I've always had a few questions about Therum. The unstable ruins that collapse by simply triggering a mining laser (Why hadn't it collapsed the first time the laser was used? How did the miners even excavate without a collapse? How did the protheans build their structures in the first place?) The lava pits that you could walk/drive right next to (Where's the volcano or fissure for the source of all that molten ground? What about convection? Toxic gases? Bueller? Bueller?)
So the ruins are close to collapse from all the blasting that Eldfell-Ashland has done, and this part of Therum (sans lava) looks like a very craggy Mars.
CHAPTER 16: THERUM
Shepard hit the ground running with a soft thud and ran behind cover. A split second later there were two medium thuds and a heavy thud as the rest of the team touched down. The other squad members took cover immediately.
The Normandy took off and rapidly accelerated up into the sky, far away from anyone that could fire at the stealth frigate. "Make sure to keep hydrated," Shepard said to her fireteam. The planet reminded the first human Spectre of pictures from the surface of Mars. All of the ground and rocks in sight possessed a reddish rust color, as if someone had gone overboard on the planet's color filter. However, the similarities to Mars ended there, with the high temperatures and atmosphere on Therum. The terrain was fairly rough, with frequent elevation changes and boulders strewn everywhere. The current temperature neared three hundred fifteen Kelvin at the moment. The armor cooling systems of everyone's armor automatically kicked into high power, pumping more coolant through the microcapillaries that ran through the inside of the armor.
"At least it's a dry heat," Alenko said quietly. Garrus grunted agreement.
Shepard couldn't help but chuckle. "I can't tell you how many times I've heard recruits say that at 29 Stumps, and then end up in the medbay an hour or two later from heat exhaustion or dehydration." Then her expression turned serious. "You know this place will be crawling with snipers and scouts." Shepard charged a powerful dark energy barrier and ran out of cover, running towards a series of boulders perhaps twenty meters away.
The other three squad members followed close behind, with Garrus lingering back from the humans and the krogan to provide sniper support. "Sniper!" the turian yelled suddenly. Everyone dove for cover, but at the same moment he shouted, a round slammed into Shepard. Rather, it hit the dark energy protecting her, the barrier absorbing the impact damage. The commander staggered slightly from the shoulder shot as a result of the round's high power, diving into cover as her barrier strengthened to an even brighter shade of blue.
Garrus already had the trooper sighted. "Got it," he said as he fired. A round left the accelerator coils from the C-Sec officer's rifle and slammed into the geth's skull. The trooper crumpled to the ground with sparks surging from exposed wires in its head.
"Nice shot," she said.
Shepard's corona flared bright blue as she gathered dark energy for a moment, then sent a massive biotic attack towards some unseen foe that was down and slightly to the left of their position; Wrex couldn't tell the exact location of the hostiles, but he charged up to join her. Her corona flared again as she unleashed another biotic attack, this time lifting two troopers into the air, with Alenko and Garrus putting rounds into each of them.
Wrex unleashed a throw on a pair of geth troopers. Three seconds later the remains of the geth troopers dropped fifteen meters back to the ground as the commander's lift ended. The krogan caught up with Shepard as her corona flared again one last time.
The four members of the fireteam looked around for any more geth. There were none, at least not any that were intact. More than a dozen geth, including one of the three meter tall behemoths, lay scattered about, many of them resting in pieces. Rocks and boulders with masses of several hundred kilograms had been tossed around, and to Garrus it looked like an angry god had descended upon the hapless geth. Shepard didn't even seem fazed by the exertion. Her eyes expertly scanned the horizon.
"Wrex and I will go ahead and draw out any enemies. Garrus, Alenko, you pick them off, and keep an eye out for snipers," Shepard said.
Anyone working with Shepard figured out her tactics very quickly. Normal Alliance squads would consist of flexible fire support teams that would cautiously advance and expertly exploit any weakness, utilizing ship and drone support. But their drones had been hacked on Eden Prime, and the commander apparently didn't think too much of standard Alliance tactics. She did not at all seem to mind charging in where she was outnumbered ten to one—or even more—and hurl the enemy about with her biotics until they had all fled or they all were dead.
"Snipers. Two hundred thirty meters, along the ridge," the commander said. She returned to within several meters of the fireteam. "This is going to be a tough fight. Ghostrider, stand by to drop the Mako."
"Copy that. ETA one minute."
"Drop the Mako…here," she said, highlighting the location on her holographic Omni-tool.
"Aye aye, Commander."
"Ghostrider, after the drop, engage the geth."
"Aye aye, ma'am."
"I see the geth," Garrus said. Both he and Alenko had shouldered their sniper rifles. After everyone was in a good position, the two men simultaneously fired.
Two geth soldiers fell as Wrex and the commander sprinted forward. Hell, she could handle this by herself…okay, maybe not, Alenko thought as he got a far better vantage point of the battle; there were perhaps three dozen geth up ahead.
The geth opened fire, with most of their fire focusing on Shepard and Wrex. There was simply too much enemy fire to really concentrate on killing some of the synthetics. Shepard still had her dark energy barrier from the beginning of the fight; dark energy freely flowed and cracked around her body. Alenko condensed dark energy around himself to form as strong a barrier as he could. He emerged from cover as he overloaded the shields on pair of geth before returning to his sniper rifle. The two synthetics crumpled under the tech assault, but nearly a dozen geth opened fire on him. Nearly a dozen rounds impacted his barrier as he withdrew into cover. He strengthened his barrier as rounds chipped away at the boulder he was hiding behind.
Kaidan aimed his rifle once again as the commander charged her biotics, and he put a headshot into a geth trooper a moment later. Searching for another target, he saw Shepard unleash a ferocious shockwave the geth, a wave of swirling vortices several meters wide. Geth flew in every direction: into the ground, into the air, or into each other. The wave sent boulders that easily weighed a few thousand newtons in every direction as well. An unlucky geth trooper was crushed as boulders rolled on top of it, and perhaps four more fell under the wave of dark energy.
He concentrated on the dark energy surrounding him, and hurled a three meter tall geth destroyer into a rock. The blast caught the behemoth and a shock trooper, tossing the helpless pair of geth into the air. The geth troopers crashed into a rock hard, sending sparks and shards of metal in every direction. He returned to cover immediately after as he drew fire from a dozen geth.
"Clear to drop," Shepard stated calmly into the comm.
The Normandy roared overhead about two hundred meters above them at near supersonic speeds. The loading bay opened and the Mako dropped free, automatically firing its thrusters to slow and control its descent. Shepard stood out of cover and in the open, surrounded with an almost blinding barrier as she fired her pistol, in an attempt to draw fire away from the descending Mako, but the Mako had very powerful shields, and was far enough away from the geth that shooting at it was dicey. She did manage to drop one geth with skilled pistol fire. Though she took fire from close to twenty geth troopers, she had helped to draw shots away from the descending vehicle. She dropped back into cover, her barrier seriously depleted.
"Ghostrider, weapons tight. You're cleared hot," she said as the ship began to turn back. She continued to recharge her barrier for several moments.
The moment the Mako rolled to a stop it fired its mass accelerator cannon, blowing apart a pair of geth. By this time the Normandy had circled around again, and used her GARDIAN lasers against the synthetics.
This was yet another thing the Normandy should be good at, Shepard reflected. The frigate could fire her lasers at several power settings, and tune the laser frequency to reduce thermal blooming in atmospheres. The Alliance warship opened fire on geth at the rear of the formation. One of the geth destroyers had a hole punched through its chest, and was finished off by another shot that nearly cut its torso in two. The stealth frigate fired again at a trooper, the barely visible beam hitting the geth in the neck, decapitating it.
Wrex charged into a pair of geth, sending them flying back into a boulder where they crashed limply against the side. He laughed as he ran to a trooper three meters away and grasped its arms, ripping the limbs clean off before shoving it to the ground and stomping on its head. He charged a geth sniper on a flank of the formation, the force of the impact launching it into a nearby boulder.
Garrus lined up and dropped geth troopers one after the other. He drew a quick bead on a rocket trooper as it prepared to fire, shooting its head in a snap shot while the rocket exploded harmlessly on the ground.
The Normandy made another near-supersonic pass at low altitude, roaring over the battle area and dropping another geth trooper. Pressly and Joker were keeping the ship low and fast, which was just fine with Shepard. At their speed and altitude, it would be near impossible to get a shot off with a weapon capable of tracking and turning in to engage them.
By this point, there were only about a dozen geth remaining. They soon fled back to a stronger position near the ruins and the craggy ground surrounding them, out of view of the Mako. The geth took cover out of sight of the overhead ship, waiting for the organics to come closer.
Alenko saw a blinding blue-white light shine behind a boulder, then an enormous singularity appeared in the center of the geth formation. All but three of the troopers got pulled into the swirling, contracting vortex that also had picked up a few boulders. The lieutenant threw one of the remaining three geth into a rock wall, and finished it off with a rifle shot. Garrus pulled his sniper trigger twice in rapid succession, dropping another unaffected geth.
The maelstrom swirled and contracted, with boulders and geth crashing into each other. Garrus saw the singularity collapse, then detonate in a blinding flash and boom, sending parts of geth – and parts of boulders, he saw – in every direction. The sound from the explosion echoed through the narrow valley.
One last geth remained, which looked at Shepard and froze, unmoving. Its programming apparently didn't know how to respond. Wrex ended its "uncertainty" with a headshot from his rifle.
Shepard said into the comm, "Chief, I doubt you'll be able to get the Mako through that rock garden up ahead. See if you can get up to that ridge that overlooks the valley to the north and give us fire support. I think the valley is too deep and narrow for Ghostrider to provide effective fire support," the commander said.
"Aye, skipper," Williams said.
"This is the only entrance to the ruins from this area, so you know it will be crawling with geth. Stay low and in cover, and let the Mako do the heavy lifting."
The three nodded in acknowledgment. They passed through a narrow entrance to the valley that was surrounded by rocks. Sure enough, she saw the geth had holed up in defensive positions behind the large number of boulders.
Shepard took several moments to draw in dark energy into a singularity, drawing all geth within a seven meter radius into a swirling vortex. After another moment boulders slowly lifted off the ground, as they were drawn into the singularity and slammed into each other and the geth. Two of the geth were slowly crushed between some of the massive boulders, the grinding impacts shearing them to pieces. Only four geth were not caught in the deadly vortex, and one of them fell in the subsequent detonation.
Alenko used his Omni-tool to blow apart a geth's power core, and it collapsed to the ground in a shower of sparks. Garrus shot one with his assault rifle, and after a steady stream of fire it fell. Wrex used a biotic throw on the last trooper.
"Mako, are you in position?" Shepard asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Cover us when we enter the valley to our northeast." She turned to her squad. "This is going to be tough. Stay in cover. Garrus, stay back and provide sniper support. Wrex, Alenko, keep your barriers up at all times. Presume they have several rocket troopers, so jump from cover to cover after every few shots. Use your grenades and Omni-tools liberally. Are you ready?"
All of them nodded.
"Okay." She took deep breath, putting up a dark energy barrier around herself, while Wrex and Kaidan did the same with themselves. The three biotics sprinted into cover in the valley and immediately came under fire.
A boom announced the firing of the Mako's main mass accelerator and a pair of geth blew apart from the high explosive anti-personnel round. Scarcely had the tank shot when several rockets streaked toward the Mako. The jump jets on the six wheeled vehicle fired, and the rockets streaked harmlessly underneath it.
"Mako, back up! There are too many rockets!" Shepard exclaimed. "Try to hit their left flank!" The Mako's tires spun as it landed, sending the vehicle into a rapid reverse and away from the ridgeline, Williams effortlessly dodging boulders as the IFV began to maneuver towards the geth's flank.
Garrus leaned with his back against a rock, quickly spinning out of cover and aiming his sniper rifle at a geth sniper. It was nothing more than a potshot, but he could not afford to stay out of cover for more than a couple seconds. He fired, hitting the sniper in the arm. The round did not kill the geth, but the fall probably did. The round had enough force to knock the unsuspecting and unbalanced sniper off balance and backwards off the tower it was standing in; the sniper flailed its limbs as it fell to the ground fifty meters below. That works, Garrus thought to himself, wondering for a moment how the geth unit got up there to begin with. He dove into cover behind a nearby boulder, then took aim at another geth and dropped a second geth sniper.
"Ghostrider, start another attack run," Shepard said.
"Got it, Commander. We won't be able to hit many of the geth in this valley," Pressly cautioned.
"You don't need to. Just give them something else to worry about." She unleashed a wave of dark energy; she didn't hit any geth, but it sent a few of them jumping for cover. The rocket troopers had reloaded, and three opened fire on the squad. She gripped her left hand tightly and a dark energy barrier appeared about ten meters in front of her. The rockets detonated harmlessly on the backlash, but she still staggered from the feedback, and quickly dropped back down into cover, seemingly a bit dazed as she stayed hiding behind the rock as she charged her barrier.
Several seconds later the Normandy slowly passed overhead, firing bursts of GARDIAN lasers at the geth. Because of the odd dimensions of the valley, only a single geth was damaged, but the barrage bought the squad a few moments' rest and the change to move to better cover.
"Hit them hard!" Shepard yelled.
Another biotic attack from Shepard swept up a pair of geth and slammed them into boulders. Alenko did the same, hurling a pair of rocket troopers over a ledge. Wrex fired a carnage blast; the geth dodged the shot, but the subsequent explosion blew the troopers to the ground. He threw a grenade at the geth, finishing it off. Alenko lobbed a pair of overload grenades at a trio of geth; two collapsed to the ground in a shower of sparks. Wrex sent a rippling wave of energy towards the enemy formations; a pair of geth were swept off their feet and hurled into boulders. He charged into a pair of geth, grabbing one with each of his arms. He smashed the unfortunate troopers together three times before hurling both to the ground and charging into a third trooper.
The geth began to retreat, slowly trying to fall back. Wrex's dark energy barrier crackled as he pulled out his shotgun. The first blast knocked a geth trooper off its feet, where a boot to the head finished it off. He fired twice more at a range of less than five meters, blowing the chest of a second trooper into metal shards.
The krogan looked around as the sounds of battle faded. No more geth stood in the valley. Garrus approached the squad from his sniper perch. It was only now that Shepard actually started to look slightly fatigued to a trained eye. The commander used her abilities nearly non-stop; the turian noticed that some of the time she didn't use a firearm, not even a pistol.
The commander stopped and used an energy injection, but Wrex marveled how she was still conscious…the krogan was surprised at the petite woman's endurance. The asari he had fought with or against would be much more fatigued than this human girl, especially after the biotic output with those massive singularities and the detonations. He suppressed a chuckle as he remembered his goading from a few days ago, when he had told her she looked soft and weak…
Shepard let out a long sigh. "Ghostrider, do you detect any geth between here and the ruins?"
"No, Commander. Not a thing."
Shepard sighed, turning to the fireteam. "I trust the crew, but who knows if the geth can hide their signatures from our sensors," she said quietly. "There could be a unit or two between us and the ruins. Everyone rest up a minute before we move up the ridge," Shepard said, wiping her forehead. No one in the squad said a word as they took drinks and leaned against boulders, staying in the shade. "These crevasses and ruins narrow even further," Shepard said. "If I was them, I'd set an ambush there," she gestured. "Wrex, you and I will go ahead to trigger the ambush, then fall back."
"You can charge backwards. Krogan never fall back," came the gruff response.
She chuckled at him. "It's different for you; you're big. Me? Well…I'm more than just the antonym of big." She had them take another twenty seconds to cool off. "Let's get moving. Stay low."
Shepard took point as the squad ran around and up a twenty meter ridge. To her surprise, no ambush manifested as they spent five minutes cautiously moving towards the ruins. She filed her thoughts on odd geth behavior away as the fireteam came to the entrance to mining ruins.
The commander crept forward as her barrier flared. That was the biggest problem with barriers, she knew. While her barrier had probably saved her life a thousand times, it made noise. Noise prohibited a stealthy approach, but she preferred the protection to stealth, in this case. Wrex followed a moment later, jumping out of cover, rifle sweeping left and right for targets.
Nothing. She relaxed slightly, glancing behind her to the rest of the fireteam. "Well, it looks like there's no ge – "
Suddenly large storage crates blew apart in clouds of shrapnel, and a loud boom echoing through the valley. Shepard dove into cover as fragments passed right next to her arm and into the rock behind her.
"You had to say something, Commander!" Garrus shouted as he aimed his rifle.
Shepard glanced from behind the rock to see a geth…thingy, was the first and rather undescriptive thing that came to her mind. The new geth unit unfolded and stood to its full height.
Her barrier crackled as she shouted into the comm. "Ghostrider, get to our position and open fire on the large geth…thing," she finished. "Weapons tight."
The five meter tall, four legged armature unfurled and pointed a rather large cannon at Shepard's cover, anc she charged to hide behind a different boulder. Tali hadn't briefed the team on whatever this geth unit was…
"Uhh, copy that, Commander," Joker replied. "Could you be a bit more specific on this 'thing'?"
She paused for a moment while she threw a trooper into a boulder. "It's big, it has four legs, and it's shooting at us!"
Close to ten geth troopers came out of hiding, including two of those hoppers that Tali had described. The spiderlike hoppers began jumping around from surface to surface, projecting beam weapons and firing mass accelerators from their necks and heads.
The armature fired on the rock Shepard had been using for cover, blowing a good chunk of it away. She ran to cover behind another rock; in the process she was hit with an overload from one of the hoppers and a sabotage from the other, overloading the heat sinks on her weapons and draining her armor's shields. Her armor's computer beeped and whined in protest. But she still had her main source of offense and defense: her biotics. Better that they hit me than someone like Garrus, or Kaidan, her mind thought.
She responded by lifting one of the hoppers into the air. The Normandy had responded that they would be there in thirty seconds. Wrex opened fire on the lightly armored hopper, and a couple seconds of sustained fire shredded the geth. Shepard charged behind a crate; the armature destroyed the boulder she was hiding behind a second later.
Garrus and Kaidan stayed back, trying to drop the support troops as fast as possible so they could then all focus on the walking tank that the geth apparently now possessed. Garrus threw an overload grenade at a geth trooper, blowing it apart. Alenko hurled a pair of troopers nearly fifteen meters; they crashed to the earth in a shower of sparks. Wrex unleashed an enormous wave of dark energy at the tank, but between the legs anchoring it to the ground and the stability system keeping it upright, the tank simply staggered backwards.
The armature then fired at Wrex, forcing him to hide behind a different boulder. His previous cover exploded, undergoing rapid disassembly from one very large rock to a countless number of much smaller rocks in spectacular fashion.
A stream of rifle fire from Garrus dropped the second hopper. The armature fired at Shepard again, blowing apart the crate she was hiding behind before she could get clear. The concussive blast sent her airborne for nearly ten meters, and she rolled to a stop after a couple more meters of rolling and sliding along the ground. Dazed, she tried to scramble to her feet as the armature took aim on her again. Before anything else happened, Wrex charged the tank with a loud, laughing yell.
He fired his shotgun at the nearest leg with one hand as he unleashed an enormous nova at the base of the tank, staggering the tank a half a meter backwards before it could try to kick him away. He fired again, then charged away from the armature as Alenko and Garrus took a break from a steady stream of rifle fire to overload its shields, further weakening them.
Shepard had staggered behind cover, and charged her biotics while the krogan did his close quarters dance. She dropped a dense singularity on top of the armature and yelled, "Detonate in three…two…one…now!"
All three biotics unleashed as much power as they could muster at the tank, and Garrus threw a pair of grenades, one from each hand a split second apart, into the vortex for good measure. The enormous biotic explosion shattered all the windows in the ruins and knocked a pair of doors off of their hinges as debris flew in every direction. The tank staggered for a moment, a few mechanisms and wires holding its two left legs to its torso, then the armature toppled to its side as the two damaged legs collapsed.
Shepard breathed deeply to catch her breath for a moment, then charged her biotics once again as she slowly lifted a large boulder off of the ground. The massive rock slowly floated towards the disabled tank. The other two biotics joined her in the effort, and after several moments they had positioned it right above the armature.
The three biotics then let the boulder drop the three meters to the ground, whereupon the massive rock crushed the geth's "head". The tank's two remaining attached legs twitched as it let out a final, chilling, oddly humanoid screech, then the armature fell silent and motionless.
Shepard let out another deep breath, allowing herself to relax as she approached the remains of the walking tank. "Thank you, Wrex," she told him, reaching up to pat him on the shoulder. "I owe you one. Next time I'll try to find you a better dance partner."
The krogan let out a quick, barking laugh. "Ha! I want a bigger one next time."
"If Doctor T'Soni's here, she's probably in these ruins. Hopefully the geth haven't gotten too many units inside," Shepard said.
The Normandy roared overhead. "And here you called us all the way down here to blow something up," Joker sighed over the comm.
"And you said there were no geth signatures outside the ruins," Shepard responded, bringing up her omni-tool. "Transmitting all the data from my armor sensors. Take a look to see what our software and hardware missed with those signals."
"Got it, Commander," the sensors NCO replied.
"We might drop out of contact for a bit when we enter these ruins. Stay close in case we need extraction."
"Aye aye, Commander."
The fireteam entered the ruins to find, what was for them, only token resistance: a pair of troopers, a sniper, and three assault drones. Shepard was pleased that whatever prothean tech was in this cavern didn't interfere with their comms, like the prothean ruins or the beacon had on Eden Prime. The fireteam found several geth troopers that had already been destroyed by biotics.
"Huh," Wrex muttered. "That little asari must know what she's about."
The fireteam took two elevators that took them deeper into the ruins. The second elevator, however, stalled a little more than a meter above the ground when the front of the platform got stuck. "Stand back," Shepard said as she charged her biotics.
Wrex instead walked over to the door, having decided to resolve the issue in the old-fashioned way: with a hard krogan kick. His boot dented the door and forced it off of its rails. Another kick knocked the door clear of the elevator.
"Or that. That works too," Shepard said with a shrug and grin. The krogan jumped the meter to the ground, followed by Garrus.
Commander Shepard watched Lieutenant Alenko walk up the tilted elevator floor, and briefly look down before jumping to the surface below. That wasn't what caught her eyes, however. What caught her eyes was the fact that due to the tilt upward on the broken elevator, she had ended up staring directly at Kaidan's rear from just over a meter away and almost at eye level for a moment before he jumped. Even though he wore armor, she couldn't help but wonder what the rear in question looked like without –
Due to the distraction, she hadn't been paying attention to her own footing. Just as she jumped down the meter to the ground below, her boots slipped on a patch of dirt at the edge of the elevator that she hadn't noticed. Her legs slipped out from under her as she jumped, and she ended up falling flat on her own rear when she hit the ground. "OW!" she yelped in a very un-Spectre-like voice, much to everyone else's amusement.
"You hurt, Commander?" Alenko asked with an amused snort, reaching down and pulling her to her feet. Garrus looked equally amused, while Wrex was laughing loudly and heartily.
"Only my pride," she responded with an embarrassed grin and a shake of her head. "Okay, it was funny for a few seconds. Now stop laughing and let's get moving," she said, studiously averting her gaze from Lieutenant Alenko, her face flushing for two reasons.
The fireteam had barely moved forward only thirty meters when they heard a voice, and all four instinctively jumped behind the nearest pieces of cover. "Hello? Hello!?"
After a brief moment, the fireteam stood up as one, all four members slightly embarrassed over hiding at the sound of such a voice. It was definitely that of a "young" asari, and from the tone she was yelling in obvious panic.
"Could s-somebody help me? Please!" the voice shouted.
Shepard walked around a corner to see an orange energy barrier between her and an asari. On the other side of the barrier, an orange sphere of energy suspended an asari about a meter above the ground. Energy swirled around her wrists and ankles in the field.
"Can you hear m-me out there?" the asari pleaded, pulling helplessly against the restraints.
"Are you Dr. T'Soni? What happened to you?" Shepard asked.
The asari nodded. "Yes I'm Liara T'Soni. I-I was exploring the ruins when the geth showed up, so I fought through them and tried to hide in here. I knew the barrier curtains would keep them out. When I turned it on, I must have hit something I wasn't supposed to. You have to get me out!" the asari begged.
"You're not working with the geth?" Shepard asked. She already thought she knew the answer, but she wanted to make sure.
Despite her predicament, the asari actually looked indignant, even angry as she momentarily tugged at the restraints. "Why would I ever work with the geth? I was trying to hide from the geth! That's how I ended up trapped!"
The commander held up her hands slightly in defense. "Okay, sorry, had to ask. Geth are crawling over these ruins."
Wrex snorted. "A couple of those little shits were literally crawling," he muttered.
"Do you know how to deactivate that…bubble…thing…you're caught in?" Shepard asked.
"Yes, there's a control in here," Liara answered. "You'll have to get past the barrier curtain. That's what the geth are trying to do."
"We dealt with the geth," Shepard replied, starting to look around for some way around.
"There's more geth, and there's several krogan giving the orders," Liara told them.
The commander's head whipped around with narrowed eyes as she regarded at the trapped asari. "Krogan? Working with the geth?" she asked after a moment.
"Yes. I've seen several of them," Liara replied.
Shepard looked to Wrex, who shrugged and muttered something that the commander had high confidence was a krogan curse, presumably describing what he thought of the limited intelligence of those particular krogan.
Liara's voice cracked slightly. "The geth and the krogan, they…they apparently want me alive."
"They want information from you," Shepard replied. "Long story. We'll get you out of there." She once again glanced around the subterranean room, looking for a way into the prothean ruins as the rest of the fireteam split up to look for equipment or a door that would allow them entry.
"Very scientific, Commander," Alenko muttered from a couple meters away from the commander, with an amused expression. "A geth thing, a bubble thing."
"You try coming up with names in the middle of combat," she shot back.
He shrugged. "Geth walking light tank. Security restraint sphere. Not that difficult."
"But you've had time to think those over," she protested, grinning up at him.
"Fine, I have," he conceded. Then he grinned. "Plus you slipped and fell. Not exactly doing that old blonde stereotype any favors, Commander."
He face flushed momentarily as she recalled the exact reason she had slipped and fallen. She forced a shrug and looked away. "Not many of us left. Someone has to carry on that tradition," she replied. Her gaze suddenly froze as she look at…yep, that will work.
The crackling of biotics echoed through the cavern as the commander biotics charged, the corona nearly blinding Garrus as space around Shepard glowed bright white, until an enormous wave of dark energy rippled towards a pile of debris and boulders. The biotic blast sent the several skycar-sized boulders rolling down the tunnel, until they reached and toppled down the elevator shaft, slamming to the ground several seconds later with loud hollow booms. The ground at the bottom of the shaft groaned for several moments, causing a barely noticeable tremor throughout the cavern.
"Whoa," the turian muttered in surprise. Even Wrex regarded the biotic attack with an incredulous look.
"Let's go," Shepard said evenly, as if nothing was unusual about what she had just done. The fireteam walked through the tunnel and to the elevator on the other side. It automatically raised them to the level above where the trapped asari was.
Shepard suddenly saw one of the visions from the prothean flash before her eyes again, showing a landscape burn as beams of fire destroyed everything –
She staggered slightly, and before she knew it Alenko stood at her side, holding her up. "Commander?" he asked with concern.
"I'm…it's the visions. From the beacon," she said quietly. "Picks the worst time to make a return." She blinked her eyes clear, staring at the elevator walls that slowly dropped out of sight for several moments. The vision didn't return. "I'm…I'm good," she said finally.
"Are you sure?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah," she replied, though her voice didn't exactly convey confidence.
Shepard saw that the elevator had conveniently deposited them behind the containment field, with Liara suspended about ten meters ahead.
"How…how did you get in here?" Liara asked in surprise.
"Biotics. But we have to get you out of here before more geth arrive," Shepard said.
"Of course it's too much to hope for that we've already killed them all," Garrus muttered.
"Those controls should shut down my containment field." The asari described it to the Spectre.
"'Should?'" Layla responded uneasily. "I'm not going to end up restrained like you…am I?" she asked nervously with a raised eyebrow.
"No…you should be fine…I think. Maybe," came the asari's response.
Well, that's very reassuring…Shepard thought, glancing at Alenko as she bit her lower lip in concern. "Which button should I hit?"
"I'm…not entirely sure. Not the big green one. That's how I ended up trapped. I think the large orange circular button shuts it off."
Layla regarded the panel with a distinctive frown, eyes slowly roaming over the panel as she crossed her arms, staring at the buttons with palpable dislike. "There's three large orange circular buttons, Dr. T'Soni."
"Oh," the asari replied, remaining silent for several moments. "Well…I suppose you could try one of them," she said without any confidence.
Shepard sighed. "We may need to get Tali down here to figure this out," she muttered to no one in particular. But she knew they were on a schedule; she presumed more geth ships would appear in orbit. She walked slowly over to the panel, scratching the back of her neck. She reached the controls, but suddenly her vision blurred and she staggered slightly as the images from the beacon returned to her mind death murder RUN
She blinked several times as she forced the remnants of the beacon's vision out of her mind, realizing that the writing on one of the orange buttons said "out down," or something like that. She barely had time to ponder that fact before she staggered forward. She placed her hands on both sides of the panel to brace herself, but nearly collapsed to the floor.
Alenko was at her side before she knew it, with Garrus a couple steps behind. His hands reached out to steady her, providing her both stability and a warm sense of comfort. "Are you OK, Commander?" the lieutenant asked quietly.
"Yeah," she replied. "I think." A long pause. "I don't know," she whispered. "It's the visions."
"Beacon vision…" he mused. This was just twice in the span of a minute that she had staggered, and it only had started when they entered the ruins. "Do you think it has something to do with…the prothean ruins? Looking at prothean technology?"
"Maybe. Possibly," she muttered. "Whatever it is…" Then she seemed to fully regain her wits. "Stand back, you two. I'm going to drop that…bubble thing," she ordered.
"Commander," Alenko said quietly, immediately thinking that she would be trapped in that energy field as well.
"Geth reinforcements are likely inbound; we don't have time to take this thing apart."
"But Commander…"
"Get back, Lieutenant. If I get caught in this field, you'll need to find another way to get me out."
The lieutenant sighed and nodded after a moment. Shepard saw Alenko, Wrex, and Garrus take cover as far back from the panel as they could.
She hesitated for a moment before pressing the "out down" button and disappearing in a biotic flash, charging ten meters away and clear of the console. The only thing that happened was the containment bubble holding the asari scientist disappeared and she fell to the ground. The commander closed her eyes and unclenched her teeth, breathing a loud sigh of relief.
The orange barrier vanished. Liara massaged her wrists. "I—I still cannot believe this! Why would the geth come after me?"
"Let's get out of here first," Shepard said, gesturing everyone to a working elevator. Once they were all on, she hit the button to start the ascent. "The geth are looking for information about the prothean extinction."
"But I don't know…" Liara began. She stopped as a dull rumble echoed through the cavern. Even the moving elevator trembled under their feet.
"What the hell was that?" Garrus asked.
"These ruins are…not entirely stable due to blasting nearby from the mining corporation. How…you said you got into this room with biotics?" Liara asked. The asari was looking directly at the commander with worry, as everyone slowly turned to face the petite human woman.
"Yeah. Biotics," Shepard said after a moment, wringing her hands, studiously looking at the ground before looking back up. "So…when you say not entirely stable, do you mean an occasional little shake or two, or the entire place collapses on us?"
The ground shook again as each of the five occupants balanced themselves to prevent from falling to the ground. "The latter!" Liara shouted with panic in her voice as the ground rumbled again.
"Uh oh," Shepard said quietly. "Ghostrider, get to our location ASAP. We're in underground ruins, but they could collapse on us," she said with surprising calm given the situation.
"Aye, aye, Commander. ETA two minutes," the pilot responded.
Barely had the elevator stopped when a large krogan battlemaster strode over to their location, surrounded by a dozen geth and two more krogan.
"Too bad Shepard. I was hoping you'd get caught in that field with the asari. Then we could ship both of you off to Saren," the large krogan bellowed.
Shepard was taken aback. "Wait what – " she started to say in surprise as she fully charged her barrier and her biotics, but her voice was immediately cut off by the krogan's bellowing.
"Capture the human female and the asari alive. Saren's orders. Kill the rest!"
One krogan fired his shotgun at Alenko; it took his entire barrier and nearly all of his shields to absorb the blast. The nearest geth shock trooper fired on Wrex, whose dark energy barrier went up as he charged the trooper, delivering a solid punch to the head. The geth crumpled to the ground, not the first and certainly not the last geth to make the mistake of attacking Wrex.
The commander immediately jumped into cover after unleashing a wave of dark energy at the krogan and the geth that flanked him. She saw Liara had done the same several meters away, her barrier up as she frantically looked around. At least she had the good sense to use her barrier in a firefight.
Shepard wondered just why Saren could want her alive as she moved to better cover behind a wall next to the elevator, but her vision suddenly transformed to a fiery, hellish landscape as she tried to flee from the monstrosities that chased her. She staggered and collapsed against the side of a support, her mind screaming at her to fight back.
She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, but whatever abomination charged her vanished just as soon as she turned to face it. The krogan battlemaster suddenly replaced the horror as her normal vision snapped back into focus. "Take her alive!" he bellowed.
She cursed at the vision's poorly-timed return as she charged her biotics. She almost threw the krogan across the room, but the massive krogan was too fast, and he closed the distance to her in a split second. She started to jump out of the way but the krogan's fist caught her in the side. The blow sent her airborne and she crashed in the wall three meters away.
Shepard charged her biotics again so she could crush the fierce battlemaster, but again the vision flashed before her eyes, giving the krogan a head start. The battlemaster swung his rifle like an oversized club at her, hitting her hard in the stomach as she tried to dodge. The armor absorbed it as best it could, but searing sharp pain rippled through her abdomen, forcing the air out of her lungs. Her body doubled over as an instinctive response, even as her mind was screaming at her to fight back as she threw a disoriented biotic punch, but the krogan countered, grabbing her by the upper arm and hurling her against the wall.
Though nearly unconscious from the krogan's destructive blows, and too disoriented from the recurring visions to use biotics, Shepard quickly grabbed her combat knife at her belt as the krogan picked her up. She jammed the knife into the relatively thin skin of the krogan's neck with lightning speed, faster than even the battlemaster could react. The krogan howled in pain and grabbed her thigh with both his hands, hurling her across the room again. Her world spun, and then, everything went black.