"Oh, thank you, God!" Ashley's voice echoed in the open space, beams of sunlight peering through cracked and broken concrete illuminated the dust in sharp lines. I felt it warming my skin through my armour and smiled to myself, letting my body and my mind relax for a brief moment.
It had taken us nearly a full day to make it back through the tunnels towards the colony and the operation was wearing us down.
"Colony is this way, I think." Tali called, her voice echoing in the vast open space.
Zhu's Hope was essentially unchanged, apart from a missing Marine and Asari scientist. According to Fai Dan, Liara and Kaidan had left several hours prior to our arrival to fix the colony's water supply. At the time, I wasn't worried about their absence. Kaidan and Liara on their own were formidable biotics. Together, they could handle nearly any small enemy encounter that might have come their way.
So, unworried, I set about my next task; getting to the labs. Thankfully this time, we could take the Mako.
The skyway was an absolute mess. Masses of concrete, wire and fragments of fallen buildings littered the road, providing natural obstacles for which the Geth used to delay us from reaching Exo-Geni. Inside the Mako, the world felt silent around us. The hum of the engine a steady backdrop against the constant yelling of fire orders between Chase and I. My voice was present but I lost sense of time and place. The landscape flashed past; a blur of brown/grey sky punctuated by only the occasional Geth platform put in our way. I wanted to take my helmet off, pop the hatch and feel the breeze on my skin.
The sky above us began to disappear, the Mako now entering a tunnel, forcing us to switch the headlights on when the dust rendered our night sensors useless. The tunnel ended a few hundred meters later, rubbled to a dead end.
"Sir…" Tucks prompted me through the intercom.
"I see it. Crew, dismount. Tucks, Chase, stay with the boat."
Chase began switching off her gunnery controls, preparing to move into my seat. "We'll take good care of her, Sir."
The dust was thick, like a fog in our lenses, the light from our flashlights cutting only so deep into the darkness.
"I got a stairwell here." Ashley called. "I got life forms too."
The life forms turned out to be a group of refugees led by ExoGeni scientists Juliana Baynham and Ethan Jeong. When the Geth attacked the labs, they had managed to escape with a handful of survivors. Maybe fifteen of them had survived out a group of nearly 100.
Wrex loomed over the small, dark-haired woman dressed in grimy laboratory wear. "What's in those labs that makes Geth slaughter humans like this?"
Juliana brushed sweat-matted hair from her eyes, weary and frightened. "I - I don't know."
I sighed under my helmet and shouldered my rifle, exhausted and tired of questions continuously going unanswered.
"Juliana," I pleaded, "I need to know what's going on down there. I need you to help us understand why the Geth are doing this."
"We haven't found anything useful here," she exhaled, her gaze locking on a tall man with small features and a moustache, "something Exo-Geni is keen to remind us of."
"We need to recoup our expenses. It's nothing personal." He said.
"Are you in charge here?" I asked him.
"I'm the senior executive here, yes."
"So, tell me what you know, so I can kill the Geth and help you."
"You're not much further from the HQ, that's where they're staging from, I think. There are private corporate interests in there, soldier. Just get rid of the Geth and nothing else."
I heard Ashley scoff, Wrex cock his weapon, and Garrus mutter something under his breath. I clenched and unclenched my fists as I approached the thin man with the unkempt moustache.
"They don't give a shit about company secrets, Jeong!" Juliana intervened before I could respond.
"You show me some respect!" He shouted, lunging at her with a pointed finger. Garrus threw himself between them before a physical altercation could occur.
"Alright, enough!" I barked. "Garrus, take miss Baynham, I'll take Mr. Jeong here. Rest of you secure the perimeter and make sure these survivors don't start killing each other."
Questioning Jeong got me nowhere. More concerned with protecting the image of Exo-Geni, I was quickly becoming frustrated with him. I left him and the other survivors and ordered the ground squad to regroup at the Mako.
"Please tell me you got something," I begged Garrus.
"Miss Baynham has a daughter, maybe still alive in the HQ. She was left behind."
"Anything more useful than that?"
He shook his head, "No."
Ashley cleared her throat, "Some technician offered me credits for getting back his OSD. That could be a thread to pull on."
"Awful bold of him, bribing a soldier."
"Oh, I accepted it." She joked. "You don't pay me enough to march around in full MOPP gear getting shot at for three straight days."
"We've got another problem," Tali pointed out, "the skyway's blocked here."
I thought for a moment and looked towards Wrex and his giant sack of explosives. His laugh told me he knew exactly what I was thinking.
More tunnels, more clearances, more fighting through concrete and 90-degree corners. Feros' structures also complicated all aspects of military operations there. Their composition, frontages, size, and window locations affected force positioning and weapons deployment considerations in each new space. Angles, displacement, surface reflection, and antenna locations influenced communications and intelligence collection. Considerations such as snipers, rubble, interfloor movement, and the like also played a role in everything.
Constantly fighting in a built-up area was taking its toll on our bodies and minds. The threat was all around us, and we had so few forces holding ground was impossible. Whenever we left a room, it had to be considered unsafe and cleared each time we re-entered. This was becoming a common occurrence as the Geth forced us to navigate the tunnels like a hedge maze they'd designed.
The Geth don't have eyes. They see us through our heat signatures, our electromagnetic emissions, and the noise we generate. So, we had to go 'old school'. Live and work on our bellies, maximize the use of hand signals, use spray paint to mark rooms that had been cleared or trapped, contact points and runners were used for communication rather than risking radio traffic and further detection. Those days on Feros were some of the most difficult of the Geth war.
We were dismounted again, the Mako parked in the Exo-Geni HQ garage as the rest of the ground crew navigated to the R&D labs.
Ashley held up a ration pack and motioned for me to take it. I sponged some decontamination gel on the opening and onto my helmet port and drained the rest of the warm liquid.
Slowly adjusting my sitting position along a wall, I toyed with my night sight. It was dark now and my turn to take watch. Normally, I prefer to move in darkness, as night operations almost always favour the attacker. But at this point, we needed to stop and take a rest.
I glanced down at the time and tried to ignore the fact that Garrus was several minutes late returning from his scouting trip. When it hit ten minutes I started working through a search mission in my head.
*Click * A pause *Click, click*
I pressed down on the discarded spoon of a grenade and made two more distinct clicks. Tonight's password was any combination of five. With my accepted response, Garrus quietly made his way to my side and bent his head close to my ear.
"There's a cavern down that way and looking at the blue prints I think it's our best option. It looks like the Geth blasted it out."
"Maybe they got sick of tunnels too." I slurred, the exhaustion finally setting in.
"You need some sleep. Let me take watch. You're no good to anyone like this."
"Where's Wrex?" I asked, ignoring his concern.
"We split up a few hours ago. He said he smelled Varren."
I shifted once more and continued to stare into the darkness. "Give the others a couple hours of sleep, grab some yourself. Then we'll look at the blueprints."
"Right." He sat down beside me and I felt him relax as he let out a long sigh. We began our vigil in silence, staring into the darkness, listening intently.
Darkness acts as a strong stimulus to the imagination and thus burdens the nervous system. With limited visibility, my other senses were greatly heightened and I found myself continuously analyzing each and every sound to determine if it was real or imagined.
I felt myself beginning to relax, then something in the dark corridor moved.
I didn't dare breath. I just slowly switched the safety off.
When the trip flare's magnesium strip flooded the corridor with bright white light, my body moved into action without my mind. Three, four, no five Geth were rushing our defenses so quickly I barely had a chance to shout orders.
I only started screaming 'cease fire' when the biggest Varren I'd ever seen slid on the floor and rested at my feet.
"Found an alpha in the adjacent tunnel." Wrex 's voice echoed though the hall as he abandoned his cover.
"Are you alright?" I asked.
"Fine." He said casually.
"We gotta move." I sighed; frustrated I wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight.
My head ached, my eyes burned, my arms and legs were giving up. I could hear my single thin mattress back on the Normandy calling my name, cooing sweet nothings about how happy it would make me if I could just fall bodily onto it for just a moment.
I tripped on a concrete slab sticking out of the ground and stumbled onto the floor with a loud huff. Wrex grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to my feet, brushing me off and pushing me forward, keen to help me ignore the obvious. I was exhausted, and I was in danger of being ineffectual in command. I held up a hand, wishing to take a quick break and the squad took their positions while I rummaged in my pack for the last of my immuno boosters. Snapping it into my hardsuit inject port, my eyes caught a small object on the ground. I picked up the small metallic square and examined it. It looked like a small medallion, but was square with intricate designs along the edges, a hole marked it center. I placed it in my bag, thinking Liara might be interested in examining it.
"Ready, skipper?" Ashley whispered.
"Yeah." I said, already feeling the positive effects of the booster, "let's go."
We rounded another corner and were ambushed. As we raised our weapons in the direction of fire, I caught the silhouette of a human.
"Wait!" I ordered, "Hold you're fire!"
A young woman emerged from around the corner. She was dirty, her lab uniform grubby and tattered, her eyes wild and terrified. "I'm so sorry!" She cried, her voice half a sob, "I thought you were geth, or one of those varren."
"Do we look like varren?" Ashley questioned.
"Ash," I said with a sigh, "we're all on edge. I don't blame her." Turning my focus to the young woman in front of me, I could only assume we'd finally made contact with Miss Baynham's daughter. Lizbeth had survived by herself for nearly a week. Her clothing was torn and tattered, covered in dirt, grime and blood. Though a young woman, she looked older than her mother when we found her.
As we marched her back towards the Mako and towards safety, I explained our mission for the umpteenth time, and asked the same questions I'd been asking since our first arrival. To my great relief, Lizbeth could answer why the Geth had come to Zhu's Hope.
"It's the Thorian." She said, matter-of-factly. "It has to be. It's the only thing of value here."
We all looked around at each other for several seconds, wondering if 'Thorian was a common term amongst any one of us. "What is a Thorian?" Tali finally asked
"It's a – a creature. It's – I don't know how to describe it exactly."
"Try." I begged.
"We called it Species 37. We discovered it only months ago, but it's a plant-based organism that we've determined has telepathic abilities, bleeding into mind control. We've hypothesized that it hibernates for decades, maybe centuries, which is why we overlooked it initially. From our initial studies we've determined it's at least 50,000 years old, but its age is impossible to determine given its hibernation cycles."
"Why would the Geth want the Thorian?" Garrus wondered aloud.
My heart began racing, "because it might have knowledge of the Reapers. Through the Protheans."
"Reapers?"
"Nevermind," I waved off Lizbeth's inquiry and asked her to continue.
"We wanted to study it, wanted to tap into its sensory network around the colony. It releases spores into the air that allow it to control those who inhale them. By the time we realized what we were doing it was too late. It took less than a month for 80% of Zhu's Hope's inhabitants to become infected and begin performing tasks for Species 37. Though the initial conditioning is painful, the Thorian doesn't force the thralls to perform dangerous tasks or hurt themselves. We compared this behaviour to that of a craftsman who is careful not to damage his tools."
"Jesus Christ," Ash muttered. "That's what's in the air...That guy in the tunnels."
"All of the data is in the HQ," Lizbeth offered. "I have access, but the Geth are there in force."
"If this Thorian thing is sporing itself around the colony right now, the crew isn't safe." Garrus said, a pinch of anxiety in his voice.
"They're as safe as we are, for now. They have the same enviro protections we have." I reminded him. "We need to get that data first, and deal with the Geth drop ship."
"Then we can go kill the plant-monster." Tali said, patting Garrus on the shoulder.
"Wait!" Lizbeth interjected, the panic in her voice ever more apparent. "My mother, we got separated. I don't know where she is! She could be in the offices. If you're going there…"
I smiled to myself, happy for once to dispense good news. "Your mother is alive. She's with some other scientists. We'll take you there."
Lizbeth looked as if the weight of the world had been lifted off her. Her hands went straight to her mouth, then to her eyes to wipe the tears away. When her knees buckled with the heaviness of emotion, Ashley was there to grab her. I could see the smile on her face too, as she whispered to Lizbeth that it was going to be ok.
Despite all the suffering, all the shit, all the hardship we had faced up until that point, I savoured that moment as a win. It fueled me to press onward. It gave me motivation and energy to finish the task ahead.
An hour after rendezvousing with the surviving scientists, we were fighting our way through the Exo-Geni offices, basic laboratories, and engineering facilities until coming face to face with the Geth deployment hub.
I admired the Geth's ingenuity. Inside the repurposed vehicle bay, the dropship had attached a pair of claws into an existing set of bay doors.
We kept the plan simple. Overwhelm with fire while Ashley and I bounded forward from cover to cover. It was textbook fire and movement and it was working well until a Geth Prime showed up.
I remember it being incredibly loud. All BOOM and CRASH, and rifle fire. I remember Tali screaming as she lunged forward laying down covering fire, yelling at Wrex to fire his last explosives. I remember the shrapnel flying towards me, and then Ashley giving me first aid when it was all over.
I shook her off and tried to stand. There was blood in my eyes. "Did we take the ship down?"
"Your helmet, skipper. We need to get that breach sealed."
There was blood in my eyes. That meant my helmet was breached. That meant I was contaminated. That meant I could be compromised by the Thorian.
"Did we take the ship down?" I asked again, unwilling to acknowledge my own dire situation.
"No." She huffed. "Tali's downloaded most of the Exo-Geni classified data using that scientist's key card."
Without responding I headed for the door control and a few minutes later, the whole place was shaking as the dropship, overwhelmed with its own weight, detached from the facility and plummeted towards the dust choked below. Then, I focused on the data, and I had trouble believing what I was reading.
"We've got to get back to the Normandy." I said. "We've got to get back right now."