Flesh and Metal:
Book One:
The Saren Incident:
Chapter Three
The sweet sent of lilac-in-lace filled the air and the sky was turning a soft peach colour, the gas bags were floating mindlessly along with the breeze and if you strained your ears then you could just make out the chirping of the Crack bugs in the long brown grass that surrounded the dig sit. All in all, it had the makings of being another fine night on Eden Prime.
Gunnery Cheif Ashley Williams did not consider herself to be a poetic person even if she did enjoy reading some works in her spare time, just because someone enjoyed ice cream didn't mean they could make it after all but if she did ever decide to write poems in her spare time then she could very much see Eden Prime being a great source of inspiration.
It was often described as being a paradise and Ashley could certainly see why, every single day was long and filled with a gentle warmth that seemed to settle into your bones and made you want to do nothing more than lay in the grass and do nothing but take a nice long nap, even when it rained it was never cold and only served to make the air fresher and cool those who worked in the fields down after long hours of work.
It seemed that the reputation of it being a paradise was one of the factors that explained the population growth that Eden Prime had been experiencing ever since it had been established back in 2152. For a colony that had only been established just over thirty years ago it's population was already booming, form three hundred thousand original human colonists the population had grown to a solid four million across the entire planet.
And that was just the human population, if you counted the Geth runtimes that existed in the massive server banks that were situated in Eden Prime's capital city of Constant then the actual population of the colony was actually in the high single digit billions. Eden Prime also had a high population of Asari that had just this year had grown to the same original population of human colonists that had first settled Eden Prime.
It might just have been old distrust about what had gone down during the First Contact War but Ashley still couldn't seem to find herself trusting them, she knew that it didn't make any real sense considering that it had been the Turians that had attacked them and the Asari who had basically pulled them back by the scruffs of their necks and had been the ones who had made them stop attacking and if Ashley was going to be honest had been the ones who had really stopped the war.
The Geth had been ready to fight with them to the bitter end but even they had admitted that in a full out war between them and the rest of the races in the galaxy it would end in a crushing defeat for them with only the slightest margin for anything that resembled a victory, at least that was what Granddad had always said that the main physical representative of the Geth Consensus had said during the war councils on Shanxi.
Either way it didn't matter, there were only a half dozen battles that made up the First Contact War and all of them had been crushing defeats for the Turians and not for them. The Geth Armada was massive and well built with some of the most advance tech in the entire galaxy and the Turians hadn't been ready for them and that surprise had given them the advantage in those battles.
And it might have been Ashley's pride in her own speices talking but she liked to think that they had provided some help as well, the spikey bastards had certainly not been expecting the brand new fighter carriers that they had devolped and the Turians hadn't been able to compensate for the thousands upon thousands of fighters that they had deployed into the battlefield as well as the Geth's suprior tech.
The Geth might have seen any fight as one they couldn't win but they certainly didn't mean that they were just going to lay down and die, from the moment that the Turians had attacked their diplomatic vessals that had been in orbit around Shanxi since the moment that they had meet in the system an order was sent back into geth space, to being construction of more war ships to try and face of the combined might of the entirety of council space.
Thousands and thousands of Geth dropships, frigates and destoryers were constructed as well as hundreds of light and heavy cruisers and a dozen dreadnoughts on top of that. Geth didn't need to rest after all and had a great deal of automated construction equipment which meant that they could build a vast amount of well built ships which were more technically advanced than most of the ships in the entire galaxy.
Of course the feets they had stood off hadn't been even a fraction of what the Turians could truly bring to bare and they hadn't need to face it once the Asari had gotten involved and negotiated a peace. The Asari had apparently threatened the Turians into complying with it, threatening to impose sanctions on to them that would have ruined their economy in a fortnight.
That in itself was part of her dislike of aliens, Turians in particular. Granddad had said it himself, the Turians would have blown apart every single one of their fleets, killed all of their soldiers, drop asteroids on their cities which Granddad had swear they had tried to do despite what anyone else had claimed after the fact, if it hadn't been for the quick actions for the Geth fleet in the system then the Turians would have dropped rocks from space on civilians and had not given a crap about it.
It was only when the Asari had threatened them that they had pulled back, if left to their own devices they would have slaughtered them who were willing to pick up a gun and fight, slaughter the vast majority of their civilians and whatever was left of them they would have made a client race like the Volus and maybe Ashley was stupid but she didn't see how that was any different than slavery when it came to it.
And why had the Asari chosen to get involved? And risk pissing off the Turians as well? It wasn't like they were any more sympathetic to AI's than any of the other Citadel races, Asari had drafted most of the laws that had them out and research into them heavily outlawed. And the Geth were a synthetic culture that had overthrown their masters and established their freedom and were a known threat through out the galaxy.
It didn't add up and Ashley didn't like it.
She let out a heavy breath, her hand coming up to rub at her eyes. She knew it sounded paranoid, chances were that it was paranoid but Granddad had never gotten used to trusting any alien race other than the Geth and he had taught her to never trust just like he had done for Dad as well. And yet it was hard to find someone else who understood when she had try to tell them.
She wasn't one of those lunatics from Terra Firma, she didn't distrust aliens just because they were aliens and she certainly didn't hate aliens just because they were aliens. She just didn't think that when the shit hit the fan that should expect the other races in the galaxy to come to their aid, only the Geth had proven that they would stand with them when their backs were to the wall and in Ashley's mind they should be prepared to go it alone with them when the time came, because of course it would.
God, she was putting way too much thought into all of this. It wasn't do to the fact that there was an Asari population on the colony, not really. Over half a billion Asari had sworn the oath citizenship and had renounced their citizenship of the Asari Republics, some of them had even joined up with the military and had increased their biotic ranks. If they were Alliance to the core then that was good enough for Ashley and she would protect them as she had sworn to do for any citizen and die for them if need be.
No, the real problem had to do with the beacon that the dig sit crew had found a couple of days ago. When the reports had come in almost no one could actually manage to believe it. The last time that humanity had found a Prothean beacon had been when they had found the data archives on Mars and that alone had advanced their species by almost a thousand years according to her old history teacher.
There had been a ton of rampant speculation in those early hours, wondering what might be in the beacon. Someone had suggest that their might be plans for energy weapons or maybe plans for an even faster method of travel than FTL, a plan to make the Mass Relays not needed anymore. Someone else of course had suggested that it might just be a massive stash of porn.
The speculation soon died down however and got replaced by muttering when the colonial authority ruled that they had to contact the Alliance and the Alliance would then inform the Citadel Council that they had recovered a Prothean artefact. The Asari had drafted laws thousands and thousands of years ago, back when they first met the Salarians that any Prothean artefacts or working technology was to be shared with the greater galactic community.
Asari scientsts had been allowed access to the Mars archives only a year after the war had ended and they had stayed on Mars for five years, scanning every inch of the archives and and copying most of the date and sending it of to Thessia for it to be more closely examined by some Prothean experts from a fancy university back on Thessia.
Which if you asked her was total bullshit, sure the Asari liked to preach all about unity between all the speices and galactic cooperation but it was easy to preach when you were already on top of the mountain and had already made all of the rules before anyone else knew about them. The Asari just smiled and talked about keeping peace and blanace making sure that no speices advanced faster than any other.
It left a bad taste in her mouth considering that it was said by the most advanced spieces in the entire galaxy, well, aside from the Geth and the Salarians but the Asari were a close third in terms of science and were the first when it came to economic might, even the Volus were behind them on that and their military was said to be the strongest as well with their navy being the second largest in the galaxy and only smaller than the Turian navy by a few thousand ships, give or take a couple of cruisers.
Ashley knew what it looked like when the biggest fish in the pond was trying to make sure that they stayed that way and it sucked that she couldn't talk to anyone about it without someone calling her a xenophobe or someone else agreeing completely with her and telling her where the next Terra Firma or Take it Back party meeting was being held.
God, all she really wanted was a nap. Her legs were aching from standing guard and she needed a piss. At least the company was decent, Private Nirali Bhatia was twenty years older than Ash and she was not a career solider. She had joined up with the Alliance through one of the defered education plans and once she had finished her service she was going to go and open the resturant that she had always dreamed of opening.
All you really had to do was look at Nirali to know that she wasn't really cut out for service, it wasn't that she wasn't brave because she definitely was and she had also proven to be a crack shot with an assault rifle and a heavy pistol and had proven perfectly able to keep up with any of the other marines in the unit but Nirali hadn't seen any actual combat yet and that was when you found out what a solider was actually made off and Ashley wasn't sure if Nirali would be able to handle an actual live fire situation.
Nirali with her sweet smile and kind eyes who didn't have a bad word to say about anyone, who spent her free time knitting some clothes for her sisters and daughters and neices and nephews, listening to recordings of her husband at night to help her get to sleep and always lamenting that she didn't have access to a proper kitchen so she couldn't bake the rest of the squad something nice when their birthdays came up.
Nirali just didn't seem to have the right sort of hardness she would need in order to survive in the corp, but then it wasn't up to her to judge that and it wasn't as if Nirali intended to actually keep going forward in the navy. Ashley just hoped that for the rest of her service things would be nice and quiet and then she could get out and get her restaurant opened. She had always told all of the squad that they were more than welcome to come to her resturant when they were on leave, free of any charge and they had all cheered for her that night.
Even now despite having been standing at the post with her for the same amount of time as she had without going to the bathroom, there was still a smile on her face that seemed to make her dark brown eyes shine. Her long dark hair had been bound back into a bun just like Ashley and she held her Avanger rifle close to her chest. She turned to look at her and the smile stayed fixed on her face. "Are you well Chief?"
Ashley nodded and rolled her shoulders once again, trying to relieve some of the tension that had been creeping back in. "Fine Private, bored out of my skull and needing a piss but aside from that I'm just fucking peachy." Ashley threw a glance behind her, down the ramp and past the brown ground where a mass of dirt surrounded the reason that they were here in the first place, the beacon.
Something about it just set her teeth on edge, for something that had been buried beneath the earth for tens of thousands of years it was just too clean, like the passing of the ages hadn't left a single mark on it. The beacon stretched up to the sky, a tower of silver metal with a pale green light hanging around like an aura and when you got closer to it then you could just make out a subtle hum.
She knew that it was just a piece of advanaced technology that an extinct speices had left behind, no different than the Mass Relays that everyone used to get around but all the same it still unnerved Ash to look at it. It just made her think that if the Protheans were so advanced that they could build the Relays, which were basically what all of galatic society was built on, and the Citadel, then what could of wiped them out?
Ashley shook her head then and turned back to look out the rolling fields that spread out around the digsite, she had been watching was too many horror vids lately, in a couple of days at most the beacon would get picked up and the Asari could pick over it as much as they liked and then the boredom of colony life would set back in, the most exciting thing to ever happen was when the 212 got called into to stop some young drunk jackasses from popping some of the gasbags with their pistols.
The sky turned a darker shade and the air took a chiller note which signialed that night was fast approaching when deep and heavy footsteps approached them, the metal of the ramp shaking beneath their feet as the massive form of Geth Prime Unit 374431238, Alliance rank 2nd Lieutenant. Or as Ashley liked to think of him, Primey. filled their vision and stared down at them.
"Greetings, Willams-Gunnery Cheif, Bhatia-Private." The voice of the super heavy geth platform was probably the closest thing that a Geth could get to sounding like they were speaking a throat full of gravel. It's platform was massive, easily standing over twelve feet tall with metal arms that looked like they could someone's head without even a hint of effort while it's legs were as thick as tree trunks, large tubes filled with a synthtic fluid ran over it's body and a large spire like antenna shot out from it's shoulder which gave Primey a remote connection to the Geth server at Constant.
"Rabe-1st Lieutenant control unit of this company has ordered that this unit relieve you of guard so any organic functions you require may be completed." Primey turned and reached up to take hold of the two Revenant light machine guns that were holstered on his back and stared out at the fields, looking for any sort of threat. Most Primes perfered to use Geth Spitfires as weapons, Ash had only seen one in use once during basic training and it had torn through an armoured and kinetically reinforced target in a matter of moments.
She had asked Primey once why it choose to use Revenants instead of a Spitfire and it had clarified that while a Spitfire was a much more powerful weapon than the LMGs that they carried, a Prime unit would need to use both hands to fire it while when it came to the LMGS a Prime unit could fire two with one hand and with a great deal more accuracy than any organic could with using one with both hands.
Ashley nodded at the order and shot of a salute before she and Private Bhatia turned and began their was back to the prefabricated barracks set up near the other side of the dig site when the synthetic tones of the 2nd Lieutenant called after them, she knew that she was really only apply her expectations of her emotions on to the Geth but she was certain that for just a moment she could hear something that sounded like dread in the massive machine's voice. "Williams-Gunnery Chief, retrieve local control unit Rabe-1st Lieutenant at once. Reports from Geth Fleet serial number 10001000011101 in orbit via primary Geth server hub in capital dwelling of Constant, fleet of approximately eighteen thousand vessels has FLT jumped into local system via Mass Relay, ship profiles identify as Batarian Hegemony warships including three dreadnoughts, all heavily modified with unknown technology and a ship profile that does not match any in our database but weight class suggests superheavy dreadnought. Reports suggest heavy damage to fleet and landing will commence in fourteen galactic standard minutes."
A pause, as if the Prime was taking a breath before it spoke again. "Run."
End of Chapter Three
This was a tough one as Ashley is a character that I personally think is very easy to misinterpret and I didn't want to do that, it's important to remember that Ashley doesn't hate Aliens but simply that she knows from her Grandfather what it's like to be at their mercy. The Turians had been attacking them without even a fraction of their true strength and if the Asari had decided to side with the Turians instead of putting an end to the war then it would have been an end to humanity even with the aid of the Geth.
So I wanted to capture a balance of mistrust of any aliens that aren't geth while at the same time trying to point out that Ashley doesn't hate them either, she just knows bullshit when she sees it and any trust Humanity does put in others should be given to those that have already proven themselves to be allies. Like the Geth.
Anywho,
Tell me the thought of a Geth Prime duel wielding Revenants doesn't make you smile just a little bit.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter, please leave a follow, a review and a favorite if you did. Constructive Criticism is always welcome
I'd also like to thank LogicalPremise for helping me with some military terms and ranks, something I am absolutely hopeless at and also strongly recommend you go and read their amazing Of Sheep and Battle Chicken series and any related works, it's one of the best and most detailed Mass Effect au fics I've ever read.
Lots of love,
DiscordantSymphony
