Flesh and Metal:
Book One:
The Saren Incident:
Chapter Eight
He had never missed Eden Prime, not once for a single second after the day he had decided to leave.
Oh, he had missed some of the people sure. His Moms, his little sister and his little brother and his friends and the first girl he had ever kissed behind one of the large agricultural units that had been built on the shore of Lake Hope but he had never missed Eden Prime as a place to live, it was beautiful and quiet and peaceful and he understood why so many people found it to be a great place to live.
But it was never what Richard had wanted.
He had wanted to see the galaxy, had wanted to see all the worlds that he could. He wanted to see the jungles and great rivers of Sur'Kesh, the massive cities and vast seas of Thessia, the vast and deep deserts and server clusters of Rannoch, the wide plans of Dekuuna and the world encompassing sea and thin chains of islands of Kahje. Hell, a part of him wanted to see the mountains of Palaven and the strange wonders of Irune.
And he had wanted to fight as well, he wanted to protect the people he loved and he wanted to make sure that the Alliance would always be as strong as it was and stronger to. His moms had both tried to talk him out of it but his mind had been made up and with a few hugs to his family he had left the planet to begin his career as an Alliance solider, his head held high even as his family cried and he hadn't thought about his home since that day.
Only now, as he saw the smoke rising in the distance, did he realise how stupid he was.
The Normandy had touched them down in a more rural area, away from the worst of the fighting, and they had kept their heads low as they pushed towards the dig sight with EDI guiding them from the ship, safe enough in orbit with the stealth systems active and as they walked in silence all Richard could do was look around and watch as how many things he used to think he never cared about burned to the ground.
The Cliffords agri unit where he and his sister had used to work during the hotter months on the colony when they needed some extra credits for stuff their allowance from their mothers wasn't enough to buy, it was on fire and there were two bodies laying broken in front of the burning homestead. They were to far away and to badly burnt to make out who they had been and Richard didn't know how to feel about the fact that he was glad about that. The Cliffords had been a big family and hired dozens of farm hands, the rest of them might have gotten out.
The communal plot which was used to grow apples, pears, peaches and grapes and he could remember hundreds of days when he and his friends would go in there to pick fruit from the trees and vines and lay in the shade to eat, it was nothing but a field of ash now. Richard had to wonder if anything would ever grow there again and even if there would be anyone around to plant the seeds for it.
The wide river that Richard had used to swim in a thousand times when he was a kid was now dammed with bodies, it was the worst smell that he could ever have imagined and it made his eyes water. The bodies were so badly damaged and waterlogged that he couldn't tell who any of them had been before, some of the bodies were small enough to have been children.
His moms could be dead, his sister and his brother as well. Their homestead had been closer to one of the larger lakes than this but it wasn't that far away, he was sure that his Ma wouldn't leave easy as she would use her dad's old rifle to defend them but Mom would try and convince her to leave for Annie and Sam's sake.
Oh god, his brother and sister.
Annie was only eighteen months younger than him and always followed him wherever he went when they were growing up, it used to drive him crazy but now he would kill for her to be here with him, talking his ear off about a thousand things he never used to care about. She always used to say that she would be right behind him in joining the Navy and becoming a marine, she might never get that chance now.
And Sam...Sam was the youngest, seven years between him and Annie which meant that were close to a decade between him and Richard. Sam was always so hard to connect with, fragile. Special, that was what his moms always used to say about him. Whenever there was a really bad thunderstorm, which wasn't uncommon on Eden Prime, he would always go into his room and rock back and forth under a cover and count outloud until he calmed down, same whenever anyone came over to yell at their Ma about some disagreement about whose land was whose.
But he was funny to, like, wickedly funny and he loved to help Mom in the kitchen and he liked to always play on the piano that was kept in the main living area but no one ever used until Sammy came along. Mom had taught piano back on Earth and still did lessons for the other kids on the colony whenever they needed some extra credits but Richard and Annie had both been hopeless at it but Sammy had always made it look so easy and Richard knew Mom had been proud that one of her kids had the talent.
Sammy could be dead now, his body could be one of the ones choking that river back there.
Richard felt himself clutching his rifle more tightly, he felt himself falling slightly behind.
And he felt when the cool, three-fingered hand came to rest on his shoulder and he looked up to stare into Legion's brightly lit eye. "Jenkins-Corpral, we must keep pace."
"Yeah, I know. Thanks Legion." Richard tried to smile then, it took him a moment to long to realize that the Geth probably wasn't able to appreciate the gesture. Richard had grown up around AI's and he knew that sometimes organic emotional ques could be hard for them to understand.
The Geth tilted it's head head and it's flaps around it's eye slightly moved and it then jogged ahead of him and Richard moved to follow him, pushing the thoughts of the burning world to the back of his mind.
He always knew that actual combat would be different than what he was trained to expect, that nothing would be able to properly prepare him for it, but it was nice to know that he was going in with a fair bit of back up.
Master Chief Nicola Baroni was at the head of the marines with Staff Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko marching alongside her, the human marines were in formation following behind, the Geth marines were marching in perfect formation aside them with not one foot out of place. Bringing up the rear was the ATHENA mechs that EDI was controlling from onboard the Normandy.
It was hardly a force to sneeze at, but there was only so much that it could be a comfort considering it was marching through the burning ruin of what had been the backdrop to so much of his childhood.
Commander Shepard had gone on to scout ahead, Jenkins wasn't sure of what to make of him yet as he had only joined up with them just before they were due to launch from the Citadel but he seemed...impressive, if a little cold at times. Richard remembered how he had worked them up back in the Normandy's cargo hold before they deployed on to the planet, it was a good speech and it had filled him with confidence at the very least.
Not that it had lasted long after getting his boots on the ground.
The LT suddenly stopped walking as he brought his hand up to the side of his helmet to listen into his comm link, he was to far away from Jenkins to overhear what he was saying and the helmet of his hardsuit obscured his features to the extent that Jenkins wasn't able to tell if it was good news or not but whatever it was, it was a short conversation. The LT pulled his hand away and started to talk to the Cheif, it was another short conversation before the Cheif turned to face them and adressed them.
"All right, listen up maggots!" The Chief shouted, her dark eyes hard and unforgiving of any disobedience or mistakes. "The Commander has eyes on what's left of the 212, we're going to meet up with them and then push forward to the digsite, so double time it!"
"Aye aye Ma'am!" The marines called out in unison, the Geth marines were silent but that wasn't unusual and they picked up the pace a little as they followed behind the Chief and the LT up a small hill and then through a thick line of trees. They came through on the other side of the trees, there was a small cluster of storage sheds off to one side that Jenkins knew would be used to hold the harvest for the colder months, they were undamaged so that was one good thing.
Suddenly, to the other side, there was movement and Jenkins found himself rasing his rifle in that direction and at least hal a dozen other members of the unit did the same thing and the Chief held her hand up to signal them to hold their fire. The movement was a figure on top of a smaller hill in an armoured hardsuit and it was waving their arm at them before they turned back and swung their arm around to beckon someone forward.
A few moments later the figure was joined by other figures, most a similar size to them but one figure stood several feet higher than the rest of them and it only took Richard a moment to realize that it was a heavy Geth platorm, it was a little to far away for him to tell if it was a Prime or a Juggernaught but either way it was a reassuring sight to see as they amount of punishment they could both take and deal out was well known to everyone in the Alliance.
They met up with them halfway up the hill and as they got closer Jenkins could see that the Geth platform was a Prime, it had clearly taken a lot of punishment already with it's auto repair drones struggling to repair it and it's eye lense was shut out, standing next to it was a woman in armour and holding an Avenger rifle with a frown on her face and her warm brown eyes narrowed into slits.
"Prime Unit Serial Number 374431238, rank 2nd Lieutenant reporting for duty. Inquiry, who is in charge of this unit?" The Prime answered, it's voice deep but slow and methodical.
"That would be me." A voice came out of nowhere and a moment later the air seemed to distort as the commander appeared out of nowhere, his sniper rifle slung over his shoulder. Jenkins felt his jaw drop but he liked to think that he recovered quickly as the commander continued to speak. "Lieutenant, I am assume that our AI aboard ship has given you a full update on why we're here?"
"Aye Aye Commander." It was hard enough to read Geth at the best of times, it was even harder when their one and only eye was gone but it didn't seem to be giving the Commander any trouble. "However, be aware that the dig site was under heavy attack and the most likely outcome is that it has fallen to their control, status of the beacon is unknown at this time. Also, be advised that we have a prisoner."
Two of the marines of the 212 pushed forward a Quarian, a wound on it's thigh that had been patched up with Omni-Gel with it's helmeted head tilted down towards the ground and it, it was hard for Jenkins to tell if it was a man or a woman, shivered as the marines jeered at it. "There are creator combat forces active on Eden Prime alongside modified Batarian forces, we are unsure as to what reason they are here but they have proven hostile."
The Commander nodded, his lips pressed into a grim line as he stared at the Quarian. "Understood LT, we'll deal with that as best we can but for now we're going to need you're help to get to the dig site. Chief Baroni, get the men moving and I want the prisoner secured on the Normandy. I'll scout on ahead." And with that the Commander activated his Omni-Tool and vanished into nothingness with a blur and Jenkins wondered what you had to do to get an invisibility cloak because that looked fucking awesome.
The 212 joined up with them then and they began their march on to the dig site, as two of the ATHENA mechs came forward and secured the Quarian and marched him back towards the second drop zone as well as two of the marines of the 212 who took one of their wounded with them whose injuries had kept her unconscious and looked close to death, for the most part they marched in silence except for the occasional sound of Commander Shepard's rifle sounding out from somewhere ahead of them which made Chief Baroni order them to stop unti the Commander radioed back with a status update and that they could move forward.
When they came up to the dig site Jenkins couldn't hold the gasp in even if he wanted to, more senior soliders than him reacted so he didn't feel to bad about that but most of them cursed or just growled like they were animals.
It was a slaughter, that was the only word he could use to describe it. The sheer amount of enemy forces that had moved through the area of the dig site had churned up the earth and their was dirt and soil everywhere, tables and crates were scattered in a clear effort to make some barricades against an attacking force but this was not a stronghold, it was a work site.
Fires were burning and broken bodies were scattered all over, some were soliders in hardsuits but others were men and women and Asari in work clothes or laboratory grab and the weapons fire had chewed them up. Atop heavy spikes, at least a dozen people had been impaled with their mouths hanging up and thick black fluid leaking out of their mouths.
And milling among them were the monsters, Richard had never thought of anyone as a monster before. He wasn't stupid, he knew that there were people who could do some really terrible things but he had always thought that he could comfort himself with the knowledge that those people, for the most part, only did those things because they were doing it for what their version of the right thing was. It didn't make it better or right, but it made it more understandable.
There was nothing understandable about this.
Two of the mutuated Batarians picked up one of the bodies, a woman whose body hadn't been to badly damaged, and carried her over to a medium sized black base atop three pointed legs and drapped her over it. Moments later there was a low whirr and a massive spike shot of of the base and impaled the body through the belly and drove it up into the air.
"Commander, what's the plan here?" Chief Baroni asked on her comm link and then the air distorted again as the Commander appeared again as if out of thin air, his face a mask of stone as he looked over the dig site before he unslung his sniper rifle from his back and looked down the scope of it, his frown deepening as he continued to scout out the site.
"EDI, I want you to move your mechs around to the west side of the dig site and hold there until I give the command. Chief, hold your marines here and wait for the order to charge. Legion, I want you to come with me." And with that the Commander walked off with one of the Geth following behind him at the same time. The rest of the marines dug in while EDI controlled her mechs to walk around to the west side of the site.
Every second they stayed there was harder than the last for Richard to bare as he had to watch the mutated monsters continue their desecration of the bodies that were somewhat intact as they continued to impale them on spikes, he could hear grumbles and whispers from the rest of the organic marines so he wasn't alone in his anger, his hands gripping his rifle tight.
Chief Baroni suddenly held her hand up to rest against her helmet and nodded briskly. "Marines," she spoke as she dropped her hand. "Charge!" She roared and the rest of them roared in answer, following her down the hill into the dig site. The Geth marines were silently but they were still right beside them, above them Geth drones rose up and laid down surpressing fire.
The kickback of his rifle stung his hands and Richard had to bite his lip as he kept up the fire, the burst of fire burst through the bodies and broke them apart, the horrible sound of the voices shrieking through the air, Geth drones laid down surpressing fire, keeping the monsters down and kept casualties down all around as the ATHENA mechs came down next, pining the mutated Batarians in.
Among all of this were the deep sound of two sniper rifles firing, each time it sounded another Batarian would go down. Lieutenant Alenko was blazing blue and hot white like he had pulled down a star and with a wave of his hands he sent the monsters flying, their bodies breaking as they hit the deck and it was honestly one of the coolest things that Jenkins had ever seen. Thought, the sight of any eyeless Prime picking up one of the monsters and throwing it aside while firing into a mass of them with it's LMG was pretty close.
Soon enough they had cleared the dig site of hostiles and Commander Shepard and Legion came down to join them from wherever they had been perched. "Any sign of the objective?"
"No sir." Lieutenant Alenko said with a shake of his hand, he had picked up a data pad from a table that was stained with something that Jenkins didn't want to think about what it was stained with. "All the data here seems to be from before the attack, no sign of it being moved from before that."
"It wasn't." Chief Williams of the 212 spoke up. "It was still here when we left and Lieutentant Rabe split us up, they must have moved it to somewhere more secure."
"Any idea where?" The Commander asked her and Chief Williams shrugged her shoulders and the Commander's frown deepened.
Suddenly there was a loud clang and Jenkins...well, he jumped as he spun around and pointed his gun in the direction of a large storage unit towards the border of the dig site, the red light next to the door signifying that it was locked. The Commander stepped forward and rested his hand atop the barrel of his rifle and he pushed it down to the ground before he turned to adress the storage unit, rising his voice to a shout. "All right, we know you're in there! Come out now and keep your hands up and you won't get hurt!"
For a moment the light stayed resolutely red but after another moment there was a beep and the light switched to red and the door slide up and seven people stepped out, four were humans dressed in the heavy overalls of the manual labourers of Eden Prime, two more humans who were dressed in lab uniforms and the last one who was a young Asari dressed in cheap security armor.
It was the Asari who spoke. "Oh, thank the goddess! I thought we were going to die here!" She made a noise that sounded like something between a laugh and a sob and it looked like she was moments away from crying.
"Who the hell are you? You weren't here before the attack." Chief Williams asked, her eyes narrowing as she crossed her arms over her chest while glaring at the Asari.
The Asari blinked, again she looked like she was seconds away from bursting into tears. "N-no, I'm a security officer. I work down at the spaceport but we were attacked there as well, we...we were getting overwhelmed and we had to run. Goddess it was chaos, we all just picked a direction and ran. I...I panicked, I'm not a solider and I just ran for it."
One of the humans, a gruff looking man dressed in the worker's overalls with a black bushy beard and deep blue eyes placed his hand on top of the Asari's armoured shoulder and spoke with surprising tenderness. "Nerolla, don't beat yourself up. We would all be dead without you right now, if it weren't for your biotics I don't want to think about what would have happened."
One of the other workers, a woman with her dark red hair cut down to nothing but a soft fuzz on her head and her young features pinched in both worry and hope and there was something about her that seemed familar to Jenkins, she might have been a neighbour of his once but he couldn't place her. " Are...Are you hear to rescue us? Please say you are, you can't just leave us here!"
The Commander held his hand up to stop her then. "I'm sorry, this is not a rescue mission. We're here for the beacon and that's the most important thing right now but if you go back in the storage unit and keep quiet then you should be safe. So, the beacon. Where is it, did it fall into enemy hands? And if so, do you know where their landing zone is because if so we need to get there, now."
One of the people in the science uniforms, this one a woman with dark blond hair and dark circles under her eyes and her hands nervously twitching. "I...I'm Doctor Sarah Warren, I am...I was, the head of the dig team here. We k-know that the science team from the university of Armali was on their way but we didn't see the harm of making some inital findings. I thought that I heard Lieutenant Rabe ordering some of his men to take the beacon to the spaceport."
"I didn't meet any soliders on the way here." Nerolla answered, rubbing her hand over her eyes to wipe the tears that were falling away. "But it's possible we missed one another, I don't know. But the spaceport was under heavy attack so I don't think they could stay there."
"Is there anywhere else they could've gone, somewhere more defensible?" Lieutenant Alenko asked gently.
Nerolla shrugged. "I mean...I guess the storage warehouses, maybe? It's off the spaceport a little ways and I can't think of anywhere else they could have gone where they could reach quickly."
"Well then, that's where we are going." The Commander spoke. "Go back into the shed and lock the door, as soon as this is over we'll send someone to come and get you. I can't promise you'll be safe but it's the best we can do for now."
None of them seemed happy about that but none of them looked like they wanted to press the issure with the heavily armed group and so they walked back into the storage shed and shut the door, locking it behind them and with that the pushed forward to the spaceport warehouses.
There was a path that went off from the main spaceport towards the warehouses and that was where they found Nihlus.
He was dead, there was a massive gory hole in his middle and another smaller one in the middle of his forehead. His shotgun was laying near his feet and his green eyes were staring up at nothing and the wreckage of some sort of drone near his feet. Lieutenant Alenko kneeled next to the Turian and shook his head. "He hasn't been dead longer Commander, nothing we can do for him."
Legion, on the other hand, walked over to the ruined drone and then picked it before carrying it over to the Prime Unit and held it up like he wanted the Prime to get a better look at it and then, in unison, the rest of the Geth walked over to them and they seemed to hold a silent conversation while the rest of them just...watched them.
Legion was the first to break away and walked over to Commander Shepard. "Shepard-Commander, this is a Creator recon drone. It is not combat capable but it does have recording software. Damage is consistent with close range shotgun blast, Nihlus-Specter would have no reason to see it as a threat while unde attack. Hypothesis, Nihlus-Specter was familar with this technology and knew it was recording, he destroyed the drone for us to find it in case he lost the fight. It would be possible for us to recover the footage."
"How long would it take you to do that?"
"Unknown, damage is extensive but it should be possible. Would recommend attempt to do so back on the Normandy, with EDI to assist us and where all processing power can be dedicated to the task."
The Commander nodded and ordered the Geth to secure the drone and spared one more glance down to the Turian Specter, his face was blank and impossible to read before he began to lead the march down to the warehouses.
As soon as they arrived, Jenkins was reminded of all those times in the old vids when one of the characters would say that it was to quiet. It was far to quiet.
One of the warehouse had it's doors blown up and there were bodies scattered around it, burned with their armour melted into their flesh. There were splatters of red blood deeper into the warehouse, to much to just belong to the marines but the marines were the only bodies that were around. At the far end of the warehouse, glowing green, was what had to be the Prothean Beacon.
"Wow." Jenkins breathed.
"Normandy, we have the beacon. Sending location now." Commander Shepard spoke then there was the sound of his Omni-Tool activating but Jenkins wasn't listening to him, he wanted to get a closer look. After all, who could really say that they had seen actual working Prothean teach that wasn't the archives on Mars?
When he took a step to close to the beacon though, it felt like something had grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him close and Jenkins let out a shriek and what felt like cold metal fingers dug into his skull and ripped it to shreds, images of burning cities and bloodied metal and thick, toxic sludge that flowed like a river that reduced whole worlds to nothing.
It lasted a few seconds. It lasted an eternity. But sooner or later something heavy hit him and Jenkins was back where he started on the ground of the warehouse and the Commander was hovering in the air in front of the beacon. His body was shaking, suspended in the air by a force that couldn't be seen and then there was a high pitched whine as the beacon exploded and the commander went flying.
The rest of the marines rushed to gather around the Commander as Lieutenant Alenko performed first aid and Chief Baroni radioed the Normandy to tell Doctor Chakwas and when Chief Williams came to help him up, one thought kept going around and around in Jenkins head.
Oh god, my first mission and I killed my Commander.
End of Chapter Eight
And that is the end of the Eden Prime arc, not sure if we are going to have another interlude yet or have Shepard wake up in the Med Bay next but we will see about that but I am leaning towards the interlude.
But it only took me a few years aftet the story was completed to finish the first arc, maybe I can finish the story before 2030! If we're lucky and my horrible attention span doesn't fail me!
With a ton of love and warmest regards,
DiscordantSymphony
