Chapter 60. Of Queens and Matriarchs
16. January 2415 AD, Noveria, Surface Level of Peak 15
"Another whelp," the bounty hunter observed as he kneeled down next to the body of the krogan and inspected the bloodied, unfuzed headplate before moving on to the next body, again removing the helmet, and staring at the now exposed face of the krogan. "And they all look the same as well. I told you, Shepard," Wrex roared as he tore of a third helmet and threw it across the room, denting the wall where it hit. "Saren's growing my people in tanks!"
Looking at the dead krogan they had just fought, that was also the conclusion the N7 was coming to. They were clones. All of the krogan that had helped guard the entrance to Peak 15, which they had reached five minutes ago and fought for ever since, were identical down to the bumps in their orange body-plates. Nothing had to be said as to why that was a very bad discovery. Fighting the geth was already difficult enough. But now that an increasing number of krogan joined them every time the Normandy went after another target meant to lead them closer to Saren, things were becoming even harder.
"Care to explain?" the specialist going by the weird codename of Magic asked as he walked up the stairs to where Wrex had rushed and she had followed as soon as the last shot had sounded, lowering his own Valkyrie as well.
"You know why Wrex joined up with us?" she asked.
"Saren took the women of his clan, right?"
"Yes. At least some of them," the N7 nodded before trying to come up with the best way to explain this. "After we first ran into one of these krogan back on Therum, Wrex told me that he suspected Saren took their clan's females to grow a krogan army for himself," looking at the numerous krogan clad in mass-produced, black, white and grey camouflaged armor and armed with cheaply-made assault rifles and shotguns, that were spread out all over the snow-covered white interior of the lab's garage, the commander sighed. "Back then it sounded plausible."
"But now it's undeniable," Wrex growled before crushing one of the other discarded helmets under his heel with a burst of purple biotic force, extinguishing the orange lights of its visor in the process. "Saren better hope he's dead before I get my hands on him," he added before stomping off.
"A krogan clone army?" the specialist murmured next to her while watching the krogan kick one of the corpses before joining Alenko and Williams in securing their immediate surroundings. "You know I have to move that up the chain of command once we're done here, no matter what the Council ordered you to do."
Turning her head to the specialist and frowning behind her onyx-black helmet, Shepard was caught of guard. "Do you think I was going to keep this to myself?" she asked carefully. She had to have caught that wrong.
"Considering you went to Therum a week ago and didn't lose a single word about the existence of a krogan clone army since then? Yes, I think it's a possibility," he countered, shattering the faint hope that they might get along after all which she had gotten after their brief talk in the port.
"Are you serious?" she replied. "I was waiting for some confirmation on Wrex's theory before I told anyone about it. That includes the Council and HSA. This isn't keeping things to myself, it's being reasonable about sensitive information and avoiding a mass-panic about something that might not exist after all."
"Debatable," the specialist shrugged before nodding to the badly damaged door up-ahead. "But not here. We can sort this out when we're done with our mission."
Alright.
She had told herself to be professional but this crossed a line. Specialist or not, she was done playing nice. As he was about to walk away, she grabbed his arm and pulled him back, which judging by the ease with which it happened, he either hadn't expected or allowed to happen.
"If you think you can just say things like that to my face and walk away like you did back on the Citadel, then you're dead wrong," she began, still having an iron grip on his arm. "Bringing Saren in and rescuing the councilor is my mission now and I won't have you of all people question my judgment or my integrity. If you have a problem with something I did or said, then you either stick around to talk it out or shut up about it. You don't get to only say your side."
"You asked me something, I gave you an answer," the specialist said before quite suddenly twisting his arm out of her hand and taking an instinctive step back. "Where's the problem?"
"You accused me of intentionally withholding information about our enemy because the Council told me to," she replied, taking a step forward and slowly getting angry. "That's the problem."
"I didn't accuse you of anything. I just said that I considered it a possibility," the man replied. "I didn't even say how probable it was."
"Why would I even do that?"
"Again, possibility and probability are two different-"
"When the two of you are done arguing in the middle of a battlefield, Doctor T'Soni found something you should see. Both of you," Vakarian injected, pulling Emily back out of the ugly fight the argument with the specialist had quickly descended into and at least making hers feel ashamed at her sudden lack of professionalism. She couldn't speak for the specialist though.
"I've been done for the last minute," the specialist shrugged nonchalant before walking towards the asari ahead of her, evidently content with leaving things as they were.
Yes. Definitely not ashamed.
Alright. Two can play that game.
"So am I now," she said, more to the detective than the specialist. "Alright, show me what you got," she added with a sigh before following Vakarian. Of course no mission of hers could go off without some kind of complication. First the beacon on Eden Prime, then the forcefield on Therum and the Thorian on Feros and now this. A specialist.
"A piece of advice?" the turian next to her said after a moment of leading her to a terminal built into the wall next to the garage's damaged main airlock. Considering that Liara was frantically studying something on her omni-tool right next to it, her interest was now peaked. Nonetheless, she also wanted to hear what he had to say.
"Please."
"Don't let him get to you," his voice flanged through his dark-blue helmet, giving it a slight synthetic tone. "I've met some guys like him back in the army. The paranoid naval intelligence type. They don't mean most of what they say personal, even if they sound like they do. It's just that they say what's on their mind. It's the way they're used to working and they won't change that just because it pisses off us regulars, " he said before offering a shrug of his own. "Or at least that's what they claim. Personally I think it's just because they like hearing themselves talk."
"I met my share of intelligence officer as well, Vakarian," Shepard replied after briefly smirking under her helmet, the thought that the turian next to her may very well be spying on them for C-SEC slipping into the back of her mind. "But this is different. I can't put my finger on it but whatever it is, it really is personal. At least to him."
"Garrus," the turian only stated his name for a reply.
"Excuse me?" she asked in return.
"I told you my family's history. Please. Drop the Vakarian and start calling me Garrus."
"Okay, Garrus," the N7 confirmed. "As I was saying, this is personal for him."
"You really think so?"
"Yes, I do. I can usually tell when people have a problem with me."
"I see," the turian said a moment later."Another piece of advice?" he asked, stopping a few meters behind Liara and the specialist who was already looking at what she had discovered, his arms folded and his back turned towards Emily.
"Yes?"
"It always takes two people to really make something personal. Whatever his problem might be, you don't have to make it yours. If you don't let it get to you, it won't be an issue, at least not with the naval intelligence type. Say what you will about them, they usually have their mind on getting the job done."
No matter how much she wanted to claim that this was all on the specialist, the turian had more than a valid point. In retrospective Emily knew she had been the escalating party in the argument and she knew that it had been because it felt personal to her. Taking to heart what Garrus had said, she frowned again behind her helmet, but this time at herself. "Besides, if there really is a problem, you can always solve it back on the Normandy. Can't walk away from you on your own ship now, can he?"
"You're right," she nodded before walking to where Liara was standing to take a look at the terminal that seemed to have drawn in both her and the Section 13 operative.
"Well? What do you have for me, Liara?" she asked when neither of the two opened their mouths. Instead of talking to her, they were looking at what was clearly a recording of the door they were standing in front of. However since it was still intact and that they weren't visible in the spot they were standing in right now, it had to be a past one.
"I hacked into door's security cameras to see what we were up against," Liara finally explained, her voice quiet and devoid of its usual enthusiasm.
Emily didn't have to be a spy to figure out why that was likely the case. Probably much like the specialist, she already had a good idea what, or rather who, the asari had discovered in the security recording. "This was taken right after the facility went dark," she said before a wave of her hand rewinded the footage until a number of asari, all clad in the same uniform black armor favoured by huntresses, could be seen marching towards the facility's entrance in a formation resembling a diamond, which was typically meant to-
"It's my mother."
- to protect the person walking in its center, Councilor Benezia T'Soni. As she looked at the asari break through the entrance with a display of biotic force the N7 had never seen before, pushing its magnetic locks and heavy armor plating into the facilty with seeming ease, she swallowed not because of how intimidating this kind of power was but because of what it meant to one member of her ground team that she was here.
Going up against people she knew would've already been bad enough. But this? Fighting her own mother? Even if it meant risking her landing in a coma again like on Feros, Emily wasn't going to put the asari through that kind of nightmare.
"General, do you read me?" she spoke into her helmet's radio.
"Go ahead, Commander."
"Something changed," she said as the formation marched through the door in lockstep, a swarm of geth and at least a platoon of krogan trailing behind them.
"You can brief me on the ground, we're two minutes out."
"It's Councilor T'Soni, General. She's here and it doesn't look like she's a prisoner. Quite the opposite actually. It looks like she's the one leading the attack."
"If that's the case then she's been indoctrinated," seeing the asari flinch at the turian's words, Shepard felt a sickening feeling rise in her stomach before making a gut choice. "We have to consider her a hostile from here on out."
"I know," she confirmed before looking at the asari scientist. "Can you hold the shuttle when you land? I want to get Doctor T'Soni back to the Normandy as soon as possible. She doesn't have to be here anymore," that caught Liara's attention.
"Understood. I'll tell the pilo-"
"No," the asari suddenly said while shutting off her omni-tool. "I'm staying."
"Liara-" she began, only to be cut off.
"I said I'm staying," the archeologist said defiantly, drawing the attention of the rest of the squad. As her blue eyes looked at Shepard through the clear visor of her helmet, there was only one question on the N7's mind.
"Do you really think that's a good idea?"
While her mission was to save the asari councilor, the fact that she had been indoctrinated and would fight them would drastically alter her objective. Before she was a hostage to be rescued, but now? Now Liara's mother had turned into another Saren. A dangerous individual that had to be stopped, by any means necessary.
"She is my mother," the asari replied. "If she's here, I'm staying."
"You understand that we have to kill her if she tries to stop us?" Magic, who up to now had remained silent, injected. "If we don't, all of us are dead. When it comes down to it, it'll her or us. It has to be."
Just as she had expected, he had chosen the harshest words possible. But this time around, they simply rang true. Sure, he was being an unsensitive asshole about it, but in this case, he was right. As she watched the desperation on Liara's face grow, Emily was glad that the specialist had done exactly what Garrus had said he would, said what was on his mind. Because if she was honest with herself, she wasn't sure if she had it in her to voice that harsh reality to the asari scientist, no matter how badly it needed to be said.
"I understand that, but," the asari shook her head before looking at him instead, "but if there's even a one percent chance that I can save her, I have to stay. I have to try. You have to give me a chance to bring her back. Please."
"She's indoctrinated, Doctor. Indoctrinated people don't come back. I know you don't want to hear it but that's a fact. There's no chance to bring her back and trying to will only get you and other people killed."
Again, harsh but true.
Why was it that taking his side, which was arguably the more logical one, made her feel like a hypocrite all of the sudden?
"No," the asari muttered. "That's an assumption. You don't know for sure that they can't come back. No one does. I've been studying this process for years. I spent weeks at a time trying to understand it and there has been too little information to say for sure that she's gone," shaking her head and pacing in a circle, her hands rubbed her helmet's chin in a thinking gesture. "If I talk to her, trigger old memories, return her mind to the state she was in before the indoctrination first occurred, then I can break through to her, bring her back to who she was before all of this."
It was easy to see where that believe was coming from.
Blind desperation.
"You're right. I don't know it for sure," the specialist replied calmly, quickly looking at the destroyed door and the semi-visible, crushed remains of two security guards that had been caught in its involuntary opening, before going on. It was clear what he was worried about. "But neither do you. So for our sake, we have to work under the assumption that they don't come back."
"You have no idea what you're talking about!" the asari snapped in denial. "Why do you think you can judge if my mother's beyond saving or not?"
"Because I actually saw all of those things you studied about in that lab of yours," he replied, suddenly lacking the calm tone he had prior to this moment, sounding surprisingly stressed instead. "I watched them kill one hundred and ninety six people on Akuze because someone thought like you're thinking right now." Wait. Akuze? Hadn't that been the place where an unfortunate marine company had stumbled over a pair of mating Thresher Maws during an exercise? "Indoctrination is more dangerous and more powerful than you understand. It's not hypnosis, it's not a condition. It's final. Hell, considering how long Arterius held your mother captive, chances are she won't even recogni-"
"That's enough, Specialist. You made your point" Emily said when she realised that she didn't want to see how far he'd take this. Much to her surprise, the Section 13 agent stopped immediately, only glancing at the two of them for one second before marching to the door and staring into what little he could see of Peak 15's entrance.
"Liara, I still think it's best that you leave," the N7 said while placing a hand on the asari's shoulder, trying to sound as reassuring as possible.
"I'm staying," the doctor replied. "And unless you make Wrex carry me out of here, that's my final decision."
Every single piece of her rational mind was telling her to do just that. But who was she to deny a daughter the chance of trying to save her mother? She had lost a parent. She knew what that was like. If she could have a one percent change of bringing her dad back, she'd do it, no matter the risk. Losing someone like that was something other people just couldn't understand, the specialist probably among them. So, despite the part of her that was screaming at her that Liara was emotionally compromized, which was most certainly a part that at least right now was thinking the same as Magic, Emily made a choice. A choice she hoped she wouldn't come to regret or at least could still regret by the end of the day. It wasn't the objective call, nor was it the logical call.
But dammit, it was the right call and that was all she'd have at the end of the day, the knowledge that she had made the right decision.
So, while looking Liara in the eyes, she radioed the turian general for a second time.
"General, you can tell the shuttle to leave. Doctor T'Soni's staying."
"Thank you," Liara offered quietly to which Emily only gave a nod.
"Understood," the turian merely replied. She wasn't sure why the turian general hadn't questioned this sudden change. Maybe he trusted the doctor's abilities, maybe he trusted Emily's own judgment. Maybe this was just him living up to the promise that this was her mission and that she was the one in charge. It didn't really matter. She was simply grateful for it. "We touched down a few moments ago and are making our way to the center of the surface layer. According to the plans one of your specialist pulled from the NDC's servers, there should be a tram station there that connects the other research stations to this one."
"Leading to?"
"The hot lab."
"Where they were doing what?"
"That part sadly wasn't included in the blue prints, Commander," the other specialist herself explained over the radio in a friendly voice. "Turns out part of the contract between the NDC and the people using their labs is confidentiality. They got no idea what Binary Helix is doing here. They just know how the building they built looked like when they rented it out."
"I see," she replied. "We'll hurry up and head for the tram station as well then."
"No need to hustle, Commander. The tram's the only way to move through the facility and the way we came in are the only ways out. Whoever's still in Peak 15, they aren't getting out. Not anymore."
"Meaning we can take out time?"
"Exactly. I'll see you at the tram."
Why was she so much more pleasant than her companion?
Pushing the thought back into her head and motioning for her squad to rally up and move into the facility, she stepped over the broken doors and passed Magic, who fell in line without a single complaint, proving Garrus' assesment of him at least partially right. He seemed to have his head in the game.
As they headed through the facility's surface layer to reach the tram station, Emily realised that the mixture of asari, krogan and geth forces had gone room through room. As far as she could tell from what little remained standing of the facility's interior, they had broken into every lab, every living quarter and even the social room and killed all Binary Helix scientists, security guards and staff members they could find before systematically searching every inch of every room.
"What do you think they were looking for?" Alenko wondered as they cleared another broken door and found yet another site of the massacre that had unfolded inside the facility, a larger laboratory located right next to the tram station.
"Next question. Did they find it?" Wrex added to the biotic's inquiry while stepping over the body of a dead salarian clad in white and red formal wear. "Because if they didn't this was a huge waste of ammunition," when the krogan paused, Shepard turned around to see what had silenced him so suddenly.
"What are you doing, Wrex?" she asked cautiously as she watched him lean over a terrarium built into a larger desk filled with dissection equipment and take out his knife.
"I don't believe it," the krogan said in a way that was far too similar to the time he had told her about his theory regarding the fate of his clan's females. "Why in the void would anyone do this?"
"Do what, Gunnery Sereant?" she asked Williams who was already standing next to the bounty hunter and simply watching him try to pry open the reinforced glass ceiling.
"I don't know Ma'am. Never seen those things in my life," the NCO replied before Emily reached the terrarium and looked at the small, roughly football sized eggs stored inside.
"Which you can thank my people for," the krogan growled as his knife only managed to scratch the safety glass, prompting him to smash a biotically fueled fist onto the glass which did produce a small crack in its surface.
"I don't get it, what's going on?" Alenko, the third person to decide and check in on what was going on. "Jesus, are those-"
"By the goddess, rachni eggs?" she heard Liara mutter from behind them.
"Did you just say rachni?" the N7 wondered. "I thought they went extinct?" Actually she didn't just think it, she was sure that they were extinct. Ordering the genocide of an entire species was one of the Council's darkest moment in history but as far as every source told her people and the other species who hadn't been around back then like the turians or the drell, it had been the only way. Every attempt at negotiating or even establishing a working method of communication with the insectoid civilization and ending the war, or even finding out why it had started in the first place, had proved impossible. In a galaxy full of extraterrestrial life, they had simply been too alien.
Or too troublesome if a minority of people was to be believed.
"They didn't go extinct," Wrex said before smashing the glass again, causing everyone who had gathered around him to take a cautious step back. "We hunted them down to the last. My ancestors dragged nukes into their nests and burned them to ashes. For a century we cleaned up every little infestation of rachni until not a single one of those beasts was left. It was the golden age of the krogan," although Emily kept it to herself, she couldn't claim that committing a genocide of unparalleled scale should be considered a 'golden age'.
"Except the one who made these, evidently," Garrus offered, drawing a snarl out of the krogan in the process. "Is this why Saren came here? To add the rachni to his army?" he asked her.
"I wouldn't put it past him," she murmured while looking at Wrex again try his large knife on the glass, dead-set on getting to those eggs. Was this really what the rogue Spectre had been doing all this time? Assembling an army of every potentially galaxy-ending threat for his reaper masters? The geth, the krogan, the rachni, if the reapers needed an army to do to them what they had already done to the protheans, Saren was doing a good job at recruiting it from the worst of the worst. "General Arterius, we've got-"
"Rachni?" the flanging voice finished for her.
"Yes."
"It's the same over here. I don't know how but Binary Helix managed to revive their kind. The entire lab I'm standing in was made to breed rachni larvae" the general said, a dampened, unknown screetching sound audible in the background of his radiofeed. "We can't let any of them leave Peak 15."
"So how do we contain them?" Shepard asked, still trying to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why the human-owned company had thought this was a good idea and how they had even gotten their hands on living rachni.
"We don't contain them, we kill them. Down to the last worker."
What?
"Come again?"
"According to the blueprints, the facility can neutron purge itself completely in case some disease or bioweapon is accidental unleashed. If the other layers are anything like this one, activating that function just became our main priority. No matter what happens here today, every rachni in this station has to be wiped out."
There it was again, that complete willingness to kill an entire species.
"General, you're talking about wiping out an entire race here," Shepard. "I mean I know the history books like everyone else but are you sure that this is the way to go?"
"They were exterminated for a reason, Commander. I don't care if it's your orders or mine that activate the neuron purge but it will happen. The rachni die today. For good this time."
Maybe one had to be around to get why this was the only option? Then again the turians hadn't actually been around for the Rachni Wars either. They had missed that conflict by seven centuries, idly expanding over their part of the galaxy and putting down the occasional separatist uprising aiming to spark another Unification War while being blissfully unaware of the billions of people dying a few mass relays outside of their territory in the biggest war the galaxy had seen up to then.
"Finally a turian idea I can get behind," Wrex grunted before a final smash against the terrarium proved unsuccessful, bringing Shepard to the morbid conclusion that Binary Helix had at least taken as many safety procussions as possible when coming up with the plan to bring the rachni back from the grave. "Let's go and kill some rachni," he added with a chuckle before retreating from the damaged but intact terrarium and moving to the large door that would lead them to the tram.
"What are we gonna do Ma'am?" Williams asked after a moment, probably equally stunned.
"Focus on the reason we came first," she replied quickly before radioing the general again." General Arterius," she began.
"As I said, the purge is happening, one way or another."
"Not before we have the Councilor."
"Commander," he began, only for her to shoot him down.
"You said this was my mission," the N7 said before looking at Liara. "And that mission is to recover Councilor T'Soni," in what way remained to be seen, "until she's save, I'm not going to let you purge this facility. You heard what the specialist said, as long as we have the tram station under control, no one's going anywhere. First we save the Councilor, then we can take care of the rachni. That's the order of our priorities," she knew what this sounded like but she certainly didn't plan to commit genocide either. Waiting for as long as it took the turian to reply, Emily hoped that the answer wouldn't be a no because frankly, if the Blackwatch officer made up his mind to neutron purge the facility, there was nothing she could do. She wasn't going to use force to stop him. They were allies. So this had to work, she had to convince him. "Understood?" she finally asked, biting her lip in the process. It was a high-stakes gamble and relied solely on the general respecting her command like she had respected his command.
"Understood," he replied in the almost mechanical fashion she had heard some turians speak in when receiving orders they weren't at all pleased with. Although far from the ideal solution, it at least bought her some time to come up with a solution to the fact that the general, his honorguard and at least one member of her squad, she didn't want to ask or speculate about what Liara or Garrus were thinking in that regard right now, were set on committing genocide.
"Let's get to that tram," she said, producing a nod from the NCO.
Ten Minutes Later, Central Tram Station of Peak 15
"So, what exactly happened to it not being a problem?" Yo-yo asked as she leaned next to the spot on the tram's railing he had chosen for himself, away from the team he had arrived with.
"Whatever gave you that idea that there was a problem?" Morneau asked with faked innocence as he looked down the ravine the mountain-tram was taking them across to reach the next part of the Peak 15 facility. Was this what the Alps looked like? He had only ever seen their summits from the edges of the larger ARA metropolis before leaving for Terra Nova.
"Come on, I spent more than enough time with you to know when something's up," the specialist sighed. "So do us both a favour and spill it."
"You're really sure about this, hmm?" he said, looking away from the snowy landscape and at his partner.
"Yes," the specialist nodded. "Also, the commander's been staring daggers into your back since you got on this tram. So something obviously happened. Only question is, what?"
"Have I ever mentioned that I dislike it when you use your training on me?"
"It's also your training."
"Still a valid point."
"Stop stalling, start talking."
"Fine," he sighed. "All I said was that I think there's a chance the council ordered her to keep something from the HSA. Guess she took it the wrong way," that really had been his intention. To just say what was on his mind.
"Keep what from the HSA?"
"That Arterius is growing a krogan clone army."
"Oh."
"Really? Just oh?"
"Can't do anything about right now, can we?" Yo-yo countered while leaning against the railing herself and looking at a distant mountain. Or at least that's where he assumed she was looking, the tainted glass of her visor made it hard to tell. "Besides, it's not the strangest thing I've ever heard this year."
"Guess it's not," he replied while following what he assumed was her gaze to look at the perfectly snowy mountain top himself. They had just seen the rachni come back to life and the guy they were chasing was trying to bring about a galactic cataclysm. Cloning a couple of krogan didn't really sound so special compared to that.
"Ever thought you might've put it the wrong way?" Yo-yo offered while leaning on the railing herself.
Of course he had considered that. But that still didn't change that he wasn't completely responsible for the way that argument had gone down. At least not as far as he was concerned.
"Maybe," he half-way admitted before chuckling a fake chuckle. "Satisfied? There was a problem. It's over now."
"Not yet, actually."
"Really?"
"That's not all that happened, is it?"
Sighing and silently cursing the fact that she seemed to be so good at reading him, Morneau pushed himself away from the railing and looked at the doctor. "Tried to talk her out of going after her mother."
"Didn't go so well?"
"You could say that," he replied, the way Yo-yo turned his head to him making it clear that he had to go into more detail. "Because we're talking about her mom here, the doctor came to the dangerous conclusion that she can just try and talk someone out of being indoctrinated."
"And you didn't like that?"
In this case, not saying anything was his answer. Only a very small number of people knew what had happened to him and Alec on Akuze, how there hadn't been any Thresher Maws. Specialist Rachel Young was one of them.
"Of course you didn't," sighing herself and looking away from the mountains to study him, Yo-yo continued what he knew to be an assessment of whether or not he was still fit to do his job. "What did you do?"
"I tried talking her out of it. Obviously." he answered before honestly reflecting on the other argument. "Said something about there being a chance that her mother wasn't going to recognize her anymore along the way."
"Hmm."
"Just hmm?"
"I mean you're not wrong," Yo-yo shrugged. "You're a dick about it. But you're not wrong. As far as we know, indoctrination can't be reversed."
"And trying on an asari matriarch," he began.
"Will get us killed. Right," Yo-yo finished. "Can I ask you something?"
"You're already half-way through the interrogation, aren't you?"
"Is this because of Alec's daughter as well?"
He had expected the question. It was the obvious conclusion. But somehow it still took him by complete surprise.
"Honestly?"
"Please."
"I don't know."
"Something's making you lose your cool around her, Morneau. If it's guilt, you have to fix it asap. Otherwise it's gonna mess you up, badly."
"Guilt you say," Morneau repeated, the words of Director Rei coming to his mind again. If this was his way of trying to repay a dead man by looking out for someone he left behind, he was doing a shit job at it. He had probably alienated her beyond recovery already. Then again, he was convinced that he wasn't trying to do that so it didn't really matter, right? Either way, admitting that he felt like he owned Alec a debt he could never pay back would be admitting that what had happened had left an impact on him and that Akuze had changed who he was despite his best attempts to put it in a box. And that was something he definitely didn't want to do.
"Well it's either guilt," Yo-yo offered, "Or you're just being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. But considering the timing, I think it's the former."
"Like I said-"
"You don't know."
"Exactly."
"Then it's about time you figure it out," as the tram got closer to their destination and the white landscape was exchanged for the metallic dark-blue of this part of the research lab, Morneau continued to listen. "When this is over, you're gonna sit down with her and decide if the universe just gave you opposing personalities or if you can't look at her without being back on Akuze again and feeling the stress all over again."
"And what if it is?" he wondered before joining the rest of the group at the door of the tram, his rifle at the ready.
"Then we'll have to figure something out."
"I was afraid you'd say that," the specialist replied right as the doors came apart to reveal what had happened in this part of the laboratory.
Damn.
"Is that what I think it is, Wrex?" the turian detective askef.
"Yes, it's one of their soldiers," the bounty hunter simply grunted before stomping off of the tram and into the hot labs of Peak 15.
Lying in front of the entrance and blocking off a portion of the dark-blue tubular corridor they were now standing in was a large creature. It was surrounded by three destroyed geth platforms and still connected to the krogan clone slumped against the wall of the corridor, which it had impaled with one of its long and evidently very sharp tentacles. If he just went by his own impression and ignored the rest, it's outer appearance reminded the specialist of a mixture between a lobster and a bug. The red carapace covering most of its body was riddled with bullet-holes and a chunk of its head was missing, probably thanks to a shot fired from the now damaged shotgun still stuck in its four-pronged, mangled jaw. Furthermore one of its legs had been blown off, possibly by a grenade.
All in all, it gave the impression that the creature had gone down fighting and that even one of them was incredibly dangerous, which naturally was a huge problem for them. He wasn't naive enough to think that Binary Helix only would've brought one of these rachni back, he knew they'd run into more of them on their way to taking out the indoctrinated councilor. If she was still alive that is. Powerful biotic or not, if there were enough of these, she'd be in a world of trouble. So if luck wasn't on their side, they might fight their way across Peak 15 while looking for the councilor, lose a couple members of their team to these monsters along the way, and finally find her and her followers dead.
Knowing the way things usually went for him, Morneau was starting to consider that possibility very likely.
"I think this speaks for itself, Commander," General Arterius muttered. Kicking the corpse of the rachni after leveling his rifle at its head, he only moved away from the body and down the corridor after Wrex when no reaction came from it. Although he didn't say anything else, Morneau could tell that the Blackwatch officer was set on triggering the neutron purge and that nothing was going to change that. He wasn't sure how to feel about that just yet. While the past had taught him that he crossed lines he said he'd never cross all the time, he liked to believe that genocide really was one of the things he wasn't going to have any part in. Realising that he had sounded far more skeptical about that last part than he would've liked to, Morneau shook his head and climbed past the rachni corpse, waiting for the N7 to give an answer to the general all the way through the corridor.
It never came.
Continuing through the hot labs in what little flickering light the corridors still gave them, Morneau found himself at the end of the formation and looking at the backs of everyone else. Since he trusted the rest of the unit to have the visual part covered, he decided to focus on what he could hear rather than what he could see. While blending out the noises five humans, five turians, a krogan and an asari made when moving in a closed-in space was difficult, it wasn't impossible. At least not entirely. As the steps of armored feet faded into the background, he noticed something else. Something that had been there the entire time. A silent but sharp sound that sounded almost like something was walking above them, following them ever since they had entered the hot labs.
Tilting his head back to look up at the dark-blue ceiling covers, the specialist put a hand on the shoulder of the marine walking in front of him, squeezing it just hard enough for her to stop.
"What is i-"
Hushing her with a gesture every human would understand, Morneau pointed upwards, right above his head, before nodding forward. Quickly catching on to what he meant, the marine repeated the gesture right until the entire formation came to a halt, finally allowing the sharp sound of dozens of insectoid legs rattling through the air vent above them to be heard clearly.
Great.
As he inspected the material of the corridor, coming to the same conclusion as everyone else, Morneau lowered his rifle at the realisation that shooting inside of here was an absolutely terrible idea.
"Where do we go from here?" Lieutenant Alenko finally asked through the squad-intercom, interrupting the noise of the seemingly endless stream of aliens moving above them.
Meanwhile, Early 2156 CE
It was a decent question.
Where did they go from here now that it was clear that a stream of dozens of rachni was moving the way they were going?
Going back was not an option. There was nothing for them the way they had come.
Up, down and sideways weren't options either. The corridor was closed off in those directions by the fortified walls of the hot labs, which had clearly been built to contain things far more destructive than them.
Hence the only way they could go was forward. Despite the road ahead most likely leading straight to where all those rachni were going, advancing was the only choice they could make.
Yet it wasn't his choice to make or his order to give.
It was Shepard's.
Even though the rachni had been a variable no one could've expected to encounter and the commander had failed to agree with the necessity of what had to be done now that this ancient foe was a part of their mission, she was the one in charge. She gave the orders. And even though he was set on ending a two thousand year old war the krogan had evidently failed to finish for good, he'd honor her command until their mission, securing Councilor T'Soni, was done.
But not a moment longer.
"Can't really go anywhere but forward, Lieutenant," the N7 finally said, giving the krogan in front of him the all-clear to keep going and stop blocking his path. Relieved that she gave the only sensible order, the Blackwatch general followed the krogan, his honor guard, the team of the Normandy and the two specialists in his rear, the rachni above him and their target hopefully ahead. Pushing the thought that they were just one broken airvent away from being overwhelmed by the swarm of rachni into the back of his head, Desolas made his way through the corridor right until the bounty hunter in front of him was stopped by a heavy blastdoor.
"The hot lab should be right behind that thing," the human specialist who had joined them on the shuttle earlier said as the krogan member of their team banged his fist against it, producing a small but still visible dent.
"So are the rachni," he remarked before starting to get work on the door. "I can smell them." Despite being certain that doors as this would be sealed beyond airtight, Desolas stayed silent for now.
"Then we might not want to do that without a plan," the turian detective pointed out dryly as he watched the krogan try to force his way through, wincing ever so slightly when the bounty hunter's fists started to glow purple with biotic force.
His presence here really was something Desolas didn't quite understand. According to the service record he had pulled out of curiosity after their mission on Feros, Garrus Vakarian had been a distinguished member of the Reconnaissance Corps, the part of the Hierarchy's conventional forces that was sent ahead of everyone besides the cabals, the Blackwatch or the debatably sane members of the armigerian shock troops who's unique method of entering the battlefield made it impossible for anybody to be faster than them without dying upon impac. Although having clashed with his superiors on several occasions, prompting not just one but three disciplinary hearings, which was three times the turian average, someone had still placed the cipritinian-palavani on a fast-track to becoming a career soldier after his term of service would've ended. By all means, he should've already become a high-ranking member of his corps five years ago.
Yet he had ended up on the Citadel after he suddenly discarded his position in Recon in favour of requesting a permanent posting with C-SEC mere weeks before he would've been transferred back to Palaven to start his officer training.
"How about we just shoot everything with more than two legs?" the krogan grumbled. "How does that sound for a plan, Blue?"
"Not that great."
Although he knew that fighting the rachni was one of the few universal things all krogan seemed to be proud of and it had been one of the greatest forces responsible for their past unification prior to their rebellion, Desolas hadn't figured that it could be this personal for any of them. After all, not one krogan who had fought the rachni was still around to tell the tale. This one might've been old but two millennia had passed since the war. He hadn't been alive back then. Narrowing his eyes behind his visor as a biotic punch hit the blastdoor, the general recognized the danger in front of him. The krogan and his pride would get some of them killed if he didn't start to control himself.
"Wrex," the commander said, only producing a grunt. "Wrex!" she nearly shouted this time around, finally getting his attention.
"What?"
"Stop. Remember what we talked about." It was rare to see a krogan listen to orders. It was even rarer to see a krogan listen to orders coming form someone half his size. Yet for some reason, the N7 managed to stop his anger, something he was sure he wouldn't have achieved without using force. Desolas didn't know if the Spectre had some kind of leverage over the bounty hunter, but it was evident that he listened to her. It made him somewhat more controllable.
"Fine. We'll do it your way," the krogan nodded. "Not that it matters much. We have to go through here anyway," he added before moving to the sides.
"Just punching a blastdoor won't get us there, though," the N7 said before studying the door. "Explosives won't do either. This was built to last."
"So we open it the normal way," the human lieutenant offered.
"And let every rachni in there swarm us in this corridor?"
"We've got five biotics, Ma'am. They won't even get close to touching us."
"He's right, Sir," Callius injected. "If we work together, we can keep them at a distance. I figure that's why we haven't found any dead asari yet. The rachni couldn't reach them."
"So how do we do this?" the N7 asked a moment longer before turning to her lieutenant. "This isn't exactly my depth, Lieutenant."
"In pairs," he explained after catching onto her intention. Addressing Desolas' lieutenant, he stepped up to the role of their temporary leader quickly. "How strong of a biotic are you?"
"Turian average," which likely marked her as the weakest in the group. Although his people were good at many things, biotics never had been one of them. Whether it was their slightly different biology or some other factor they had yet to discover, compared to other species, with a few exceptions such as his brother, there were no strong turiab biotics. It's why cabals worked in all-biotic squads, they could make up for what they lacked in brute force by working as a unit.
"Okay. You'll be number two with Wrex, then," he said before addressing the other human biotic at the end of the formation. "Average, right?"
"Yeah. Let's go with average."
"Then you and me are the first ones in," he recognized the logic behind that decision. Much like the cabals, human biotics were also trained in units. Additionally they were trained in one centralized location by a small number of instructors. Hence the two humans probably fought nearly similar. Furthermore by choosing to go first, he did what any good officer was meant to do. Lead by example.
"Works for me," the other shrugged before making his way forward. "I take left, you take right?"
"Yes."
"And me?" the asari asked.
"You're definitely the strongest of all of us. So you'll be our reserve, handle the ones we miss or can't stop in time," he certainly was confident in the asari. Then again, Desolas had seen her in action on Feros. With a bit of training, she'd likely go down the same road her mother had gone down and become exceptionally powerful. After all, with asari biotic potential actually was something determined by heritage and not by chance.
After nodding her agreement to his plan, the human officer took his place in front of the door, purple waves already dancing over his hands in preparation. "How exactly does this thing open?" he asked, causing Desolas to search for the walls around them. Doors like these usually had a hidden emergency release, just in case they weren't meant to seal but did so anyway. Spotting a small panel to his left, he undid the lock holding it in place, dropped the panel to the floor and revealed a red switch with salarian writing on top of it which his HUD quickly but messily translated to 'Emergency Open'.
"Probably with this," he said before placing his left hand on the switch. "Whenever you're ready."
As the biotics formed up in front and the rest leveled their weapons behind them, he met the eyes of the human through his tainted visor.
"Do it," he said with a calm any turian officer would be envious off. As he pulled the switch down, Desolas was sure that the human lieutenant would make for more than just a very good second-in-command one day.
Meanwhile, 16. January 2415 AD
When the blastdoor vanished into the wall thanks to the emergency release, the inside of the hot lab became visible. Crawling on the walls and ceilings were dozens of small green insects that seemed to be occupied with chewing on the equipment, the walls and the wiring of the room. They were taking it apart for a reason Emily didn't have time to think about before the larger red rachni hurled up in the center of the room turned towards them in unison, screaming with open mouths and lashing the air with long combat tentacles before trying to close the six or seven meter gap between them and her team. Uncaring of the gunfire punching into their bodies from the moment they had turned, the aliens were only stopped when two waves of purple marked the beginning of Alenko's plan and sent them staggering back, forcing them to start the charge all over again and costing them two of their own in the process. As the first rachni collapsed just in front of the biotics with a gaping hole in its torso, which had most likely been produced by the shotgun one of the Blackwatch soldiers had exchanged his Phaeston for, and another dropped with several small holes in his head, a second wave of biotic energy sent by Wrex and Lieutenant Callius stopped the other rachni from getting to them just after the sharp tip of one of the tentacles barely missed the specialist next to Alenko.
"Heh. Looks like we got the attention of the small ones now," Wrex exclaimed as the purple energy disbanded around him after he had caught one of the green rachni that were now leaping at them from the ceiling with his hand and subsequently crushed it. The yellowish, clear liquid that passed for their blood spilled on his hands and he dropped what was left of its body, charging his biotic powers up again. Remembering her role in the plan, it was Liara who stepped up next, stopping the other rachni that tried to jump at them by tossing back with a purple shockwave that seemed to produce enough force for most of them to die upon hitting the wall again. Additionally the wave had the nice side effect of not only forcing the other rachni back again, but also killing several of them by setting off the residual biotic energy that had still been surrounding them from the Wrex's and Callius' push.
Asari biotics really were something else, weren't they?
The mixture of biotic powers and mass accelerator fire continued right until the last rachni dropped dead, the combined fire of the entire squad leaving it an unrecognizable mess of holes, yellow blood and red carapace pieces. As a final shotgun shot left Wrex's gun, the carnage was ended with the head of the creature exploding. With the rachni dead, she could finally take in the hot lab after ejecting the red-hot heat-sink of her Valkyrie rifle and allowing a new, fresh one to slide in its place. Although painful to maintain, she was really clad that the weapon had this feature right about. It meant that human soldiers didn't have to worry about their guns overheating and not working during fights like this one.
Kicking the glowing piece of metal away from her and watching it slide over the floor, Emily looked at her surroundings through something else than the sights of her rifle. Although devastated by the fight, it was clear that someone had gone through here before them. Between the pieces of the lab that weren't covered in dead rachni she could see the bodies of several dead scientist, which much to the dismay of her stomach seemed to have been eaten by the rachni soldiers prior to their arrival. However judging by the bullet holes in the bits and pieces of the scientist she could still see and the orderly fashion in which they all seemed to lay in one line in the center of the room, it didn't take long for her to decide that Saren's troops had entered the lab, lined them up and shot them before continuing deeper into the facility. Additionally to the dead bodies, the equipment had almost entirely been destroyed by the rachni workers. With one exception. Signaling for Alenko to make some room for her, Shepard left the entrance they had made their stand in and walked to where one terminal in front of a large glass panel had been left untouched. When she was close enough to see what was behind the terminal, she realised why.
"Holy shit," the curse slipped out of her mouth before she even registered it.
"Is that-" Williams, who had followed her, began to say only to take some time to find the right word for what she was looking at, "is that their queen?"
Situated in a reinforced glass tank was a rachni much larger than the others. It had longer tentacles, a bigger, dark purple carapace and, unlike the other ones, eight eerily glowing blue eyes that shot up to them the moment the gunnery sergeant had finished her sentence.
"Yes," Wrex nodded as he joined them, staring down the creature that instantly seemed to ready its tentacles in recognition of the krogan. "That explains where the brood came from. They didn't make their own rachni. They let her hatch them."
"Well-" she began before a series of turian curses, some of which in a language her translator didn't catch, caused her to turn around.
"Spirits, he's still alive! How is he still alive?" Lieutenant Callius exclaimed as she leveled her Phaeston at one of the dead scientists that was now standing in front of her despite his left arm having been chewed off by the rachni and the bullet hole in his head. Trained special forces officer or not, that sight would terrify anyone.
"This one," the dead salarian began to speak as his eyes rolled backwards before turning completely white,"serves as our voice," registering the movement of the queen behind her, a harrowing idea began to form in the N7's head. Was this like the Thorian all over again? "We cannot sing. Not in these low spaces," the corpse went on before turning its head to them. "Your musics are colourless."
"Doctor?" she heard the turian general ask. "Did anyone ever observe that rachni could control dead bodies?"
"The rachni were never observed while trying to communicate," the asari replied.
"Because they were too busy killing everyone," Wrex added.
"We never communicated because your way is strange. Flawed. It does not colour the air," the corpse, which was now the target of not one but three Phaestons and their turian owners, explained. "When we speak, one moves all. We are the mother. We sing for those left behind, the children you thought silenced. We are rachni."
"I know what you are. And don't you worry, you won't have to sing much longer," the krogan replied a moment later, addressing the creature in the tank and not the corpse. "I'll send you to your children soon enough," as he eyed the terminal and the large red button in its center, Shepard stepped in front of him.
"What does that button do?" she asked everyone besides Wrex. After a wave of her omni-tool, the marine who then went on to stand next to her replied.
"It's a failsafe. It'll flood the tank with acid and kill the queen."
"Ending the rachni once and for all," the turian general added as he joined, the corpse now in his back.
"The song you sing betrays your anger. You may not be in harmony with those who came before but you still seek to harm us. To make our song fade away once more, " the corpse spoke under the instructions of the queen. "Why?"
"Why?" it was Wrex's turn to speak. "Is that thing serious?"
"We remember the struggle with the colourless, the destruction it sowed on us. Yet it's symphony was sung before we hatched. Just like the children of old who's music you pushed into the silence of memory, we had neither a choice nor a part in what transpired. We slipped away before the oily shadows claimed all and composed their own music through us."
Was it trying to say that the rachni had attacked the council because they had been forced? Because it definitely sounded like that.
Also, what were the oily shadows supposed to be?
Could it be-
"What does that mean?" it was Liara's turn to ask after she had joined them. "What are you trying to say?"
"You," the rachni queen said as she looked at the asari. "You sing as the one before you did," so the councilor had also been here. "Do you desire the same?"
"No I want to know what you mean-"
"What did the other one desire?" Magic called suddenly from the other end of the room.
"The gateway to the last world of those who sang to us through touch, who tried to make our children their weapons before you."
"Gateway?" he asked. "Do you mean a mass relay?" as the corpse suddenly began to wander behind them, Emily watched the specialist turn on his feet, now focused on the body. "Show me," he instructed."
"Does this one speak for you?" the queen asked, still looking at the asari archeologist. "Or does it only seek to force its music on you." As both she and the specialist nodded towards Liara, Emily hoped that she'd give the right answer.
"Where's the gateway?" she asked after a moment. When she was done, the corpse, now the target of three turian Phaestons and the other specialist's own weapon, stumbled towards a screen, the touch of its remaining hand causing it to turn on, revealing a hooded figure surrounded by several asari in a room somewhere else in Peak 15.
"This one sang to me and my children with a colour we never heard before. It knows where the gateway is." So they hadn't come here to add rachni to the reapers' army. She wasn't sure if that was a relieve or simply meant that they didn't even need the rachni because the rest was already powerful enough.
"Can you tell us as well?" Liara asked.
"You are colourless. We cannot sing to you. Join her music, then her knowledge will become your knowledge."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Emily muttered.
"I guess we'll either have to ask the councilor," Garrus began. "Or figure it out on our own."
"So the queen has nothing left to give us," Wrex continued. "Time to kill it."
"I agree. They put the acid there for a reason. I say we push the button, get the councilor and activate the neutron purge," General Arterius said as he joined the krogan. "Then we won't have to worry about the rachni ever again."
"Kill her? She's a captive," Williams pointed out. "We don't kill captives."
"She's right. The krogan went too far the last time," Liara added. "This is our chance to make amends and fix their mistake."
"Mistake? We saved your kind."
"He's right, Doctor. The krogan did what had to be done to stop the rachni. Their only mistake was missing this one."
"They committed genocide," Alenko threw in. "There's nothing right about that."
"It ended the war, didn't it?"
As the argument spiraled out of control, Shepard, who was still blocking the terminal from Wrex, noticed that the queen was now switching between looking at her and Magic who was standing halfway-across the room, still looking at the screen.
"Your music is a harmony," the corpse said while the queen moved its head. "Which song will you sing for us?"
Codex: The Rachni Wars (1 CE to 11 CE)
In 1 CE, shortly after the introduction of a unified time-keeping and financial system at the hands of the volus, an expedition of the Citadel Council in search of new colonization grounds opened a dormant mass relay connecting to the now quarantined Rachni-Sector, a previously unexplored region of space inhabited by a race of extremely aggressive, extremely numerous insectoids that despite not yet having breached the light barrier had still managed to colonize several dozen worlds, the rachni.
After initial attempts at communication were met with violence and resulted in the death of the envoy and the loss of its vessel, the Council decided to fortify their end of the relay and bide their time, a strategy that worked until late 4 CE, when a massive invasion force of rachni vessels reverse-engineered from the envoy entered Council space. Starting on the salarian world of Taedria, a colony located near the rachni home cluster Ninmah, the first of several rachni incursions claimed the lives of sixteen million colonists and military personal in little more than half a year before being beaten back by a collected armada of asari, salarian, batarian and the then most recent addition to the Citadel Council, quarian warships.
Believing themselves victorious, the Council began to rebuilt after stationing a sizable defense fleet at the mass relay linking to the Rachni-Sector, content with not launching a counter-attack into the unknown.
However even before the first aid workers reached the now desolate Taedria to start with rebuilding, a second, much larger rachni brood began its incursion into Council space, tearing through the stationed fleet and ravaging across thirty six colonies over the span of six years, killing an estimated three hundred million Council denizens before finally exhausting themselves in 11 CE on the salarian agri-world of Lamei.
Bloodied but still alive, it was the Union's armed forces, the then biggest military in the galaxy, who had faced the brunt of the attack with roughly fifty million soldiers and sailors, professional and conscripts and Union and Dalatrass forces alike, laying down their lives to stop the rachni brood a mere three relays before they would've reached the first coreworld with more than a hundred million inhabitants.
Having learnt from the last incursion and the failed believe of victory, the salarians wasted no time trying to rebuilt what had been lost. Instead of hoping for peace, STG was tasked with finding a way to not only repel but stop the third incursion probes had already confirmed to be in preparation.
With desperation increasing and the pressure of the Inner Cabinet forcing them to take action, the research division of the Special Task Group turned away from the failed attempts at biological warfare and experimental weaponry and set their eyes on the inhabitants of a world who had failed to end their civilization despite their best, nuclear attempts. A world where even the most basic forms of prey would've outfought any rachni warrior.
Tuchanka.
A/N:
Happy New Year guys!
As at least six of you have figured out, the reason why this chapter took this long to drop is because Semper Vigilo Anthologies dropped inbetween now and the last update. I suggest you check it out if you like some back story on the universe I've created. (this sounds cocky.)
So, chapter 60 is here now. Obviously ending with a cliffhanger because well, I obviously haven't done that often enough already!
Other than me playing a bit with the POVs to make these canon missions a bit more interesting (I am happy to say that noveria is the last mission that'll stick close to canon for now. Vermire will be.. way different. I already droppped the first hint on how somewhere around here, whoever finds it gets a methaphorical cookie.) this is basically just the build-up to the canon confrontation with benezia and the rachni choice.
Also, since Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 is dropping soon, I decided to give the rachni wars a bit of a tyranid spin by making them several incursions, not one prolonged conflict (that's why it's called the rachni warS, right? I'm such a genuis.)
Also, also, we got some build-up for another, non-canon confrontation that has to happen before Mass Effect 1 / Season 3 ends. Morneau and Shepard.
Also, also, also, I just want to say that I loved the new spiderman movie. This has nothing to do with the plot, I just recommend you watch it if you get the time. It was really good.
Also, also, also, also, starting in late January, I'll have three weeks of vacation. Finally. I'll try and see if I don't get the next chapter and the one after that out during that time. No promises though, I also have other stuff to do.
Other than that, I don't have much to say other than the usual stuff. Let me know what you think.
For the record we're at 525 reviews, 822 favorites and 916 follows.
See you around next time.
