I don't own either Mass Effect or the AvP franchise
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The cannons fired again and again, but is was like throwing pebbles at a rising tide. No matter how many they killed, the enemy would regroup and attack again. The defence was failing. They had fought well. they had fought incredibly well, but they were outnumbered and they were low on everything. On manpower, on ammunition, on food and water. Water! Right now she'd give everything she owned for a full waterskin. The sun was scorching hot, as it had been for many days, and the low walls around the small compound offered little shadow. For a moment she envied the non-combatants, the women and children who had sought shelter in the small church. Wait, why would the other women be hiding, while I'm not? The thought was fleeting and disappeared as she heard a shout.
"They're over the wall!"
She looked up. Scores of soldiers were climbing over the walls on all sides, swarming into the compound. The cannons fired, cutting many down, but more took their place and there was no time for another salvo. The defenders fell back toward the church, but they were pursued too closely and there was no opportunity to form a line or organise a defence. She turned around, her musket raised.
Shoot the first one through the chest, no time to reload, nowhere to take cover or hide. Swing the rifle like a club to crash a skull. She felt a searing pain in her side and saw an enemy draw back a bloody bayonet. Swing again, knock his weapon aside. No time to look at the wound. No time for anything but fight. Some of her friends were still standing, but only a few, so every few and more enemies poured into the compound. Swing the rifle again, and again. More enemies fell, but never enough. Hands grabbed the rifle and twisted it from her grasp. She jumped back, her hand clawing at the knife on her belt. She managed to pull it free deflecting another bayonet thrust, but it was getting harder. The pain in her side was getting worse, and she was tired, so very tired. Something struck her head with terrible force, sending her sprawling to the ground. Try to roll with it, evade the stabbing blades, one, two. A new burst of pain, this time in her chest, and another, and another. Then there was only darkness.
"Commander?"
"What the FLYING FUCK was that?" Shepard wasn't sure whether she had spoken out loud as she tried to sit up. Normandy. She was back on Normandy. That was good.
"Welcome back," Dr Chakwas said. "How are you feeling?"
Shepard shook her head, trying to clear her mind, despite her pounding headache. "Like the morning after shore leave. Except I don't remember having any fun."
"I see." The doctor activated the intercom. "Captain, the commander is awake." She smiled briefly. "In the meantime, let me check you out."
-o-o-o-
USM Normandy
"Shepard."
"Sir."
Captain Anderson sat down. "It's good to see you awake, Commander. We were worried. Getting zapped by alien technology is not a condition that we have much experience with. How are you feeling?"
A nightmare. It was just a nightmare, not worth mentioning. "I'm fine sir."
"That's good. Commander, I'd like to give you more recovery time, but we're on a schedule. How much do you remember?"
Shepard considered briefly. "I think all of it, sir. We got the SOS from Eden Prime and I deployed with the marines and Kryik. Jenkins was killed by a drone..." As she went through the events, the memories became sharper.
"... And that's when I got hit by, well, by something."
"An energy discharge from the beacon. Apparently, it was at least partially biotic in nature. And, no, don't ask me how something can be partially biotic, or how a piece of machinery can have biotics. I asked Lieutenant Alenko when I heard it and he didn't have a clear answer for me either. Anway, it sounds to me that you remember everything quite well. After you got zapped, some of the xenomorphs started to close in, but we got the lot of you out before your position was overrun. And, yes, before you ask, you were all checked. No chestbursters present."
Shepard nodded. "That's good to hear, sir. What about the others, Estanza, and the civilians?"
"We got Estanza and the scientists out in time."
"And the guy at the station?"
Anderson shook his head. "No sign of him."
"Damn. We needed him."
Anderson's eyebrows rose slightly. "Not to mention that this is not a fate one would wish on anyone. Correct, Commander?" He shrugged. "But you are right. His testimony would be have been very useful. We have the download from his translation implant, but it isn't the same. In any case, that's the situation as far as your deployment is concerned. Meanwhile, there is some good news. Arcturus HQ came through for us. They deployed most of the quick response force to Eden Prime. The system is under quarantine and, other than the ship that Chief Williams saw landing, we don't believe anyone made it out of the system. Meanwhile, we've got a marine brigade on the ground. They've set up a perimeter and are processing survivors as quickly as they can. As far as we can tell, all remaining geth have been eliminated. The xenomorphs have made some pushes against the perimeter, but it seems like they don't have the numbers for a serious assault."
"Yet. From what I understand, that can change quickly."
"Oh yes. And it will. But the more civilians we get out, the more limited their numbers will be. Of course, that's just short-term concerns. In the long term..." The captain shook his head. "Other than the diplomatic ramifications, which I cannot even begin to estimate, I see three major issues that need to be addressed. First, the geth. I have no idea how they figure into all of this. Our information on them is sketchy at best. The council species don't know much about them and the quarians, the only ones that DO know, aren't talking to anybody. So, there is simply no way to determine what they're up to."
Shepard shrugged. "Acquiring prothean technology? That seems to be pretty much everybody's favourite pastime. I know the geth are machines, but that should actually give them a stronger motive to acquire new technology."
"Perhaps. But as far as I'm aware they've never done this before. And this is not a tentative first move. A major assault on a human colony? That's a serious policy change. Then again, as you say, they are machines. They would probably be less likely than an organic species to be hesitant, once they've made a decision. In any case, speculation without data is pointless. So, moving on, the next issue is the xenomorph infestation. You're too young to remember, but that's not something to mess around with. I'm sure you've heard the stories..."
"I have. And the protocol is very clear. They are to be exterminated at any cost."
"Just so, Commander. Just so." Anderson shook his head. "I thought I'd gotten the last of them when we blew up Calypso. But they're like cockroaches. There are always some left alive. Anyway, this is worse than anything we've ever encountered. Before they were on hostile worlds or space stations. Having them loose on a garden world? That's a disaster."
"Yes, sir. If I may ask, what's the plan?"
"The plan?" Anderson snorted. "We have no plan. Protocol dictates a full sterilization, but nobody thought we'd ever have to do it on a planet like Eden Prime. Right now, we're evacuating people as fast as we can, but it's going slowly. Evacuating a million people takes time and every second we delay will make the sterilization less likely to succeed. Right now we have two bottlenecks: One is the number of people we can load aboard a single ship without overloading the life support systems. The other is the need to X-ray each person that leaves the surface. Even a hospital ship doesn't have enough X-ray machines. then once we're done, we have a new problem. We can bombard the colony and the surrounding area, but with these things, I don't trust kinetic bombardment to finish them off completely. Like I said, they're like cockroaches."
Shepard's eyebrows rose a fraction. "So, let's nuke'em. Problem solved"
"Really, Commander? Did you ever hear about two places called Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Do you know how many people actually survived? Sure, those weapons were weak compared to what we can do now, but then again, humans are weak compared to a xenomorph. And we have to be sure. If even one of them makes it out with a handful of eggs, we'll be facing a disaster further down the road. To be sure, we'd have to glass the colony, as well as an area maybe a hundred miles around it. Do you know what that would do to Eden Prime's biosphere? Not to mention that the Council would be screaming if we do that to a garden world. For that matter, so would our own civilians. No, that's not a decision to be taken lightly and the brass are passing the buck around trying to avoid responsibility, even as we speak." Anderson sighed. "Some things never change I suppose. Anyway, that's above our pay grade. Meanwhile, there is a third problem Saren."
"Our new turian friend, yes. I was wondering about that."
"So am I, Commander, very much so, in fact. I suspect the name didn't mean anything to you-"
Shepard shook her head.
"-but it does to me. I've met him before and I'm not looking forward to repeating that experience. Saren is bad news, Commander. There are a lot of turians that dislike us, but most of them don't live and breath it. For Saren, it's personal. His full name is Saren Arterius. Ring any bells?"
Shepard started to shake her head, then stopped. "Arterius, as in-"
"As in Desolas Arterius, yes. Saren is his younger brother. Saren actually took part in the First Contact War himself. He was at Shanxi. That's where he lost his arm, though we've never been able to determine exactly how. Between that and the fact that we executed his brother for war crimes, he hates our guts."
"Understandably, I suppose."
"Not if it intervenes with duty and in this case it does. It doesn't matter anyway; whatever his motivations, he has sought to harm as before and now he's taken it to a whole new level."
"What about Nihlus," Shepard asked. "Would he have been involved in it? They're both turian Spectres, so..."
"Possibly." Anderson shook his head. "I doubt it. If Nihlus had been in on this, he wouldn't have reacted that way. He would have tried to shoot you in the back. No, I think he was taken by surprise as much as we all were. I can only assume that he recognized this Saren from the ramblings of Dr Manuel. Why that made him run off? I don't know for sure, but I can hazard a guess. Like I said, Saren is rabidly anti-human. Not just a little bit, but obsessively so. Our government knows that about him and the turians know that we know. On top of that, he's a Spectre, which means he isn't even allowed in human space. Even under the best of circumstances his presence on Eden prime would have been a diplomatic mess. Under the actual circumstances, it was a catastrophe. I didn't get to know Nihlus well, but I got the distinct impression that he wanted to ensure good relations, either out of personal inclination, or because of the Council's orders, or both. Probably both. I don't think he believed that Saren was actually behind the attack, or he wouldn't have turned his back on him, but even the thought of Saren just walking around in the middle of the invasion of a human world must have been like a nightmare come true. He had to prevent that from coming out at all costs. Spectres are supposed to deal with threats to galactic stability as they find them, even without orders, and that's what Nihlus intended."
"And do what, hustle Saren out of sight? Hide him in a closet until we were all gone?"
"Probably, yes. He didn't know that the xenomorphs were involved, or that there would be a quarantine. All he needed was to get Saren to lay low until some form of extraction could be arranged, or things could be smoothed over with our government."
"And it got him killed."
"So it would seem."
"So, we have a rogue turian Spectre commanding geth, or at least cooperating with them, and a bunch of xenomorphs on the loose." Shepard shook her head. "If Williams hadn't told me about the ship, if I hadn't seen it myself, I would have assumed that some idiot corporation was breeding these things in a lab, but as it is... How the hell does this fit together, sir?"
"That is the hundred thousand credit question, Commander." Anderson smiled grimly. "Actually, I suspect anyone who has the answer, they can sell it for a lot more than that. I assume you don't have the answer?"
Shepard considered for a moment. She still had a pounding headache and trying to fit the chaotic puzzle pieces together was definitely not helping.
"The geth I can buy," She said slowly. "I mean, they were created by the quarians as a labour force, correct?"
"Yes, so?"
"So, they must have been capable of communication at the time. They may retain that ability. And now they're freaking AIs, but, so what? An AI should be logical, which means you can reason with it. Offer it something that it wants and get something in return. Why would that be impossible? The trick would be to survive long enough to get it to talk in the first place, but this guy is a Spectre, they're supposed to be good."
Shepard shook her head. "No, I can believe that it's possible to reach some sort of agreement with a bunch of AIs. I wouldn't trust them to keep their word, but that goes for most organics as well. No, my problem is the xenomorphs. I can believe that either Saren or the geth found some of them. I can believe that they would exploit them as a means of waging war. They make for great terror weapons and they can be used as a form of area denial. But how would he control them? That's supposed to be impossible and I believe it. If they could be controlled, we would have done it ourselves."
"Don't!" Anderson snarled. "Don't even think about that, Commander. That very idea led to more grief than you think. Because we did try it. And, no, we didn't succeed." He took a deep breath. "You're forgetting a couple of things. First of all, he may not need to control them. All he needs to do is keep them contained long enough to get to the target. Then he drops them and lets nature take its course. Meanwhile, his geth troops can move about freely, because they aren't suitable prey. That is one option, assuming that he's not interested in taking over the real estate that he infects with them. Of course, he would need a secure way of transporting them, but he may believe that he's found one. That may come back to bite him in the ass, but he's an arrogant bastard, so he may think he can handle it. The second problem with your argument is that we don't know enough about the xenomorphs. The average xenomorph doesn't seem to communicate outside its own species, but the queen may be different. There was a theory, back in the day, that you could control xenomorphs by keeping the queen hostage. In case you're wondering, that didn't work. But that doesn't mean that Saren, or the geth, cannot be trying it. Bottom line: we don't have enough information to judge. Remember that ship on LV-426? It carried xenomorph eggs as a cargo. So, clearly, someone else found a way to make use of them. Or thought they found a way. I've seen the pictures. The pilot of that ship died from a chestburster. So whatever means they used, it wasn't foolproof."
Shepard sighed. "So, we have an anti-human turian Spectre, who is cooperating with a group of AIs and using xenomorphs as shock troops even though he probably cannot control them in the long run."
"That sums it up."
"I see. So, what's our next move, sir?"
"The Citadel. We've just received a message from Ambassador Udina. He wants us to report to the embassy the moment we arrive. As the saying goes, 'We've got some 'splainin' to do!'."
"This is going to be fun."
-o-o-o-
Deep space
"Eden Prime was a major victory," Saren said. "We are one step closer to our goals."
"And one step closer to a new order," his companion agreed. "What about the explosives? Was the beacon destroyed?"
"No explosion took place." The new voice was flat and mechanical.
"What?!" Saren turned around.
"Most likely explanation: the explosives were disarmed."
"Did they access the beacon?"
"Unknown."
"That is very unlikely," The asari standing next to him said. "The beacon was already damaged. It was unlikely to last longer. And even if they managed to connect, without the cypher the data will be meaningless. Whatever they know, or think they know, all they can say for sure is that geth attacked their colony. Let them focus on that. By the time they figure it out, it will be far too late."
"What about the Council?" Saren growled. "There were supposed to be no witnesses!"
"Neither of us was seen. Even if the geth and the serpents didn't kill off the remaining humans, they have no proof to show the Council. And the Council will not be in a mood to listen to them. They will blame the humans for the loss of the beacon, and possibly for the release of the great serpents. Remember, only humans were ever associated with them, certainly not the geth. Perhaps they were breeding them in a laboratory on their new colony and they escaped in the chaos. Such a typical, irresponsible thing to do. Who knows? Certainly not the Council." She made a sound of contempt. "Not that they have ever known much of anything!"
-o-o-o-
Unknown planet
"This was NOT the plan! The first outbreak was supposed to happen on a Council world."
"When Saren heard of the beacon, he insisted on taking it from the humans. We could not stop them without revealing ourselves to him. In any case, the deployment was successful."
The first speaker nodded. She seemed to calm down as she spoke "In a sense. It worked, but the humans will be on full alert. There will be no second opportunity in their territory."
"True, but that was always going to be the case."
"Stealth would have been a better option. Saren should have smuggled the Kainde Amedha in without launching a frontal assault."
"He probably thought he could achieve the same effect. If the human warship had not appeared at that moment, there would have been time to be thorough and eliminate witnesses. There would have been no survivors, the Kainde Amedha would have made sure of that. All the humans would have known was that there had been a new outbreak. Knowing them, they would probably have sought to blame each other, thinking that some corporation lost control of an experiment, perhaps. We could have fostered such rumours. Any outbreaks after that would have been blamed on the humans as well, no matter where they occurred."
"But the ship did appear and now there will be witnesses. Well, what is done, is done. This was a dangerous game from the beginning. Dangerous, and possibly foolish. For the moment, we will allow it to continue, but I want hunting parties ready to interfere if necessary. For now, I suppose the humans will blame the geth, at least initially, and the Council might agree with them, or blame the humans. Do they know of Saren's involvement?"
"Unknown. He may have been spotted, but the human communications have not mentioned turian involvement."
"Which means nothing. If he was spotted, the game changes. They may be able to convince the Council, and that would spark a hunt like even we have never seen before. And if they take him alive, if they manage to interrogate him, they will understand that he had help. In any case, we need to secure our network. We will start on the Citadel."
"Shall I send in a hunting team?"
"No. not to the Citadel. We cannot risk exposure at this stage. We'll use a bounty hunter."
"The krogan?"
"Exactly."
"Very well. Incidentally, this may be of some interest. We obtained a visual record of the human team that pursued Saren. This was the individual in charge."
A hologram appeared in the middle of the table.
"Her? I wonder... Keep me informed. This just became far more interesting."
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A/N So, yes, Shepard's nightmares are different than in canon. Considering that she got a message from a failing piece of equipment in a language that's 50,000 years old, evolved for a species that's fundamentally different, I figured it should take a bit longer to figure out what she's seeing, and the prothean message would have more trouble getting through to a human brain. Keep in mind that in my universe the protheans were nowhere near Earth (there is no library on Mars), so there would be no possibility of some sort of genetic imprint. As to what she was seeing, well, let's just say that the prothean message is desperately trying to show something that a human mind would understand.
Under the circumstances, Shepard has no reason to believe that it actually is a message. She just had a weird dream after being zapped by some alien device. Nothing to worry about, no need to bother her superiors or the doctor with that. After all, someone who carries around the nickname of 'Butcher of ...' would do well to avoid any hints of mental instability.
