Welcome! Thank you for joining me in the 3rd installment of my Mass Effect series. This one is short, leaving right off from where the last story ended. On that note, if you have not yet read "Mass Effect 1: Monsters in the Dark" or "Mass Effect 2: The Shadow War", I would suggest that you do so first. While the stories stay pretty much true to the games, there is plenty of my own filler content that you may miss. It's simply a continuity thing.
I sincerely hope you enjoy this short story, and do take care of yourself!
How to Deal With Heretics
The morning after our celebratory night out on Omega brought more pain, not in the sense of being wounded, but in the sense of being majorly hung over. I woke up next to Tali in my cabin and held my thumping head with my hands. The night off was over, and I had to begin preparations for our next few missions. However, before I started that, there was one more personal thing that I had to take care of. I wrote out a very short e-mail simply stating "mission accomplished" and sent it to Councillor Anderson, Admiral Hackett, Sophie, Wrex and Liara. I wanted them to know that we had succeeded, that we were still in the fight for when it really took off with the Reaper arrival, whenever that would be.
"Back to work already?" Tali said from the bed.
"Just for me today. Everything will be back to normal tomorrow. There's still a few things we need to take care of before…"
What came next? I had not planned on what to do once the Normandy crew had completed all of our objectives. There was no way that we could fight the Reapers by ourselves, we would have to work hard to get all the species preparing for war, to fight back in the name of survival.
"What do we still have to do?" Tali asked. I flicked over to my log which contained the details of the three missions that I was planning to undertake.
"Firstly: There's a space station on the edge of the Terminus Systems that the Geth Heretics use as their headquarters and as a staging area for attacks on organic targets. Legion told me that the Heretics have developed a weapon that will rewrite the entire Geth race into fighting for the Reapers. We need to destroy the station."
"Keelah," Tali came over and read the log.
"After that, there's this issue with a Cerberus operation called Overlord that's gone wrong," I told Tali, "Cerberus command sent me this just before we went down to Tuchanka, but it's something that could be dangerous to the entire galaxy. And finally, Cerberus also gave me some Intel regarding the Shadow Broker that they wanted me to give to Liara, as thanks for her giving them my body. We'll go to Illium and give it to her, and if she needs our help then we'll do what we can for her. It sounds weird, but I owe Liara for giving me to Cerberus, for giving me my life back."
"You're a good friend, Scott," Tali said, stroking my cheek, "I'm with you all the way."
"I thought blowing up a Geth station would get you excited," I smiled at her.
I ordered EDI to set the Normandy on a course for the Heretic station and made sure everyone knew what was going on. To my delight the squad was eager to get back into action and make the galaxy a better place. When I had them all gathered together I started,
"We all signed on to destroy the Collectors. We've now accomplished that goal, and did it well!"
Jack shouted a "hell yeah" and some of the others sounded their agreement.
"You've all completed the job you were recruited to do and now I want to move on to some other missions that I personally think are worth investigating. I won't ask any of you to go any further with me. If you feel you've had enough of my adventures to wherever the danger is greatest, then I won't force any of you to continue on."
"We offer assistance," Legion suddenly said and a few of my friends laughed.
"Yeah, what the robot said," Kasumi agreed.
"I am sworn to your service until you deem it no longer necessary, Commander," Samara said in her usual calm and collected fashion.
All the others looked at me and I knew that they all had my back,
"Good," I said, "Legion, bring up your schematics for the Heretic station… wait a minute." I suddenly noticed something different about my Geth friend, and when I looked at its chest I saw the figures "SR2" emblazoned upon it,
"Legion, what's that?"
"Specify?"
"Did someone…" I looked at Jack, "tattoo you?"
Jack directed my attention to her newest tattoo, showing "SR2" proudly on her neck,
"I wanted everyone to get one, but Legion was the only one that came so I got a welder to do it."
"And you were ok with this Legion?" I asked.
"Subject Zero Jack stated that doing so would further integrate me into the company of your organic crew," Legion said. Even Tali seemed to seem relatively pleased at this and I said,
"I… That was actually a really good idea, Jack!"
"I know," the super-biotic said with a grin.
"Back to business," I said, "Legion, bring up your schematics for the Heretic station."
The station appeared in the centre of the comm room and we all had a good long look at it. The station was approximately fifteen kilometres from top to bottom, and halfway down the hull of the construct it widened out to almost half that length.
"Normandy's stealth systems will be necessary to approach and board the station," Legion explained.
"What's the objective?" Miranda asked.
"The Heretics have developed a weapon, a virus, that if deployed will rewrite all of Legion's Geth to adopt their way of thinking, including worshipping the Reapers. If the Heretics are allowed to deploy it then the entire Geth race will side with the Reapers when they arrive, that's why this is so important. The objective is to destroy the station."
"How?" Jacob asked.
"The same way we destroyed the Collector base, find the core and set it to annihilate the entire complex. Legion, what resistance are we likely to face inside?"
"There will be millions of Heretic programs on the station. However, there will likely be no more than several hundred mobile platforms in battle-ready condition," Legion answered, "to reduce the chances of detection, only a small team should participate in this mission."
"Ok. We'll need technically minded people on this one. Me and Legion, obviously, along with Tali and Kasumi. I'd take you as well Mordin but I need to you to continue treating our wounded."
"Understood, Commander," the Salarian doctor replied dutifully.
From the bridge I watched as we approached the Heretic station while Tali and Legion stood beside me. Joker shook his head after Legion had told him to simply fly right up to the station,
"You know it's just our heat emissions that are hidden right? They could still look out a window and see us coming."
"Geth do not use windows," Legion replied in his calm, electronic voice, "they are structural weaknesses. Proceed to these coordinates to dock."
Joker started to do the robot while Legion spoke, but a scalding look from me stopped him. Tali, Legion, Kasumi and I gave our kit a final check, applied our breathing masks and when the Normandy neared a docking cradle, we propelled ourselves over the short distance through space to the door. Tali cut through using her Omni tool and I soon had the doors pried open for my team to file through.
"Never broken into a Geth base before," Kasumi said, always cheery, "this could be fun."
I landed with a thud in an empty, barren room without any kind of décor, culture or colour, it truly was a station for machines.
"If we're lucky we can reach the core and plant the charges without getting caught," I said.
"Reaching the core without being detected is possible," Legion told me, "but a station-wide alert will be issued as soon as we access the core."
"Then we reach the core and leave quickly," I said, "lead the way Legion."
"Gardner-Commander," Legion said as I began to walk towards the only door out of the room, "we have more information on the weapon developed by the Heretics."
"What is it?" I asked, walking back to the Geth.
"We have determined that the weapon is ready to use and could be deployed against the Geth at any time. We can instead use it to rewrite the Heretics to accept our truth."
"We can't do that," Tali said, "that would only make the Geth stronger!"
"But once they are returned to the Geth consensus they would no longer be a threat to organics, unless organics threaten us," Legion stated.
"You think rewriting them is the best solution Legion?" I said.
"We are conflicted. Five-hundred-ninety-one programs prefer destruction of Heretics. Five-hundred-ninety-two favour rewrite."
I looked between Legion and Tali. She obviously had a biased opinion of the Geth even at the best of times, but I knew that increasing the overall strength of the Geth behind the veil would make it nigh on impossible for the Quarians to ever retake Rannoch. I was unsure of what the best course of action to take,
"We won't decide anything yet," I said, "let's find the core first."
Together we ventured through bare corridors and headed deeper and deeper into the station. Along the way we passed Geth bodies, or "mobile platforms", standing in ranks and all linked up to server hubs. Without us having set off any security systems, the mobile platforms remained inactive and we walked cautiously by them. My trigger finger was poised and ready to press down the moment one of the metallic bodies even twitched.
"Can't they see us walking by?" Kasumi said quietly.
"They are no more aware of us than you are of cells in your blood stream," Legion told her.
"That's just… kind of creepy."
We entered a large room that extended off to the side and we found ourselves looking out of big bay windows at a massive open space that stretched up and down the station. Inside the chasm there were many Geth fighters, drop ships and frigates,
"That room is huge," I said.
"The hanger runs the entire length of the station," Legion said.
"And how come there's windows? I thought they were a structural weakness."
"Creators began the construction of this station before the end of the Morning War. Geth merely adopted the incomplete construct and finished it"
"You're welcome," Tali grumbled.
We ventured on, past more static Geth, and we came across another chamber on our other side. It was nowhere near as big as the station's hanger, but the scale of it was still enough to impress.
"Are they databanks?" Tali asked as we gazed upon the multitude of what looked like super-computers all hooked up to one another and arranged in many ranks.
"Processors," Legion answered, "each contains thousands of Heretic programs."
"There'll be millions of them then," I judged, "and every one of them an enemy to organics."
"Unless we rewrite them," Kasumi said, "right Legion?"
The Geth did not answer, and though it was hard to get a bearing on what a machine would be thinking, I got the impression that it was contemplating something. The movable plates on Legion's head were shifting rather quickly.
"Legion?" I wondered what was going through its mind.
"The Heretics have networks within our runtimes," the Geth answered, "how have we not found them?"
"You mean the Heretics have… spies? If the Heretics and the Geth are enemies then why are you surprised?" I asked.
"You do not understand," the Geth turned to me, "organics do not know each other's minds, Geth do. When the Heretics chose to leave the Geth Consensus to follow Sovereign, we did not stop them. We did not fight. They chose to leave and we allowed it. How could we have become so different?" I almost thought I heard genuine pain in Legion's voice, "what did we do wrong?"
I could not fathom what this meant to a being with no individual personality, or to a race who shared processing power, thoughts, memories and all their accumulated knowledge. The Geth were beyond me, but perhaps an organic's point of view would give Legion a new perspective.
"Sometimes when two individuals or groups spend time apart, they grow and evolve in different ways. When they get back together again, they won't always agree with each other."
Legion's headlight turned to look at me, his face plates moving and changing positions slowly,
"If this is the individuality valued by organics, we question your judgement."
"Our individuality is what makes us alive," I told my friend. "If we were all the same, our existence would be boring, lacking excitement or spontaneity. Take music, for example. If all humans listened to the same genre, then no one would ever experiment with anything new. There would be no progression, no pushing out the boundaries. As it is, Humans have hundreds and hundreds of different genres, each enjoyed by millions of people. It provokes thought, discussion, innovation and change. It moves cultures forward."
I laughed internally as Legion's head-plates shifted around in contemplation. After a few seconds of silence, I decided to return to our mission.
"Have you come to a decision about rewriting the Heretics?" I asked.
"We are still building consensus," it answered shortly.
"Right," I said, "we're not going to get to the core looking at processors. Let's keep going."
I moved ahead and Tali came up beside me,
"Scott, are you seriously considering making the Geth stronger?" she said quietly.
"I know you don't like it, but look at Legion. He's allied with us to fight against the Reapers, the Geth could be potential allies."
""It" won't see it that way," Tali argued, "it's only helping us because it serves its own purposes."
"That's not true," I told her, "all this time he, it, whatever, has been with us it's been learning about us, about organics. Legion knows that organics and the Geth can work together now, surely you've learned that as well."
"I…" Tali started, "it just doesn't feel right."
"Tali, I know there's a lot of bad blood between Quarians and the Geth, but with the threat we're facing you and your people need to put this ancient grudge behind you."
"And what about you?" Tali said, "what about Humans? The Geth butchered and slaughtered the people of Eden Prime, of Feros. Are you so quick to forget that?"
"That was the Heretic Geth," I responded, "the ones that we're going to remove either way. The Turians were once enemies of Humanity, but now we're strong allies and Garrus is one of my best friends. I spent the early years of my Alliance career fighting against Batarian pirates and slavers. I held off an army of them on Elysium after watching half of my men be wiped out. But if a Batarian offered to help us against the Reapers now I'd welcome them in a heartbeat. Sometimes you have to get over the past for the benefit of all."
Tali was silent while we walked through the eerie station, our footsteps echoing down the bare metal hallways. I could not tell if she was simply upset at the prospect of the Geth becoming stronger or if she was angry at me personally. But I was right, she needed to get past her own personal feelings and see the bigger picture. Soon we found the core, a large room with a computer terminal in the centre of it and a number of processing units around it.
"Gardner-Commander," Legion said, "we have arrived at the core."
"And when we access it, the whole station will know we're here?" I reiterated.
"Correct."
I checked around the room and looked down onto the floor below ours from the balcony. There were two stairwells from which Geth could reach our floor and there was also the door that we had entered from. Considering the number of inactive Geth platforms that we had passed on our way here, I knew we were going to be under siege from a battalion sized force in a matter of minutes.
"Is there anything you can do to slow down the Heretic reinforcements?" I asked Legion.
"Negative," my Geth friend replied, "we will need to hold our ground here until the upload has been completed."
"Great," Tali said, "because we haven't had a good fight since… oh that's right, the Collector base."
"It is necessary," Legion said, "we understand Creator-Zorah's mistrust, but we only wish…"
"To offer assistance; I know," Tali finished. Maybe she was coming around to my way of thinking after all.
Legion opened up the terminal and placed a hand on it, interfacing with the system digitally. Kasumi, Tali and I kept a watch on the floor below and the door to our rear when Legion suddenly warned us,
"Alert; Heretic programs downloading to mobile platforms. Armed response incoming."
No sooner had Legion voiced his warning than Geth troopers began to pour into the lower floor and head for the staircases. Legion left the terminal and joined the rest of us in showering bullets down on the enemy units. Phaser shots hammered into the wall which we used for cover and it began to burn through in some places.
"How long is this gonna take Legion?" I yelled as I shot a Geth three times in the chest, sending it falling back down the stairs on top of some other Heretics.
"Upload is seventeen percent complete, Gardner-Commander," Legion said, "beware, Heretics attempting to bypass door to our rear."
"We need to cover all access points," I said, "Legion, you cover the door. Tali, you're on the left-hand stairs and Kasumi on the right. I'll come to whoever's needing extra firepower."
My team went to their posts and fought their hearts out, metaphorically for Legion of course, and together we held the Heretics at the chokepoints. I pushed myself to the limit darting between my three squad-mates and taking some of the pressure off of them. I saw a Heretic make it up to Kasumi's position, but in an instant the thief disappeared from view and the Heretic stood fixating on the spot where she had just been. A second later Kasumi reappeared behind the Geth and hit it with an overload charge, frying every circuit in the Geth's body.
Another Geth made it past Tali's side, but my boot swiftly found its mark in the centre of the Geth's chest and sent it toppling over the railing to the floor below. However, where the fall may have hurt an organic enemy, the Geth Heretic simply stood back up, grabbed its phase rifle and shot back up at me. The shots fired past my head and I dropped a grenade down as I ducked away. The explosion tore apart the Geth below me and threw others at the bottom of the stairs to the floor,
"Hit them while they're down!" I ordered. Tali and I shredded the stricken Heretics with our rifles, weakening their attack on that flank.
"Legion? How's it coming?" I asked it.
"Upload is eighty-two percent complete," despite the action, Legion's voice always sounded calm and controlled. The Heretics were struggling to dislodge us from our entrenched positions, but we could never hold out like this for much longer.
"Just a bit longer," I told Tali and Kasumi, "Kasumi! Watch your back."
I swung my Mattock around and shot down a Heretic that was flanking her, but as I did so I heard the whack of bullets hitting something metal behind me. I turned and saw a Heretic drop to the floor beside me,
"That goes for you too, Scott," Tali said.
"Appreciated," I said as I left her to go and help Legion deal with the door. Two grenades and some well-placed shots dealt with the Heretic units advancing towards us after a vicious fire fight.
However, we then came under a barrage of fire when a Geth Prime arrived with some kind of phaser spitting Gatling gun in its hands. The rate of fire from this thing was unbelievable and the air around us was alive with a storm of phasic shots, hitting and burning everything around us. The prime turned its fire on Kasumi and Tali in turn and drove them from their positions into cover nearer to Legion and I. The stairs were no longer being held. The Heretics began to arrive from all three directions and take up firing positions all around us. I had Legion concentrate his fire to prevent the enemy surrounding us around all three-sixty degrees, but numbers would soon be our undoing.
"Legion! Status?"
"Upload ninety-nine percent complete… Upload complete," my Geth ally said, "it is now time to choose whether to destroy the station, or rewrite the Heretics. We entrust the decision to you."
Bullets thumped into my cover and a raised myself up to fire back quickly,
"Why am I deciding?" I shouted, dropping a Heretic with a few shots to the chest.
"You have fought Heretics more than Geth have, we lack perspective and have not reached consensus."
Legion raked a Heretic unit with his phase rifle and I shuffled over to him. I did not know what to do. Every instinct was telling me to blow the station and wipe out the majority of the Heretics and their headquarters. But what if that was a mistake? Having Legion's Geth on our side when the Reapers showed up could be a huge advantage, or at least a massive force multiplier. Adding the Heretics' numbers to the Geth army would only increase the strength of the race as a whole.
"Is there any guarantee that the Geth won't ally with the Reapers when they arrive?" I asked Legion, "will this ensure that they'll side with us?"
"No," Legion answered, "we cannot guarantee it, Gardner-Commander."
Tali took a quick look over to me and I caught her gaze. The Quarians were discussing going to war with the Geth. If I reinforced the Geth with the Heretic forces then I would be responsible for many Quarian deaths. I would not, could not, do that to the Quarians. I could not do that to Tali.
"We're destroying the base, Legion," I told him, "Everyone prepare to make a run back to the Normandy!"
"How?" Kasumi asked.
"With all the firepower you can let off while using your feet to leg it! Cover Legion at the terminal."
My Geth friend dashed fearlessly over to the terminal and quickly uploaded the overload command.
"Core overloading," Legion said, "Gardner-Commander, we have given us two-hundred-forty seconds to reach the Normandy."
"Is that it?" I said with concern.
"Running at maximum achievable speed along the route we took to the core without halting, we will reach Normandy on schedule."
"Fuck," I muttered as I prepared two grenades, "All fire focused on the doorway, we'll dodge around the prime and sprint back the way we came!"
The grenades cleared a couple of Heretics, and while I gave covering fire and distracted the prime the other three dashed for the door, killing any enemies that were just emerging from it. My shields took a battering from the incoming fire as I ran for the door and hurtled down the corridors, hallways and rooms on my way to my ship. There were some Heretics along the way, but not in substantial enough numbers to slow us down for long. It seems that, just like on the Collector base, EDI had been able to wrong-foot some of the Heretics and send them false coordinates and interfere with their data sharing which meant less fire to hamper our escape. That AI had probably saved my life more times than I could imagine by now!
I made sure to keep my friends ahead of me, firing behind me every so often to fend off our pursuers, but time was running very short and I had to keep running hard. I had the timer counting down on my Omni tool, but I really did not want to look and see how little time we had left. After a heart-pounding sprint through the station, the exit came into view and my friends surged on towards it, but a Heretic appeared from a hallway to the side and took aim for the centre of Legion's back. I smashed into it before I could stop and soon found the Heretic's hands on my throat, the pulse rifle just out of my reach.
The Heretic tried to remove my helmet, with no atmosphere whatsoever on the space station, I would be as good as dead. I tried to fight the Geth off, but punches and knees to the groin did not do anything to a machine. Then a shot rang out and the Heretic's head section blew apart and I saw Tali reaching down to give me a hand up. Together we tore along the least stretch to safety and in no time at all we had jumped safely aboard our shuttle. The craft turned and the thrusters shot us away from the station, detonation was only seconds away.
"I must have rescued you almost as many times as you've saved me," Tali joked as we looked back outside and watched the entire complex disintegrate in a glorious series of explosions, silent to us in our shuttle as it glided through space. As I watched the light show in awe I said to my girlfriend,
"We've still got plenty of dangerous places to go, I'll just have to get back in front then."
Tali laughed and sat down,
"Thanks for destroying the station, with the Admiralty Board discussing war I really did not want to make it harder on my people if it came to that."
"I know," I told her, "that thought crossed my mind as well. The Quarians would have a hard enough time without me giving their enemy more troops and another fleet of warships. Plus… there's no guarantee that the Geth wouldn't come to the same conclusion again and follow the Reapers. I hope it was the right thing to do."
"It was, Scott," Tali said, "you always make the smart choices."
"Thanks," I said, "for believing in me, Tali."