Something was going on in Zhu's Hope.
From the moment we arrived, something felt off. It wasn't just the oppressive dust in the air or the lack of wildlife. It was a quiet dullness that felt entirely fallacious. Colonists posted at checkpoints, who'd been fighting for days looked utterly exhausted but spoke with a stillness that made me entirely uneasy.
Initially brushing it off as reaction to combat, my gut told me there was something wrong in Zhu's Hope and it wasn't just the dust.
The dust. It hung over the landscape like a ragged curtain. It scratched your throat. The air tasted of sulphur, saltpetre, cordite, burning rubber and burning oil from the pipelines and wells sabotaged by the Geth. Everything was covered in dust. The water had dust in it. The pre-fabs were coloured brown from it. The colonists were covered in it. The false shrubs looked as if someone had sprinkled flour all over them. There was no rain that could wash it away, no brush that could get to the bottom of it.
Normandy had docked without incident, securing the port without resistance. When I took with me to rendezvous with the main colony, I encountered two guards just a few hundred meters from our landing, just outside our cordon. They hardly acknowledged our presence and immediately told me to "go talk to Fai Dan."
Off.
Ashley, Tali, Garrus and I found the colony with little trouble, encountering a heavily fortified checkpoint with two more guards. They did not challenge us, they didn't question us, they let us pass, again telling us to "go find Fai Dan".
Off off off.
"What the hell is going on here," Ashley whispered into the comm.
"I don't know," I replied equally quiet, careful not to disturb the eerie quiet of the environment. "But I bet Fai Dan does."
"I have no Geth readings, but this dust is causing problems for our communications. Either that or there's a local jammer nearby." Tali said.
The dust.
As we reached the colony, the eerie stillness did not subside. Despite being under siege, colonists were outdoors working. While the work was dedicated to emergency services only, they were completing the work in silent lockstep, utterly confident of their safety within the walls.
Meeting Fai Dan didn't make me feel better. He was an older man, around 60-70 years old. Stalwart in build, muscles honed from years of colonial work. His face was wrinkled and weathered from the dust, making him appear much older than he was. He was polite and cordial when we met and he thanked me for arriving, but his eyes shifted constantly, like he was surveying the ground behind and beside us. He made me nervous.
His second in command, a woman named Arcelia Martinez, actually did something to allay my anxiety when she chastised us for arriving so late to the fight.
Finally, a normal reaction, I thought.
Fai Dan invited us to his pre-fab office to speak but I opted to stay outside behind the concrete stone barriers that enclosed the colony, feeling safer out in the open. He couldn't provide us with a motive for the attack.
"They just landed and started shooting," he told me. "They pinned us down here and cut us off from the labs and are running through the lower levels, destroying our infrastructure."
"The Geth wouldn't be here just to destroy a colony of 300 people." Tali interjected.
"What's in the labs?" I asked.
Fai Dan's pupils flared. His jaw tightened. "Exo-Geni uses the labs across the skyway to examine relics found."
Garrus stepped closer. "What relics are they examining?"
A muscle in Fai Dan's jaw twitched but his eyes squinted like he was straining to think. "I honestly can't say. But if you could help us clear the Geth from the tunnels, we could get word to the labs."
My focus shifted to Garrus, whose eyes flicked between Fai Dan and I, and then to a vacant corner a few meters away, presumably gesturing for a private conference.
"What do you think?" I whispered.
He took a couple more steps away from the colonists, nudging me along. "He knows more than what he's letting on, but I don't think we're going to get much more out of him in this state."
I shifted my weight a little, peering over Garrus to see Ashley and Tali shore up the defences with Fai Dan and Martinez.
"His body is telling me he's lying," I started, "but there's something in his voice. I believe him when he says he doesn't know what's going on."
"It's your call."
A sinking feeling was beginning to take hold of me as I stood there, contemplating our options. This mission was going to be a slog and I'd underestimated the complexity of Feros from the very beginning.
"Let's get a second team here. We'll cordon the area, clear the tunnels and establish comms with the labs. Once that's done we'll go from there."
"Why pull more crew?"
"I need these colonists examined. We only need a small team in the tunnels."
Garrus sighed through his helmet. He might not have been military, but he knew as well as I did that our three days of rations and water wouldn't nearly be enough. We were going to be on Feros for a while.
"Ash!" I called, and she came jogging over. "I need a landing site for a shuttle and a suitable area for a UMS and commodity point."
"Can we make use of their own medical station?"
"Clear it with Fai Dan, but I want it scrubbed for contaminants."
Her voice was cheerful, hiding the certain frustration of having to live in full environmental protective gear. "Coming right up.," she said.
It took about an hour to get the shuttle and Mako into the colony. With Liara, Kaidan and the Mako crew on the ground, we could get to work clearing the tunnels while simultaneously interviewing the colonists.
While the crew unpacked the supplies for the mobile medical station, I made my way up the Mako's back ramp, crouching as I crammed into a bucket seat and squeezing to make room for Liara and Kaidan.
I keyed up the layout of the colony, updated with the reconnaissance my landing team had completed.
"I need you two to hold down the fort here with the Mako crew while I take the recce team into the tunnels. There's probably a jammer or a transmitter in there that's blocking comms to the colony."
"What do you want us to do with the med unit?" Kaidan asked.
I tried to scratch my chin with my forefinger, forgetting my helmet had to remain firmly in place for the foreseeable future.
"I need them examined. There's nothing on the sensors but I don't want to rule out some kind of neurotoxin in the food or water or the air. Maybe it's undetectable. I don't know."
Liara started chiming away on her omni-tool. "What's making you think there's something wrong with them?"
"I – I don't know. They're just not right. Something's not right."
Kaidan leaned back in the bucket chair, bounced his helmet off a protruding shovel handle and cursed. "We're gonna need more than a hunch to justify invasive medical tests, Commander." He shoved the Mako's loose items back into place behind the storage netting.
"This colony has been under siege for what? One day? Maybe two? They're already settled into a routine, defences are strong, patrols are regular and they're calm."
He held my eyes for a moment, formulating a follow-up question or just hoping I would continue.
"How many warzones have you visited in your lifetime, Lieutenant?" I asked.
"Not many." He said quietly.
"And you, Liara?"
She lifted her chin and closed her omni-tool, "None."
"I've been to a few and let me tell you the routine takes time. These are civilian colonists not hardened veterans, but they're behaving like a highly trained unit. They don't wait for leadership or instruction they just seem to act on instinct or necessity without argument. I've never seen people behave this way, not after only a couple of days.
"There's a food shortage, but no one is panicking, no one is hoarding. Their water lines are disrupted and they're repairing them under fire, the Geth are picking away at their defences and they're just repairing and rebuilding. Their communication network is patchy at best and they're adapting to constant changes."
"Like ants." Kaidan tested.
"Like a colony of ants, yeah." I agreed. "Collapse a tunnel, they build a new one. Take away a food source, they find a new one."
"You're suggesting that these humans are behaving like insects?" Liara asked, her voice pensive and hesitant.
"That's what I need you two to find out."
Kaidan stood, bent at the waist as he exited the Mako's small crew compartment. "Piece of cake, Commander." And I ignored the hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Liara pushed herself against the back of her seat as Kaidan passed, knocking some of the ration boxes held back by the storage webbing out of place with her helmet. She locked eyes with me through her visor and we had a moment of awkward silence.
"Any questions?" I asked curtly, not really in the mood for my reasoning to be questioned.
She flinched a little, "none." She answered, feeling her way out of the Mako back ramp.
A few hours later and the colony was beginning to look like a proper FOB. We'd established a commodity point for ammunition, food, water and medical supplies; we'd set up a medical station intent on examining colonists requiring medical attention and Dr. Chakwas had arrived on the scene; and we'd started to further build up the defences. The thing we were missing most was information about the labs and the reason the Geth had decided to attack and it seemed the colonists either didn't know or could tell us why.
With the crew in action, I took a moment to myself on the ramp of the Mako, tearing open a decontamination gel pack and my protein shake lunch. I squeezed the goo onto my feeding tube and the shake's port, and slotted the bottle into place on the side of my helmet.
I stared at my feet while I sucked the chocolate flavoured liquid through my helmet straw, and cringed when I considered that under our current Mission Oriented Protected Posture (MOPP) state, we'd have to eat, sleep and toilet in our hard suits until we could be decontaminated or ensure there were no harmful toxins in the air. When the ground darkened under a large shadow, I looked up to see Wrex standing over me.
"You should be wearing a breather." I scolded him.
"Redundant nervous systems, Shepard." He moved a very large and very heavy crate as if it were nothing, and started rummaging through its contents. "This place reminds me of Tuchanka. The dust. The smell."
"If that's the case, I can see why you don't talk about it much."
"If we'd conquered what's left of Tuchanka, Krogan would talk about it and write about it more. Or if we'd understood it. But we don't know how to capture any meaning from it. We're not capable of it. So we don't talk about it." He pulled a box of explosive plastics from the crate and stuffed them into a large duffel.
I dislodged the protein shake, squeezing some more decontamination gel in the port, closing it tight and tossing the empty bottle into a waiting trash bin.
"Do you ever miss it?"
"No."
"Liar."
He glared at me menacingly and I jumped back. He took a few intimidating steps towards me, explosives in hand.
"Careful, Shepard. I like you, but there's a line."
"Noted." I told him, raising my hands in mock surrender.
I left Wrex with the Mako and headed towards the colony's main pre-fab structure, which now housed our mobile medical suite within.
Chakwas had re-arranged some of the gurneys, aligning them along the wall for better patient access. Two colonists were seated and one lay on her back, hooked to what I assumed were breathing tubes and monitoring machines.
"Lieutenant, that patient is stable, could you grab that chem kit for me?"
I snatched the kit before Kaidan could reach it and handed it to Chakwas, who was dressed in full 'battle rattle', pistol strapped to her hip.
"Ah, you're here," she said, tearing open the kit and administering it to the young man seated in front of here. "Things are well in hand here. Preliminary tests are all negative but we won't know for sure until I can use the Normandy's lab. Give me a few hours."
I sidled up to her, peering over her shoulder to observe her collecting a blood sample from one of the colonists. "And their behaviour?" I asked quietly.
She finished drawing the blood and motioned for us to conference outside the room. When we were safely out of hearing range, she wiped her visor and leaned against the dirty, dust-covered pre-fab wall.
"It's…odd. I agree. But I have no medical explanation. I can't do anything without knowing the cause."
"So what's your medical recommendation?"
"I'll keep collecting samples, I'll test them and then I'll monitor until we can re-deploy."
"What do you need from me?"
"Leave me a small team, the shuttle at least for emergencies."
I nodded in affirmation and left her to her work. Keying up the ALCOM net, I sent a radio message to rendezvous at the Mako for briefing our next steps.
The sun was starting to set on Zhu's Hope as I jogged towards the team. Ashley stepped away from a make-shift map model she'd made from discarded ration packs, bits of rope and string and other pieces of Alliance supplies. I smiled under my helmet.
"Okay, team. Chief Williams, Garrus, Wrex, Tali – you're all with me. We're going to recce the tunnels and the tower and clear any Geth resistance. Rest of you will hang back under Lieutenant Alenko. Secure the colony and monitor civilian activity. Doctor Chakwas will direct medical operations. I want the Mako and the shuttle on fifteen minutes notice to move at all times."
"What about Normandy?" Chase asked.
"XO Pressly and Lieutenant Moreau are coordinating security there. The staging deck is prepped for decon ops for when we re-deploy." I looked around the half circle for more questions but found none. "Alright, if there's no more questions, recce team stay here with me, FOB security, you're under Lieutenant Alenko's command."
As Kaidan corralled his team closer to the shuttle for his own briefing, I drew in my four.
"We'll go in together, I don't want us splitting up unless it's absolutely necessary. We'll enter here, at the tower, move up and clear then down to the tunnels. I don't want anything cutting us off from the top."
Ash looked up from the map, "What's stopping them from moving back in once we've left?"
"Nothing, but we don't have the staff power to secure the tower."
Wrex dangled the duffle full of explosives. "What about booby traps."
"I don't want to render the tower unusable for the colonists."
"We could rig a drone to stay on guard. It wouldn't hold back Geth for long but it can send us a signal, so long as they don't jam it first." Tali suggested.
"Great. Once the tower and tunnels are clear, we'll contact the labs and go from there. Everyone needs to have max rations and water with them. Sleeping gear, extra decon packs, spare ammunition. Our resupply will be limited so be extra careful about consumption."
"You'll have to give us some tips." Ashley quipped to Tali. "We're all living the Quarian life-style right now."
"The difference being you can take your suit off when we're back on the Normandy." She retorted.
"Alright. Get some food, get your gear stowed, do what you gotta do, we step off in thirty minutes."
The team broke with a muted 'HUA', indicated that no one was particularly excited for this mission but would get on with the task regardless. I started getting butterflies in my stomach, excited knots in my belly like I felt before stepping off with Will and my spec ops team years ago. That same nervous excitement I got when stuffing my rucksack full to the brim with supplies, knowing it would be days before we'd see a shower again. I loved that feeling. I imagined it was similar to how a musician felt stepping onto stage before a huge crowd. Maybe that should have worried me sooner than it did.
I stuffed one last ammo pack into my rucksack and stood it upright. It weighed a ton. I loved that too.
"Hold still, Wrex!" My attention was drawn to Tali strapping the duffel bag full of explosives around Wrex's back with a roll of gun tape. I couldn't help but laugh.
Garrus approached and dropped his own heavy carrying contraption beside me. Instead of a pack carried on his back and held by his shoulders, Garrus' pack was designed more like a saddlebag with a hole in the center for his head to fit through, with straps wrapping around his flanks.
"Good thing I grabbed this last time we were on the Citadel." He said.
I picked it up and examined it, but its weight surprised me. "Yeah, good thing."
"Tali and I should be fine for dextro rations, but we'll need to resup after we re-deploy."
"I know," I said, grunting as I lowered his bag to the ground. It must have weighed close to 150lbs. "When we're done here, I'll talk to the QM and get you and the others a proper opportunity for kitting. We'll get some catalogues or something if we can't make it back to council space in time. I appreciate you making due for now."
"Marines make due, isn't that your saying?"
I smiled under my helmet. "It is. We'll have to get you a T-shirt or something too." I took a few steps back and made a show of examining his alien body. "Or a O-shirt? E-shirt?"
"A sticker should be fine."
"Alright, troops!" Ashley had stepped out of the prefab wearing her full compliment of weaponry and carrying weight. "RV at the tower gate. Commander, we'll meet you there."
"Aye-aye Chief!" I called back.
I almost had my rucksack around my shoulders when Liara appeared in front of me, her eyes looking worried beneath her helmet.
"Something wrong, Doctor T'Soni?"
She took a moment to look me over, probably wondering how I planned to survive with a full arsenal and three days of supplies and six days of ammunition strapped to my body.
"My mother." She said.
"You think she's here?" I asked, putting my bag down again.
"No – I don't know. A colonist mentioned seeing Asari."
"Asari work for Exo-Geni." I reminded her.
"Not here on Feros. I've checked through their entire manifest and there isn't an asari among them. Everyone here is human."
"That's kind of weird."
"It is and I am definitely exploring it. But that Asari could be my mother."
"If it is I'll make sure you're informed."
"I need to go with you." She insisted.
"Not on this run. I need you here. She's likely not in the tower or the tunnels and once we've cleared those areas we can check-in with the labs. If she's in the labs, then we'll talk."
Her hands went to her hips and she looked away, "I cannot help you here."
I thumped my hand on her shoulder, "yes you can. I need you to keep pulling on those threads and tell us what's in those labs before the colonists figure out some way to bury it. You and the team are doing important work there."
She shook her head in disappointment and I could tell she was fighting back tears.
"Liara, if we know it's her, I'll do everything I can to make sure you're there. But you have to trust me."
Her headshake turned into a subdued nod in the affirmative.
"Okay." She said.
"Okay."
She turned to leave and I bent down a final time and heaved the monstrosity onto my back.
"Okay!" I said to myself as I marched to the tower gate.
We entered the tower as the sun was starting to set and soon we were in a tactical nightmare scenario: the dark, in a built up area, in a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear (CBRN) environment, against an AI. I thought about turning back but the need to get this done quickly trumped my need for security.
Gazing up at the long flight of stairs to the tower, Ashley shook her head and sighed. "Stairs." She grimaced. "I swear there must be like some secret code. Every Prothean ruin is just stairs."
It felt a long climb, my stomach was aching, and my feet were killing me. Every other flight, I found myself pulling myself up by the banister, the pressure easing as my arms took the weight from my hurting body.
"UP!" Ashley screamed and I saw a flash of biotic power from the corner of my eye as Wrex caught something above.
BOOM
Garrus' sniper rifle echoed in the small room and shook the dust from all the walls.
"Scratch one!"
I lay down covering fire and caught two Geth in the process.
Everything went quiet. None of us moved from our positions, all kept their weapons trained on their arcs.
And then we kept climbing.
We climbed until it was dark and until I saw Ashley's hand fly up in a fist. Halting, we took a knee and waited for her to whisper into her comm..
"Last landing. Hall ahead."
"Corner drill," I whispered back. "Garrus left, Tali, right. Wrex right here." I motioned with my hands the signals for the words I just spoke.
The team took the corner like they'd done it 100 times and I took a note to thank Ashely for running the non-Alliance personnel through as many drills as she had.
"Wall." Tali whispered and she shifted to the opposite side of the doorway, orienting her gun down the hall.
Garrus stood, "Clear."
We took a few steps forward.
"Shhh!" Ashley was frozen midstep.
I could hear it. That whisper in the dark. 'No, not, never.' I'd heard it in my nightmares and the sound of it froze my feet to the floor. 'Run. Hide. Flee.'
"Husk?"
"Human?"
"Shut up!" Ashley hissed, and took two more steps forward.
A shadow appeared, dark and looming, it's arms hanging lazily at its side.
"No glow." I noticed.
"STOP!" It screamed, the voice echoing through the empty halls. We all darted behind cover.
It was definitely human, and definitely afraid.
"I…can't – can't – I CAN'T HEAR THEM!"
He started lumbering towards us, half jogging, half tripping over himself. Garrus raised his weapon and started shouting.
"Stop where you are!"
The man didn't stop. Everyone had their weapons trained on him.
"Stop where you are or I'll shoot!"
I could hear the man sobbing between his incoherent screams.
"Commander?" Ashley clicked her weapon off safe and flicked her eyes at me, waiting for a command.
"Weapons down." I ordered.
"What?"
"Weapons down, Garrus! He's unarmed."
"He's still running at us!"
Wrex stepped forward, holstering his shotgun behind him. He opened his claw and pushing forward, stilled the air in front of him. Even in the darkness, sharp lines of indigo rippled in the air, and the man running towards us froze in his tracks.
"I NEED TO HEAR THEM!" Wrex had used his biotics to place the man in stasis long enough that we could restrain and search him, but it didn't stop his screaming.
"We need to get out of this kill zone." Ashley said, her voice starting to tremble a little with building anxiety. "This guy's gonna bring the Geth down on us here."
Looking around, the only way to go was forward. I grabbed the man under one arm and Ashley instinctively grabbed the other and was started running, dragging him forward as Wrex and Garrus blazed a path ahead while Tali covered our rear, the crazed man screaming bloody murder the whole way.
"In here." Wrex huffed through the comm.
"It's blocked."
[SLAM]
Wrex bodied his way through a concrete slab jamming the door. "No it's not."
The room was small, must have been a single office in what may have once been a hospital. It was ideal for the night as it only had one entrance, a doorframe without the door. One way in and one way out; risky but easier to defend with a limited force.
As the stasis began to wear off, the man became more agitated, flailing about until we could pin him on his stomach and cuff him. He had dark complexion, a large build like he played professional football and I placed him about middle aged. Even through the night vision, I could tell his eyes were sunken and dim. I wondered how long he's been alone in the tower. Ashley pushed his head against the floor, doing her best to stifle his screaming while Wrex and Garrus guarded the entrance.
I cranked my head towards Tali, "Geth?"
"No signals."
"Hey. Hey!" Ashley shushed. "If you don't stop screaming I'm going to kill you before the Geth do."
The man started crying, which felt like an improvement.
"What's your name?" I whispered, turning him over and sitting him up against a wall.
"Eeeeeeaaaaan."
"Ian?"
"IAN."
Ashley shushed him again and his crying turned to manic giggling. Something was wrong in Zhu's Hope.
"It hurts." He told me.
"Where does it hurt?" I asked him.
"Everywhere."
"Chief, run a scan of his vitals."
She keyed up her omni-tool, illuminating the room for a moment and passed it over his body.
"Jesus," she whispered, "he's having a heart attack."
"Right now?"
"Yup."
"Shit." I tossed my rucksack back and reached to my hip for my med kit, snatching a small blister pack of pills. "Chew this." I told him, shoving them into his mouth. He spit them back at me.
"No." He said through gritted teeth, eyes bulging out of his head.
"Ian, if you don't chew it you're going to die!" I put the pill back in his mouth and he spit it right back out.
"I want to die," he whispered as his body went limp.
"No pulse." Ashley informed me as she handed me the CPR kit.
I performed manual CPR while Ashley retrieved the defibrillator. Nothing worked, and a few minutes later he was dead.
"Commander," Tali whispered, "Geth inbound."
Here we go, I thought.
The Geth came at us in waves with a mass of troopers, shock troopers, rocket troopers and snipers while we took cover behind the concrete barriers. When a moment of opportunity presented itself, a break in the massive firefight, I ordered the team to move forward up the stairs. I'd marked Ian's location for later recovery, assuming we could make it out of this fight.
As we climbed the stairs we encountered more Geth hoppers, springing between levels like spiders and monkeys combined into one nightmarish sinuous biped. We kept moving.
"Tali, where are we?" I shouted, panting heavily from the effort.
"We're almost at the top, the jammer will be close."
By the time we reached the top of the tower, my team was exhausted. We'd been fighting in the dark, climbing an unending staircase, each carrying the weight of an extra person on our backs. My legs were burning, my back was screaming, I was hungry, thirsty, tired and we were only about 12 hours into our mission.
"I see it." Tali motioned towards the end of another long hall. I was really starting to hate Prothean architecture.
"Let's kill it so we can get out of here." I ordered.
We reached the jamming station with no resistance, thankfully. As she worked her omni-tool to disable the equipment, the whole of the tower started to shake. Dust fell loose from the concrete walls and ceiling, making it difficult to see through the night vision.
"What now?" Wrex groaned.
Right on cue, Normandy began cracking through the static.
{Commander, it's Pressly, radio check radio check, over.}
{You're weak and readable Pressly}
{Pressly, roger. One Geth drop ship just departed your location. Confirm you want Normandy to engage.}
{No! Do not engage. I say again, do not engage. The crash could bring down the tower, over.}
{Normandy acknowledges.}
Ashley came running up to me as I hovered over Tali's shoulder. "We're just going to let them leave?"
"They're retreating." Tali informed her. "We got too close to their ship so they'll land somewhere else. The good news is it's empty for now, but they'll be able to build more if they have enough time."
I slapped Tali's shoulder in encouragement. "Then we better get moving. Great work, Tali. Is that jammer disabled?"
"Yes."
"Perfect. Wrex, make sure it's permanent. Garrus, give him a hand. Chief, you and I are on security. Tali, have something to eat."
As Garrus wrestled with Wrex's explosives duffle, I watched the dark hallway, waiting for an ambush that wouldn't come. I imagined what the tower might have looked like 50,000 years ago. I wondered what its purpose was. Perhaps it had been some kind of living apartments or maybe an office building. Would you step off the elevators and see people milling about, wandering a shopping center or making their way home.
Now the hall was empty, dark, and silent. It made me a little sad.
[BOOM]
"Jammer's down for good." Wrex grumbled as he took a knee beside me. Even on one knee he towered over me.
I let a deep breath out and started to rise with a grunt, the weight of my rucksack bearing down on me. Wrex grabbed my pack with one hand and helped me onto my feet.
"Alright. Back down the stairs."