! Go! Go!" he shouted, "And you all better run faster than me 'cos I don't want to die here!"

The noise of a collapsing cavern was overwhelming; there was no room for rational thought, only of escape. Bursts of light shone beams through the clouds of dust erupting from behind them.

"Yeah, and neither do I," Joker agreed over the 'comm, "I'm to your right as you come out of there, and you'd better move it, because the whole place is coming down! C'mon, hurry!"

"We're not coming out the way we went down," Shepard glanced behind him, "Do you see another ramp? We're running uphill and…in the tuberamp. I can see light ahead."

"I only see one tower that looks like it has a tuberamp," Joker replied, "Does it have an EAM logo on it?"

"It's not the one we went down," Shepard repeated, "There's got to be another. How many do you see?"

"Wait, there's one," Joker said, "It's real close." As he watched the smoking tuberamp entrance seem to falter, dropping almost a meter deeper into the ground as a burst of orange lava exploded out of it like a cannon.

# # #

On Normandy's bridge, with his vision enhanced by the SVS, Joker saw the liquid rock spray out of an exit from which he had expected to see the ground team. He shrieked, "Commander!"

Shepard's voice sounded strained over the 'comm, "What?"

The pilot glanced over his shoulder, hoping Pressly hadn't heard the panic in his voice, "Uh…nothing. I mean, I thought you got killed."

Shepard was breathing hard; the uphill tunnel continued to shudder and crumble as they ran up it. "And that's…nothing?"

"What? No, and…but you didn't, so it's nothing. Never mind, I see the other tunnel." Glancing toward motion, Joker could see Tali sprinting out and stopping at the catwalk, followed by Garrus and the waddling krogan. "You guys better not stand too close to that tuberamp; the other one just settled a couple of meters and sneezed hot lava. Is the catwalk stable?"

"Uh…mostly," Tali replied, "But we need to get to that building!"

"I can't pick you up on that," Joker sputtered, "There's too much stuff on it."

"Then shoot the stuff off," Garrus pointed, "That building will outlast this scaffold!"

Joker, who would normally have argued the point, shook his head angrily. "Weapons! Clear that rooftop at one o'clock; don't damage the building!" He started to yaw Normandy around for a clear shot.

"Targets acquired," answered the Fire Control Officer. The holographic display between her and the window showed targeting info in reds and blues; she picked out the closest fragile-looking things and assigned priorities.

"And don't hit the catwalk!"

"Not targeting the catwalk, aye." Throttled down to do minimum damage, the steerable underwing cannons illuminated the scene in a blinding bluewhite strobe; antennae, air conditioning, and PV arrays shattered and folded, collapsing into debris.

"Go go go!" Garrus sprinted across the catwalk as the last of the tall structures fell away, Tali close behind. Smoke pouring out of the TubeRamp became thick and opaque as Shepard slowed to catch his breath at the top of the ramp as Liara ran across. The catwalk shuddered as Wrex stomped behind her; it looked like it was taxing the structure dangerously. Shepard sprinted across as soon as he saw it was clear.

The flanging roar of Normandy's engines grew closer as Joker maneuvered over to the rooftop.

Immersed in his SVS view, Joker switched to the cameras mounted above the hangar door, carefully slid the ship up to the building so the hangar door was just at the edge of the rooftop. He watched as the ground team ran aboard, helping each other. As the last of them boarded, the rampdoor tipped up to horizontal, operated by the Loadmaster.

Joker squinted at the display, gritted his teeth. I would totally do that, he thought. I would save people. I could be a hero, too. Someone's gotta drive the bus…I just wish it wasn't always me.

The building collapsed from underneath the hangar rampdoor, and Joker noted the rising pool of lava as he yawed to port and lifted away from the surface.

*** Glossary ***

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

RTM: Real-Time Message

SVS: Synthetic Vision System

TubeRamp: Developed almost a century ago, the SemblerCorp TubeRamp was designed to wholly replace a conventional chemical rocket fairing, soft-land on a planetary surface, and insert itself into the ground in preparation for the arrival of mining or other subsurface activities (on planets that have no magnetosphere, living underground was the norm for first-on-the-grounders.) Though the advent of mass effect technology liberated payloads from the tubular constraints normally associated with chemical rockets, the rest of the system was so cost-effective that they remain in widespread use where infrastructure is be quickly installed or rapidly replaced.

VR: Virtual Reality

A/N "Negative mass" (used near the end of this chapter when they're trying to escape the dig) is a real thing. news dot wsu dot edu/2017/04/10/negative-mass-created-at-wsu/