Acronyms and Terms:
IP – Initial Point
Lima Charlie – Loud and Clear
UHF – Ultra High Frequency
GP – General Purpose
HEAT – High Explosive Anti Tank
KEP – Kinetic Energy Penetrator
CHAPTER 14: THE MAW
Lieutenant Alenko stretched his arms as the search through the Artemis Tau cluster continued. Their course to the next system to chart would take them very near to a small rocky planet, about three quarters of the mass of earth's moon, with solid ground and a very shallow gravity well. A perfect place to dump the drive's charge, and Alenko issued the order. "Open up the heat sinks when we drop out of FTL."
"Yes, sir," the service chief at the heat load monitor said. Heat storage and dissipation was so critical in starship operations that it was given its own post and position. Heat was the limiting factor in most ship operations and maneuvers.
"Looking to take a vacation on that rock?" Joker asked.
"Sure. It's probably more exciting than some of the other hundreds of rocks we will be passing by."
"You'd get a pretty good tan pretty quickly, with the lack of atmosphere and all. Plus the cancer from the UV radiation, of course. Have to tan quick, with the few seconds you'd have before dying of decompression," Joker responded.
The navigator plotted a course for the moon, and the pilot disengaged the FTL drive. The drive technically didn't need to be discharged, but Alenko was playing it safe. It was better to keep the drive charge saturation as low as possible.
"Commencing deorbit burn," Joker said.
The Normandy spun around so she was "flying" stern-first as she fired her engines to drop out of planetary orbit and towards the small, rocky planet. Joker brought the frigate into a hover, and extended a seven-centimeter diameter cable twenty meters down to the planet's surface; this cable linked directly to the drive core. The cable enabled frigates to ground their drive's charge without actually touching down on the planetary surface. It took several seconds for the drive charge to ground—having all of the charge ground at contact could damage the core. Joker retracted the cable and accelerated away from the planet, engaging the FTL drive when they were clear of the tenuous atmosphere.
Alenko had the deck of the Normandy for the past seven and a half hours. Shepard was soon due to relieve him, and part of the lieutenant had wanted to ask her if he could take part of her shift, to let her get more rest. From looking at her last night, she certainly needed it.
In the past eleven hours the Normandy had now fully investigated two star systems that had suspected prothean activity in the past. None of the planets had any sentient habitation: Alliance, Council-affiliated, or otherwise, and they detected no ships in any of the systems.
The Normandy had just passed through a mass relay on their way to search their third star system on the list of over a dozen. The systems were very unremarkable, with no planets that would be considered habitable even by the loosest sense of the word. Though a few could support resource extraction, all of them would require breathing apparati at a minimum. And none had prothean ruins.
During the long, slow search Joker, Pressly, and now Alenko had written up more detailed reports of the systems; the entries in the astronomical database were surprisingly sparse. The crew was using the advanced systems and scanners suite to survey rocks. What a wonderful use of taxpayer money, the pilot thought to himself. Still, it might be handy to have those reports on file in the future. Well, if they found valuable resources, they could claim them and get a small finder's fee. At a minimum, it gave them something to do, boring as it was.
Commander Shepard slowly awoke to the blaring sound of her alarm. She first noticed she was a bit cold, as she apparently hadn't bothered with covers. She groggily slapped at the alarm to shut off the harsh noise, slowly opening an alarm to glance at the time. Well, she had at least gotten nearly seven hours of sleep – much more than the last couple nights.
She sighed as she slowly pushed herself out of the bed. She hadn't bothered to wipe her makeup off, and it had smeared both on the pillow and on her face, since the night before she had apparently decided to just crash into the bed face-first.
She only remained half-awake for another moment, as she remembered the tremendous responsibility placed upon her, and just how difficult her operational objective to stop Saren really would be. The realization woke her quickly as she felt a surge of anxiety at the thought.
Taking a trio of deep breaths, she walked to the bathroom, splashing water on her face to wash it off. She brushed her teeth, then pulled her uncooperative hair into a barely passable, loose bun. She pulled on a BDU, sighing at her still-fatigued appearance in the mirror, despite the surge of nerves at what and who she now was, and what and who she was up against. Just focus on the little things, Layla. Find Liara, find out what she knows. Baby steps, she told herself.
Finishing her morning routine, she went to the mess – she was surprised to find herself the only one there at the moment – and rummaged through the breakfast refrigerator for a pair of large prepackaged meals. She felt too lazy this morning to make anything else. She broke her routine and got caffeinated coffee, knowing she'd need the energy to truly be alert. While the logical part of her mind wanted them to quickly find a lead on Liara T'Soni, the rest of her mind wanted it to be a boring shift so she could try to get some extra sleep. Little things. Just focus on the immediate task at hand.
Shepard relieved Alenko and settled into the drudgery of an FTL trip. She had calmed down now with the known and settled routine of a long voyage, with the sole difference from usual being the much higher speed of travel for the Normandy. She looked at the timer to deceleration, thinking just how nice it would be to take a quick catnap now that her nerves had settled and fatigue slowly crept into her mind. But there would be no such chance this time; they were due to decelerate soon.
"Commander, you might want to take a look at this," the crewman at the comm console said soon after they decelerated. "We dropped out of FTL just outside the Sparta system and picked up an Alliance distress signal from somewhere in-system."
"What can you tell me about the signal?" Shepard asked.
"Standard Alliance signal, nothing special. No identification, and it isn't hooked in to the comm buoy. We're relaying it to Fifth Fleet. C band, center frequency…5870 megahertz. Probably doesn't have the strength to handshake with the buoy."
"Sparta? Never heard of it," she responded.
"I don't think anyone here has, ma'am. Five planets: four terrestrial and one jovian. The star is similar to Sol. G7 main sequence."
"Where did the signal originate from?"
"We pinpointed it to the ground on the second planet in the system. Edolus. Slightly smaller than Earth; pressure, temperature, and gravity are slightly below Earth's. Mostly nitrogen atmosphere, but there is enough oxygen to be breathable, at least for a few hours, so helmets or breathers aren't needed unless you are there for a while. Terrain primarily is silicate sand, with several rugged mountain ranges. No native life, ma'am."
"A large gas giant too close to an asteroid belt?" Shepard stated, more as an observation rather than a question.
"Correct, ma'am. It is just outside the habitable zone for humans, though temperatures on the sunward side near the equator can reach close to 280 Kelvin during the day. No water at all on the planet, and…no water vapor in the atmosphere, either," the crewman at the sensors station said, looking at the data to confirm that, yes, his surprising initial assessment was indeed correct.
Her eyes widened as she glanced between the two men, her expression showing both surprise and skepticism. "No water detected? At all?"
"None, ma'am," Sensors confirmed.
"Hmm…that's really odd," she said quietly. "With a gas giant flinging rocks around the system, there should be at least trace water detected from comet impacts..." Well, no time to dwell on such thoughts, and she didn't have the brain power to spare at the moment anyway. "Ship status?" she asked.
"Stealth system engaged, ma'am. No ships or heat trails detected, although we're about fifteen light-hours away from the planet. Weapons and fire-control are cold."
"Engage the FTL drive. Warm up fire-control, but not weapons." She paused for a moment. "No need to go to battlestations, but set Condition-3 watch," Shepard said. "Williams, Alenko, Garrus, suit up and meet me in the cargo hold. Pressly, you'll take the deck. Sorry."
"I wasn't asleep, ma'am. I'll be up in CIC in three, Commander," the XO responded.
"Joker, we don't want to be further away than one light-second when we decelerate. But we need a few minutes to get prepped."
"Understood, Commander. We'll head in at 1% power. That will put you on the ground in a little over fifteen minutes."
"Perfect. Take us in, Joker." Heading down to the cargo bay, she saw Williams and Garrus were already suited up. The commander went over to her locker and removed her armor, quickly donning it.
"Dropping out of FTL in 5…4…3…2…1..." Joker said.
"Engaging IES."
"No contacts out to three light seconds…five light seconds," the sensors crewman said.
"Planetary entry in four minutes," Joker said.
"Commander, we just linked into the buoy and got a comm ping for an audio call," the crewwoman at the communications console said after just a few seconds.
"Who is it?" Shepard asked.
"NAVSOC, ma'am."
"ETA to IP?" she asked.
"Seven minutes."
The commander shrugged her shoulders. "I'll take it in the comm room." She took the slow elevator back up, sighing as she opened up the link at the terminal.
"Sir," she said in surprise upon seeing the Alliance admiral on the other end. She certainly hadn't expected it to be a vid call, and she hoped her fatigue didn't show.
"First, I'd like to say congratulations on becoming the first human Spectre, Commander. I'm certain you'll be up to the challenge." There was a one and a half second delay due to the distance to the nearest comm buoy, despite the FTL corridor for the communications link.
"Thank you, sir." Shepard knew and respected Rear Admiral Kahoku, a senior man in NAVSOC, but of all times to contact her…
"It's about time the Alliance got one of our own in with the Spectres. We need people like you to deal with situations like this," the admiral told her.
"What's wrong, sir?" she asked, furrowing her brow.
"I just got a ping that you were out in the Artemis Tau cluster. The Sparta system, to be exact. We had a team investigating some strange activity there. They didn't report in yesterday evening."
"Sir, we're en route to Edolus in the Sparta system; we picked up an Alliance distress signal on the planet's surface."
A brief flash of concern crossed his face. "What type of distress signal?"
"It's Alliance, sir, but not Navy. Not MARSOC either. We're investigating it now; we land in about five minutes, sir."
"That could be them," the admiral responded quietly.
"I'll let you know as soon as we make contact with them, sir."
"Thank you, Commander. I'll let you get to it." The transmission went dead.
Why is an admiral asking about a recon or survey team? That's way WAY above his paygrade, Shepard thought. That'd be handled by a junior officer, unless the junior officer, and his superior officer, kept getting stonewalled…but why?
She hurried down into the loading bay and climbed into the Mako. The vehicle could sit four comfortably, but wasn't designed for turian physiology. Garrus sat with only minor discomfort at his seat. Williams sat at the driver's controls; Alenko manned the weapons. The turian watched both with interest, in between quick glances to acclimatizing himself with the Mako's systems. Shepard slid into her seat at the systems console last.
"Ghostrider, Mako, comm check."
"Mako, Ghostrider, Lima Charlie." Joker had vehemently insisted on the name "Ghostrider" as the callsign for the Normandy. She had no idea why he had been so insistent for that name, other than he said it was from some pilot movie, the name of which she didn't recognize, but it did seem to suit the stealth frigate.
Williams started up the engine and spun up the vehicle's eezo core. "Everything checks out, Commander. We're ready to drop."
"ETA to IP is three minutes," Joker's voice came over the comm.
"Who was that, Commander?" Alenko asked.
"Rear Admiral Kahoku. He wanted us to investigate a missing recon team in the Sparta system. I told him we found a distress signal and are en route."
"Why was he calling us directly? The S-3 forget who they report to?" Williams asked skeptically.
"I didn't ask, but yeah. That's not an admiral's job." But it does show great concern for the men under his command. "See if you can raise the team on comms," Shepard ordered the Normandy.
A minute passed. "No response on any of our standard or emergency frequencies. The area's covered in thick clouds, so we have no infrared or visible imagery of the surface," a corporal responded over the comm. "Low power active scans show a M29 vehicle and several shapes that appear to be the remnants of bodies. Probably human, ma'am. No movement detected."
Shepard sighed, but the fact that remnants of bodies remained made her a little uneasy. "Ghostrider, warm up GARDIAN but stay high. Weapons tight."
The two marines double checked the Mako's systems while Garrus watched closely, intently on learning the layout of the controls. "Thirty seconds to IP," Joker's voice said.
The cargo hold had been cleared of personnel minutes ago, with every item stored and secured. Williams centered the Mako onto the launcher in the middle of the loading bay. The hold doors opened to a rush of wind, briefly buffeting the Mako before the air diverted into specialized vents along the sides of the cargo hold.
"Ten seconds," Joker said.
"Hope everyone's strapped in," Williams said as she armed the vehicle launcher. The light switched from blue to green. "Here we gooooo!" she exclaimed with far too much glee for Shepard's liking, and from the tone the chief clearly had an ear to ear grin on her face. "Launching in three…two…one…"
Shepard held on to her harness and took a deep breath as the magnetic accelerator fired. The circuit closed and the capacitors discharged, shooting the Mako out of the Normandy.
The Mako was in freefall for nearly a minute before the retrorockets fired to slow the rate of descent. The element zero core lowered the mass of the vehicle; it also had the effect of producing more positive gees from the constant thrust engines. Shepard clutched at her harness the entire time; she hated vehicle drops, but at least the positive gees were better than the literal gut-wrenching experience of being in freefall.
After fifteen agonizing seconds of retrofire the Mako's rear wheels touched down and the vehicle slammed forward into the dirt. Shepard exhaled loudly; the drop and sudden jolt had made her a bit dizzy.
Shepard looked around at the terrain of Edolus, from what little she could see from her seat. They landed in a relatively flat area with a few rolling hills, but large, jagged mountains several thousand meters in prominence lurked ominously off in the distance, backlit by a setting star shrouded in thick clouds. A six meter per second wind swept across the surface, sweeping up fine red dust across the barren, lifeless terrain. Overall, Shepard knew that no travel agency worth their salt would ever bother making brochures for Edolus…unless they ran prisons. Oh, right. We can't call them 'prisons' or 'labor camps' anymore, because we can't risk offending the batarians. 'Non-voluntary suboptimal employment resorts', she thought sourly.
"Commander?" Williams asked.
"Get us to the distress beacon."
"Aye aye, skipper. It's about a click and a half away." Ashley floored the accelerator and Layla's stomach lurched backward. "Slow" was apparently not in the gunnery chief's vocabulary when driving.
A minute later the Mako leapt over a small ridge to see an Alliance vehicle about a hundred meters away. "The signal's coming from somewhere nearby," the chief said, looking at the displays at the driver's seat. "Probably on the other side."
Williams stopped the vehicle about twenty meters from the M29. It appeared to be intact and fully functional, but... "I'll check it out," Shepard said. She needed the air anyway; the drop and ride had made her nauseous.
Despite the dry, dusty, cold air, she was grateful to be out of the moving vehicle and standing on her own two feet. She once again put aside the random thought of why a planet like this would have no detectable water. Even with her excellent physical conditioning, she quickly noticed the lower oxygen content in the atmosphere, too, as she wasn't wearing her helmet. The air did have a strong bite to it; her omni tool reported an air stagnation temperature of only 268 Kelvin, in addition to a six meter per second wind. She walked cautiously towards the M29, but something didn't feel right to her as she reached the vehicle…
"Ghostrider, Shepard, get UHF scans around our position," the commander ordered.
"Aye, ma'am." Her omni-tool chirped loudly, telling her a search band had passed over her. It beeped again as the Normandy's scanners swept over the surface again. Shepard walked around to the other side of the vehicle and her jaw dropped.
"This is really strange, ma'am," the crewman said with confusion in his voice. "There's these…"
"Holes and tunnels in the ground," Shepard finished the sentence, an icy terror materializing in her stomach as her heart sank.
"Yes, ma'am," the corporal said, surprised that she had finished the sentence. "It seems…"
"Ghostrider, warm up the weapons and get to our location ASAP. Stay above the weeds and keep your speed at high s-subsonic. I'm on foot; anything n-not myself or the Mako is hostile. Weapons free," Shepard said, forcing herself to remain calm as her breathing unconsciously increased. The briefings of just what happened on Akuze flashed through her mind –
"Wilco. What the hell's going on down there?" Pressly asked. Everyone listening on the comm had noticed the sudden quaver in her voice, and the crewwoman monitoring the systems console with the ground team's lifesigns saw the CO's heartrate quickly accelerate from a slightly elevated 55 to over 100.
"It's a maw. Williams, get moving and stay moving. Now, and fast. Don't slow for anything. Alenko, GP or HEAT rounds won't h-have enough impact. Switch to KEPs. When you…" Shepard began but was cut off as the ground began to shake. She turned around to see a large cloud of dust shoot up behind her, and she ran away as fast as she could.
"What the!?" Williams screamed.
"A thresher maw! Drive! Drive!" Shepard screamed.
A long snakelike body, covered entirely in grey scales, burst out of the ground to a near-earthquake. Several claws adorned its head, which was little more than a massive mouth ringed with enormous teeth. Several bright blue tongues flapped from the mouth's opening, seeking prey to grasp and devour. A primal roar echoed across the barren landscape as the creature fully emerged from the massive dust cloud and descended towards the tiny human biotic.
Williams, Alenko, and Garrus froze in horror at –
"Mako drive! DRIVE!" Shepard screamed at them. She unleashed a massive wave of dark energy at the monstrosity before using her biotics to charge thirty meters away from the maw.
Her shouting jolted the Mako's crew back into action. Williams floored the accelerator. Alenko swiveled the Mako's main gun towards the creature and fired a kinetic energy penetrator just as the maw's head lunged towards the commander. He kept the trigger depressed for the secondary armament. The ear-splitting crack from the main gun round was followed by a primal roar from the maw, and it slithered back into the ground. Shepard staggered away after the charge, running as fast as she could.
The Mako swerved and kicked up a roostertail of dust as it turned towards the commander. "Williams, don't pick me up! You'll be a sitting duck! Keep your distance and stay moving!" Shepard shouted.
"Commander!"
"That's an order! Stay moving! No use you getting killed as well!" the commander yelled back through the comm. Several moments later the ground shook again, and the lieutenant tried to guess where it would emerge. "Alenko, get ready to shoot again!"
The head and neck of the maw burst through the ground with a blood-chilling roar. Shepard unleashed a rippling, boiling wave of dark energy towards the creature. The shotgun in her left hand fired a carnage blast at the abomination, crashing into its open mouth. Another linen-ripping tear came from the Mako's gun as the hypersonic round slammed into the creature's head. The behemoth roared in agony from the shell impact and retreated into the ground again.
"Ghostrider, Mako, we could use some help here!" Williams yelled into the comm.
"One minute out," Joker said.
"Make it faster! We may not have a minute!" Ashley shouted back.
The maw's head rose through the ground again not thirty meters from the Mako. Rather than lunging at either of its quarries, its head started bucking. "Williams, drive fast and ready the jump jets…" the commander said. The maw made a grotesque coughing sound as it shot jets of green fluid directly at the vehicle. "NOW!" The Mako's four jets fired as the stream of acid passed underneath the vehicle, impacting the ground behind it. It impacted the fine dust bubbled and boiled away into the atmosphere.
"What the hell was that!?" Williams shrieked.
"Acid! It boils away armor!" Shepard yelled back.
Alenko fired the main gun at the maw, but the Mako drove over a large rock right as he fired. The shot went wide, missing the open mouth by mere centimeters, the round leaving a visible trail of plasma as it streaked through the air at several kilometers per second. "Damn it!" he cursed. "That's some sort of—drive Williams! It's about to—SHEPARD!" he screamed in panic.
The Mako had slowed to a near stop from the bounce as the maw turned to face the helpless light vehicle. The maw prepared to launch another stream of acid at the stopped vehicle when the commander unleashed wave after wave rippling dark energy at the maw to divert its attention.
The creature recoiled back and turned to face Shepard, shooting the stream of acid at her instead. She charged to the side as the acid splattered on the ground, but a small drop of the acid splattered on her armor's armpiece; the fluid instantly began dissolving the ablative armor layer. A split second before the acid hit her armpiece, she quickly had preemptively jammed the emergency release, but in the process had tripped up after the biotic charge. The armpiece split apart at the underarm just as the acid hit and clapped to the ground.
Shepard staggered as the maw coiled back, preparing to lunge at her. She unleashed another wave of dark energy at the creature as a trio of tentacles shot forward from the mouth to ensnare her as she prepared to charge away. But the tentacles moved faster than she could charge her biotics.
The tentacles whipped around and knocked the commander off her feet as they began to wrap themselves around her limbs and torso. Layla screamed, her legs kicking instinctively in panicked motions as she performed a biotic detonation. Kaidan fired the main gun; the penetrator smashed into the beast's head. The monster snapped up and roared in agony, dropping Shepard to the dusty surface as it slithered back into the ground; she performed a desperate biotic charge to escape. She hadn't been balanced and set, and after the charge she hit the ground hard on her back. She awkwardly rolled and bounced along the ground several times before coming to a stop against a rock. The commander drew in dark energy as she got to her feet, looking frantically for where the maw would reappear.
The maw's head shot through the ground not twenty meters from her. It spun to face her as it prepared to lunge, blue blood spurting from the rim of its mouth from the last shot from the Mako. This time Shepard stood her ground for a moment, her corona glowing a dazzling blue-white, so bright that Garrus couldn't even see her, just a white humanoid form. She released a massive wave of energy from her right arm towards the maw.
The maw's tentacles became trapped in a bright blue sheen of dark energy, and it let out an unholy roar as it tried to pull its main source of grasping prey free of the powerful stasis. "Shoot it!" Shepard screamed.
Alenko fired the main gun again, and the beast howled as its head lurched upward, trying to break free. While the maw did succeed in freeing itself, it came at a cost. The maw's tongues tore free from its head as the beast writhed in agony. The Mako's main gun barked once again. This round pierced the maw's head, and was immediately followed by a massive biotic explosion from the commander. The creature let out a faint gurgle, then flopped down into the dirt.
The lieutenant kept firing the secondary armament while the turret magazine reloaded with KEPs, and Shepard performed another biotic detonation. The maw began to slither back into the ground as the commander charged away from the monstrosity.
"Is…it dead?" Williams asked.
Shepard didn't respond immediately. "I-I think s-so, but if it isn't, we c-convinced it I'm not worth eating," the commander said over the comm. "It won't be b-back, at least for a little while. G-good shooting, Alenko. Good d-driving, Williams."
The Mako drove over to the commander's position, and Alenko jumped out of the vehicle and ran to her. "Commander…are you…" he started to ask.
"I'm not hurt, but no, I'm d-definitely not okay," she said. Her eyes were still wide and she was shuddering. She ran a hand through her hair, letting it down. She plopped down on the ground, drawing her arms across her chest as she trembled.
Kaidan reached down, taking her by the upper arms and gently pulling her to her feet. He held her for several moments while her shaking slowly began to subside. "Th-thank y-you," she told him quietly.
"I'm just glad you're unhurt," he replied gently continuing to hold her.
The Normandy roared overhead, its scanners confirming the maw was dead as the Mako slowed to a stop a few meters away. Williams jumped out. "What was that acid it was shooting at us?" the chief asked, wide-eyed.
Shepard was now able to stand on her own, and the two officers disengaged. "D-digestive acid. It s-sometimes shoots it to immobilize its prey by d-dissolving whatever it hits. You want to see what it did to my armor?" Shepard asked.
"Not really," he responded quietly. The three of them walked the fifteen meters towards the commander's armpiece. She picked it up by the wrist, showing it to the lieutenant. The tiny drop of acid had completely dissolved a four-centimeter hole through to the interior carbon fabric. "My God…" he whispered. "What…what does that to humans?"
"You don't want to know. But if you do, and if you have a steel stomach…" she said, gesturing to the other side of the M29. The lieutenant walked around the immobile vehicle.
Half of the vehicle was riddled with holes; the acid had dissolved much of it away. Three marines, or rather what was left of them, lay strewn around the M29. The bodies were the mangled and partially dissolved victims of the maw. Alenko shook his head in sadness and disgust at a marine; acid had dissolved everything below his liver.
The Normandy opened her cargo hold. "Wrex, Garrus, we need some help with these bodies. They deserve a decent burial, especially after what they experienced in their last moments," Shepard said.
Garrus looked with shock and disgust at the marines' fate. The Normandy came to a stop, the surface of the loading bay less than a meter off of the ground. No words were said amongst the ground crew; Shepard was still recovering from a very close encounter with a grisly death. She went over to the distress beacon lying in the dirt. It was a small cylinder perhaps twenty centimeters long and about ten in diameter. She opened a panel on the distress beacon and disabled it, throwing it irreverently into the cargo hold. Wrex, Garrus, and Alenko loaded the remains into the cargo hold as Williams drove the Mako in. Only after the cargo doors had sealed did Shepard say, "Joker, get us out of here."
"Where to, Commander?"
"The next system," she replied simply.
Pressly had already told the crew that hadn't been on duty to hear for themselves what the ground team had encountered; voices on the ship were subdued. "Copy that, Commander. En route to the Athens system. ETA…two hours ten minutes."
Shepard sat down at one of the two armory seats in the cargo hold, taking a long, deep breath as the shakes began to resume.
"Commander…thanks for the warnings and heads-ups down there. We wouldn't have known what to do," Alenko told her quietly, sitting next to her.
"You did great, Lieutenant. Your shooting saved my life," she said quietly, not meeting his gaze.
"We were just following your orders. You were thinking on your toes; that's why we're all unhurt." And alive.
"Physically unhurt, maybe," she muttered. She paused for several moments before continuing. "Could you take apart that distress beacon and check its memory? It'd be nice to know who planted the signal and how long it was running," she asked softly.
He walked over to the beacon, and quickly got to work, periodically glancing at Shepard to watch her slowly calm down.
She stood, patting Alenko on the shoulder and thanking him once again. She slowly strode up to the comm room and set up a link to Admiral Kahoku. "Commander Shepard. Any word on my missing men?" He hid his surprise at her missing armpiece and disheveled, and still slightly wide-eyed, appearance.
"Admiral…your men were killed by a thresher maw. Somebody lured them there with an Alliance distress beacon. It ambushed us too when we were arrived."
"All of them?" he asked.
"Yes sir. I'm so sorry," she said softly.
He sighed and shook his head, his mouth a tight, frustrated frown. "Did your team take casualties, Commander?" he asked with noticeable concern after a moment.
Just me getting any sleep the next few nights… "No, sir. No casualties on our team. We are currently analyzing the distress beacon for information about when the signal was sent and who initiated broadcast. We retrieved three marines and am preserving them for their families," she said solemnly.
Kahoku nodded, appreciating the gesture. "Commander, I appreciate what you've done. Now I need to do my part. The families of those marines deserved to know why they died. Those marines were lured there. I'll send whoever lured them there to hell," the admiral growled.
"Anything you need from me, sir?" the commander asked.
"Not right now, Commander. But I'll let you know as soon as I find something out. "
"Understood, sir," Shepard said. The link went dead.
She headed back down to the cargo hold and changed out of the remains of her armor. She had a spare set, but she didn't want to mess with her armor right now. She pulled on a jumpsuit and went into her quarters, taking a long shower to wash the dirt off of her. She needed to calm down and clear her head; she started shaking again in the shower. She let the warm water wash over her for several minutes. She stepped out, not really caring that the entire bathroom mirror had been completely fogged over. After she was done cleaning up she put on a fresh jumpsuit, not bothering to do anything more with her wet, messy hair. Shepard sat down in the mess, placing her head in her hands. Fortunately, no one was there at the moment. She debated whether to head back down to the cargo bay and help Kaidan with the transmitter…
"Commander," a woman's voice said tentatively from behind her.
"Hi Ashley," Shepard replied quietly, turning to glance momentarily at the chief. "Thank you for saving my ass on Edolus."
"You're the one who told us what to do, skipper. You kept calm despite facing a maw on foot," the chief said, slight awe in her tone.
Shepard whipped her head around to look at Williams and let out a cheerless laugh. "Calm!? I was terrified! I was about a second from becoming dinner for a thresher maw."
Ashley didn't respond for several seconds. "Can I ask…just how did you know that? Have you actually fought a thresher maw before?" Williams asked.
She paused for a moment. "Until today, no. But before heading out into the Traverse, we were briefed on thresher maws and how to…try to survive them. On foot, you're essentially screwed. You have to have vehicles or ship support. GP and HEAT rounds aren't effective, only KEPs really can punch through the thick armored hide."
"Commander, we picked up a possible contact in the Athens system," a voice said over Shepard's communicator.
"Not even an honest break after Edolus," the commander muttered with a frown as she hurried up to CIC. "Good work down there, Ashley. You all saved my ass."
The sensors chief spoke up the moment she entered CIC. "Probable ship contact. Designating Sierra 1."
"Class?"
"Not sure, Commander."
"Joker, make a couple short, slow jumps to determine range."
"Got it," the pilot responded.
The jump prep and passive scanning resulted in an agonizingly long time to wait for sensor data, but the frigate soon decelerated for the final time. The sensors crewman shook his head. "It's not there anymore. No heat trails, no FTL trails, nothing. It was pretty deep in system, though. Near an asteroid belt."
"So the ship vanished several hours ago," Shepard commented.
"Yes, ma'am. High confidence that it was a ship, but it's gone now."
"Is there anything of interest in the system?"
"There is a very small colony on the second world. A large liquid water world named Proteus. Despite the heat, humidity, and storms, it is recommended for long-term colonization. The colony, population about twelve and a half thousand, is actually underwater due to the surface storms; they're investigating the possibilities of colonies below the water, safe from the worst effects of the weather."
"Contact them. See if they detected anything."
"Yes, ma'am."
"What system is next?" Shepard asked.
"Knossos, ma'am."
Knossos…for some reason the name rang a bell in Shepard's mind…why? "Is…Therum a planet in that system?" she asked as she blinked after a momentary pause.
The chief looked at the records, hiding his surprise that she knew the name. "Yes, ma'am. Second planet from the star. Population is about 34k. It's about 325 Kelvin during the day," he replied after a moment's hesitation, wondering just how his CO knew the name of an obscure planet in the ass end of nowhere in the Traverse.
"Ouch," Shepard said with a wince. That was warmer than the hottest temperature recorded on earth.
"Atmospheric pressure about 68 kilopascals. The high temperature is noted several times, likely to discourage visitors."
Hmm…while 325 Kelvin certainly isn't pleasant, why would they be so interested in discouraging visitors?
Therum…she blinked as something flashed before her eyes, leaving her ears ringing for a moment.
"Commander, the colony on Proteus reported no anomalies in the system. They also aren't expecting any ship traffic until tomorrow."
"They don't have military-grade sensor suites, though…" the commander said quietly, blinking away whatever had just happened.
"Should we patrol the system, Commander?"
She paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. Whatever had suddenly happened to her when those names were mentioned didn't return. "Yes, though it's unlikely there's a ship out there anymore. Take us in-system with the FTL drive. When we decelerate, snooze."
"Yes, ma'am."
"We'll loiter in-system for a couple hours and run some sims," she said. She didn't want to have the crew get bored, and although sims were far from exciting, it gave everyone something to do. She also wanted to keep her mind occupied.
Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, too, wanted to keep her mind occupied after the maw attack. She headed down the cargo bay, wanting to install the prototype mods into her new weapons. The chief could disassemble and reassemble a rifle in minutes, and do it nearly in her sleep, but she focused intently on each step, the process taking her mind off of the maw attack.
She sighed as she realized that the kinetic stabilizers didn't quite properly fit around the accelerator rails. Of course, the weapon manufacturers wanted you to buy their mods, she remembered sourly. She took a step back from the workbench, staring for fifteen seconds at the completely disassembled rifle, the mods, and the tools.
She heard bootsteps approach from behind her. Metallic, so someone still in armor. From the sound and interval, not human. She let out a sigh as she returned her thoughts to how the hell she was going to get this mod installed.
"Chief Williams," a turian voice said from several steps away.
"Garrus," she said, slightly warily. She hadn't really talked with him, except when in the Mako, and even then he hadn't been familiar with the vehicle. At least he had the good sense to remain silent while fighting the thresher maw.
"I wanted to thank you for saving our lives down there. Your driving was excellent."
"Thanks," she replied quietly. "It was Alenko's shooting that made the difference."
"But you dodged the acid, and when it burrowed after us." Garrus then became silent, which was just fine with her. He finally spoke up about ten seconds later, "I'm just not seeing a way to install those stabilizers."
"Yeah," she replied.
"Those stabilizers are Rosenkov, right? They should interface just above the carbon – "
"These are the Mark VIII, not the Mark VII," she replied.
"Ah," he replied, pausing again for several moments. "Not sure why a twelve percent increase in stabilization over the VII necessitated a full redesign of the interfaces. The Mark VIII won't even work with most assault rifles."
Williams let out a quick snort. "Yeah."
"Do you have Rosenkov VII stabilizers?" Garrus asked.
"No, just V."
"Hmm. Yeah, V to VIII is a pretty big jump in stabilization." Both stared in silence at the disassembled weapon for nearly a minute, both pondering how to install the mod. Wait a minute, Garrus thought. He then explained to Chief Williams his idea.
"You'll lose close to sixty percent of heat absorption by doing that," Williams warned. "The rifle will overheat too fast, and you'll go through ejectable heat sinks faster than a bad smoking habit."
"Not if you adjust the heat sinks," he replied, then explained exactly how the heat sinks could be adjusted.
Huh. She hadn't thought of that. But… "Yeah, that might work," she said after a moment's consideration.
"Give it a try?" Garrus asked.
Ten minutes later, a turian curse could be heard in the cargo hold. "Spirits, if it wasn't for the placement of the…"
"Yeah," Williams said in frustration. They had almost gotten everything to fit in place, except the ejection mechanism for the heat sinks.
"Well, you don't have to eject heat sinks, unless you are in a serious firefight. We will never have any serious firefights…right?" Garrus asked dryly.
Williams snorted amusement. "We're working for a Spectre. Our first mission had us fight a thresher maw, and we're chasing a rogue Spectre and an army of geth. God only knows what crazy shit we'll encounter next."
"True," Garrus chuckled, a rumbling, deep harmonic laugh. "In that case, better add a flamethrower, and a grenade launcher. Or two, just in case," he said quickly.
Ashley couldn't help but laugh. "Right?" She looked closely at the nearly assembled weapon. Garrus' idea had been an excellent one, and she grudgingly had to admit that the turian next to her knew his firearms. Wait, if you switch the – "I think I got it!" she exclaimed.
"What?" Garrus immediately asked, and Williams didn't notice the excitement in his own voice.
The chief told him, and sure enough, five minutes later the rifle had been fully reassembled. A smirk of satisfaction appeared on Ashley's face as she hooked it up to the diagnostics module. She watched with a bit of excitement and satisfaction as all of the diagnostics came back green.
"Well, there's only one thing left to do now," Garrus said.
Ashley nodded agreement with a small grin, and the two of them quickly began setting up the shooting range along the side of the cargo bay. They set up the absorbing pads, then placed the targets in front of the insulation. The sensors and high speed cameras took another five minutes to prepare; they could precisely track each round's trajectory and the weapon's performance. With everything ready, Williams shifted into firing stance, staring down the sights of the rifle. As expected, the rifle didn't feel any different, the weight and center of mass being identical as before modification. She took aim at the center of the target, selected three round burst, and pulled the trigger.
She heard Garrus mutter 'nice,' and she glanced to him out of the corner of her eyes. He nodded his head approvingly, and she shifted aim to the center of another target for a burst, then another, and another.
She closely looked at the targets, and to an uneducated observer, one might think some of the shots missed. But the cluster was tight. The twelve percent increase in stabilization made much more than a twelve percent increase in precision for a skilled shooter. A small grin appeared on her face, but this time, it wasn't tempered by Garrus speaking up.
"Can…can I try it out?" Garrus asked, with more than a hint of anticipation.
"Sure," she replied. Ashley handed over the rifle to Garrus. The C-Sec officer took aim at a target and pulled the trigger. He aimed and fired bursts at three more targets.
Finished, he handed the rifle back to Williams. She looked at his targets, scrutinizing his work…just as good as hers on her best day. Probably even better, she had to grudgingly admit. "That's a really good rifle," Garrus said. "I know the next mod I'm installing on mine. Though I'll have to remove one of heat sinks…" he muttered.
"I'll take this level of increased accuracy over five percent more heat storage," she replied.
"Agreed," he replied quickly.
Williams paused, having mostly been forgetting that she had been talking to and working with a turian for the last twenty minutes. "Uh, thanks for the help with installing the mod, Garrus," she said in a slightly subdued voice, glancing to the ground for a moment.
"Of course, Chief Williams. Good idea with adjusting the power on the ejection mechanism. I'll probably be asking for your help soon modding my own rifles."
"Sure," she said with a nod as the turian walked off. She froze in her own steps a moment later. Did…that just happen?
Tali'Zorah nar'Rayya took the elevator down to the cargo bay, looking around and hoping that it would be devoid of any other occupants at this time. To her relief, it was. While the Alliance crew looked to be accepting of her, she still noticed that they did place her under additional scrutiny, always keeping an eye on what she was doing. Her people also had the unfortunate reputation of being thieves, in addition to being vagrants.
She had heard about the encounter with the thresher maw, that Commander Shepard had faced one on foot and survived. She didn't think anyone could pull off that feat, but her new captain somehow had. The entire ground crew had been understandably shaken by the encounter, least of who Shepard, and apparently she had been called up to their ship's command center for a ship contact.
Tali had wanted to utilize the small ship's shooting range during the relative quiet, but she had found Officer Vakarian and Chief Williams already there, working on modding the human's assault rifle. Twenty minutes had apparently been enough for them to finish up. The quarian wanted to practice with her shotgun in peace and quiet.
The range still remained set up, so Tali wondered if the two of them would be coming back. Regardless, she would have the range to herself for a few minutes. She was very proficient with her shotgun, but she had found herself need to draw her weapon quickly. She could draw it quickly, and aim quickly, but she could not do both quickly at the same time.
Lieutenant Alenko had shown her what needed to be done to use the range, and after a minute, Tali began practicing quickly drawing her shotgun and firing at a target. She missed with the first three attempts, and only had a glancing hit on the fourth attempt, barely nicking the target. "Bosh'tet," she muttered.
She heard the sound of approaching footfalls. Slow and loud. That meant it would be –
"O-o-oh," she stammered. "H-hi Wrex."
The krogan was absolutely massive, towering over any member of the crew save Garrus, and could kill her in a hundred ways with minimal effort. She had planned to completely avoid him, but she hadn't realized that he spent most of his time in the cargo hold. The krogan approached to just a few steps away from her before stopping.
"S-sorry if I-I disturbed you," she stammered again.
Wrex silently looked back and forth between her and the targets. "What are you doing?" he finally asked.
"I-I can stop i-if it bothers you," Tali told him quickly.
The krogan didn't respond, simply regarding her with his terrifying gaze. "Show me," he growled.
"What?"
"Show me your quick draw."
"Oh. Okay," the quarian replied nervously. She saw Wrex cross his arms, his ceaseless gaze lingering. She realized that he wasn't even trying to be intimidating, he just was. She took a deep breath, then drew her shotgun in a flash, firing at a target. She missed, though her second shot grazed the target.
"No," Wrex said, then he explained what she needed to do. "Watch." He held out his massive hand, and she tentatively passed the shotgun to him. He stowed it on his back, then with lightning reflexes that almost seemed to rival a salarian's, he drew the shotgun and fired twice. Both spreads hit the target dead center. He repeated the full process twice more, each spread impacting the target. "You're doing this." He demonstrated once again, this time duplicating Tali's motions, and he missed the target. He handed the shotgun back to the timid quarian.
"Okay. I'll try," she said nervously, stowing the shotgun on her back. She took a deep breath, remembering exactly what Wrex had told and shown her. She drew her weapon, slowing her motions so she could better concentrate on –
She saw with surprise and satisfaction that most of her spread hit the target. "Good," Wrex said. "Now again."
Tali kept practicing, and before long, she reliably could hit a target with most of the spread after a quick draw. She turned towards the massive krogran that had surprisingly tutored her.
"Keep practicing, so you can repeat it next time you find yourself in a scrape with a salarian," Wrex told her.
Liara T'Soni jumped with glee as the prothean computer silently returned to life. Lights flickered up and down its cylindrical form. "Yes!" she exclaimed.
She had arrived on Therum with her gear to nearly no fanfare, which suited her just fine. A turian and a human had greeted her at the spaceport and took her to the ruins in a shuttle. She noticed the two men, especially the turian, were practically drooling over her. She immediately had engrossed herself in a datapad that Eldfell-Ashland provided, detailing every little piece of information they had on the ruins. The company didn't have much data on what they had uncovered, and they had recklessly been using demolition charges while searching for rare metals, but the wreckers had stopped immediately on uncovering the prothean structures. Unfortunately, the process had resulted in "a remote chance of possible slight degradation of the structural integrity of the ruins," in their words. Which meant that the entire complex could begin to collapse at any moment. Well, she had dealt with unstable ruins before.
Liara set up in a small pre-fab next to the entrance, dismissing the men despite their insistence to remain to help. She wanted to get started without distractions, and other people were distractions.
At first, she had quickly deduced that this prothean facility was little more than a mining station itself, extracting heavy metals from Therum's rich crust. Disappointed, she could at least try to decrypt bits of the data caches to point to the location of rare materials to give to the Eldfell-Ashland. She would get a rich reward of credits for that, probably enough to fund years or even decades of excavations on her wish list.
However, she began to suspect that while the original purpose of this facility was indeed mining, there was more to this facility than met the eye. She soon realized that this site had soon been appropriated into a small research facility, as the protheans had apparently discovered the ruins of an older civilization buried underneath. These ruins were far older, predating the protheans by about three hundred asari lifespans, but these ruins were not as old as others she had found.
Liara had silenced the comms to the main administrative center and to Eldfell-Ashland, wanting to work without perturbations. As a result, she missed the distress call stating an unknown ship had dropped out of FTL above the planet.
She methodically began to look through information on the prothean computer system. Little could be translated, and while the system had been powered off for fifty asari lifespans, the data looked to still remain mostly uncorrupted after all of this time, sitting unused since the protheans built the wonders of the galaxy. She began to make copies of everything she found for later analysis
She was so engrossed in her work that she didn't hear the makeshift elevator nearby hum to life. She did, however, hear it crash down to the floor. She frowned. She had told Eldfell-Ashland to leave her alone while she was in the ruins. If she needed help, she would call them. She sighed as she set down her tools, hurrying off to remind the corporate staff that no, she did not need their help, or their ceaseless staring at her chest. She turned a corner around an excavated boulder, and froze in place.
Instead of the expected human or possibly turian or salarian, Liara saw something that she had only seen in historical documents. She stared in complete disbelief; her mind telling her that what her eyes saw couldn't possibly be just a short distance in front of her.
The half-dozen geth troopers turned as one to face her, all six sprinting towards her position. Liara gasped, stepping back as the geth ran towards her. Why are the geth here what are they –
The asari turned and fled, her scientist's mind trying to understand just what the geth were doing on Therum, and why they were running after her. Why didn't they just try to shoot her, they –
Liara remembered the few times on digs that a small pirate band had attacked her, when her biotics had stopped their attack cold. Her biotics…yes, she could use them against the geth.
Dark energy swirled around her as she stopped, standing her ground and turning to face the geth. The first three fell under a wave of dark energy, and two more to another biotic blast. She turned to look for the sixth and final geth when she saw a blur of motion out of the corner of her eye –
Liara detonated her barrier, blasting the approaching geth back into a wall. It started to stand with lightning reflexes, but another biotic attack finished it off.
Shaking, the young asari's mind tried to process the fact that geth had entered the ruins, apparently trying to –
She saw the geth unit against the rock with what looked to be a handheld stunner, along with biotic restraints. The geth here apparently wanted to take prisoners, or hostages, or test subjects. The thought made Liara shudder, as the question repeated in her head: why? Why would the geth want to take people captive?
She thought about her options. She could try to make for the surface, running into who knows how many more geth, apparently with the intent to capture prisoners, the reasons for which she could only speculate but chilled her. She could hide deeper in the ruins, using her limited knowledge of the protheans to try to secure the facility. She could radio for help – yes, she would radio for help first.
Liara rushed to the pre-fab, bringing up the comm console. An emergency message had been received not too long ago, stating that an unidentified ship had entered orbit and was descending towards her current location. She checked her silenced omni-tool, and saw that it too had received the same message, which she hadn't noticed since she wanted to be left alone. Stupid, stupid Liara! her mind screamed at her. How many geth did the ship land? How many did they send down into the ruins? She broadcast her own distress message back to the colony, praying that it would be received and heard.
Regardless, she knew she had to hide. She grabbed a pistol – she would primarily use her biotics, but it never hurt to have a weapon – and sprinted into the ruins.