Chapter 18
Claimed Twice Over
"That's pretty fucked up," Maela said with a grimace as she double-checked her pistol's thermal clip.
"Agreed, that's nightmare stuff," Tyr'Garloh commented while he handed out the last bits of usable supplies from the fallen and the crates scattered on the bridge.
Kevin sat on a crate with his legs dangling off the sides of a corner eating a ration Ralik had taken aboard with them. "Fo you didn't fee anyfing big?"
"No," Arla replied whilst she tweaked her M-9 Tempest to deliver a bit more punch at the expense of the ability to pierce shields. A skill she'd groomed well since her days on the Kellius. "But now we have proof that there are quarians still alive aboard this ship."
"Captain, you can't seriously think that the child wasn't compromised," said Gaal'Meshiir. He hefted a shotgun he'd acquired from a crate that was labeled as destined for the armory. "She ran right into that bullshit."
"I'm not willing to give up on the Ulansal yet, Meshiir." Arla closed up her Tempest and cocked it once to bring the waiting heatsink out of the thermal clip and into the gun proper. "Let's… Let's just get to engineering first, nullify the threat there, then figure out what to do about the Ulansal. We can always extract and return with some support to clean things up here."
"As you say, captain," Gaal'Meshiir said with a salute.
Kevin hopped off the crate, brushed the crumbs from his suit, and replaced his visor. He could practically feel the apprehension coming off of them in waves. The story the Arla's team had told about what they saw in the depths of the ship wasn't remotely comforting, and created several tactical problems going forward. Primarily, with children still roaming the ship—horror vid style or not—they couldn't just shoot anything that moved. He drew his Phalanx in preparation of moving out, wondering just how much the need for hesitation might screw them over.
"Keelah, I could really go for one of your misbegotten dance parties right now," Arla said to him as he stepped close to her. "I wonder if we'll ever get the chance to step back and breathe again like we used to. We had so much free time back then. My biggest worry was whether or not I'd finally manage to land a hit on you in CQC practice." She chuckled to herself and shook her head.
"Those were good drinks, Folner," Tyr'Garloh added from across the room as he holstered a few extra thermal clips.
Kevin smiled as the mere mention of times past brought fond memories to the surface. Trying not to feel like a fool on the control podium as he brought up the music volume. Working with Bela to get everyone dancing one pair at a time. Dancing with Arla, bodies pressed up against each other. Learning all of their little quirks, like Tosh's gaming, Riik's teary vids, Siri's clichés, Bela's ability to sing—
That last one soiled his mood immediately as it always did, and he forced the memories down. He felt the same way Arla did—frustration at knowing they'll probably never have days as good as those again. Not with the imminent war with the geth and the Reapers waiting on call afterward. Times were so much more innocent back then. Now? Their future was sealed in doom and gloom so it seemed and it was getting harder and harder to find ways to bring smiles to anyone.
"Captain, you might want to take a look at these," called one of her marines. He had been up at the front of the bridge trying to isolate some power grids. He was apparently trying to see if he could power a terminal or two to try and get some information.
"What do you have for me?"
"I managed to grab a few text logs out of memory. Trading manifests with the rest of the fleet, incoming and outgoing ships, logging newcomers." He powered up a large terminal screen normally used for something else and brought the list of logs up, then highlighted the last few. "These ones are… curious."
After opening them one at a time, everyone could see why. They mentioned incoming, decades-old ships carrying quarians that, when being logged as newcomers, conflicted with obituaries. Quarians long dead returning to the fleet. They had apparently filed a problem with one of the database engineers and expected to run diagnostics on the software that flagged the entries. It seemed the crew of the Ulansal were quicker to blame the code for the discrepancies than to blame the rising of their own dead. No surprise there. Within days quarians started going missing or were logged as infected. The logs stopped there.
Arla shook her head. "These confirm my mother's accounts. Those were the suit-wearing geth. All they had to do was mimic some mannerisms of a living quarian and they were granted sanctuary… The fleet was always so ready to bring our people back home it became the perfect point of entry." She exhaled and flicked her head at the bridge door. "Come on, we have work to do.
As they all formed up on the door ready to make their push out, the tension increased. The ticks were louder than ever, and it legitimately felt like something was just outside, waiting to consume them. Kevin pictured the hallway outside the door turning into a giant mechanical maw. He hated this ominous oppression pressing down on them all, and so, he spoke up. "Tell you guys what. Once we're done here, I'm turning the Peravaash's cargo bay into a full-fledged nightclub."
Arla gave him a stare.
"Uh. With the captain's permission, of course."
There was actually a chuckle or two at that. Not from Arla, however, who flicked her head to have the door opened. "Let's move."
Two marines pulled the halves apart and barely got them open enough before Targold jumped through, a deep growl resonating down the corridor. Fortunately, or unfortunately in Targold's case, there was nothing to shoot at, punch, or maul. The ticks were there and heavy thumping came from somewhere ahead of them, but there was little else but darkness.
Targold's growl went from one of battle to one of frustration. "Getting really sick of this hide and seek shit. Bastards should just try to kill us already."
Kevin passed by the krogan with a solid slap on the shoulder. "You'll have your chance, big guy."
"I really don't see why we don't just blow the fuck out of this lost cause," Maela put in, rubbing her forehead soothingly. "You all know this is just a bomb waiting to go off."
"Would you risk thousands of lives in a stunt like that if this were an asari vessel?" Tyr'Garloh asked.
"Yes!" Maela coldly stated without a moment's hesitation. "Know when to cut your losses for the better of the rest or risk playing damage control and scrambling to get your footing again."
"A surprisingly military concept for a genetics specialist," Ralik pointed out. "Were this as cut and dry as most conflicts, I'd agree with you."
"But it's not," Arla said. "This is like talking about blowing up an entire ward of your precious Citadel just because an invading force got a foothold. We aren't talking about militants who signed on for chaos and loss, we're talking about children, parents, teachers, caretakers."
"Assuming any are even left," Maela added. "It looks to me like whatever got in here made sure to get everything. We can't ignore the slaughter we walked in on."
"Not all of us can choose such cold, calculating methods so easily, Maela," Kevin said as he aimed up into an air vent suspiciously lacking a grate cover. "Especially not when you've seen a child with your own eyes."
"But the child—"
"Let it go, Maela," Targold rumbled in interruption. "Arguing just makes it harder to hear the enemy sneaking up on you." He paused as he lit a side corridor to check for enemies. Lacking any, he moved on. "Besides. Just walking out and blowing it up? Coward's way out. There'll be plenty of pyrrhic victories to go around with the reapers having their way, no need to go making some of our own."
That settled things well enough, even if Maela clearly didn't agree. The semi-silence resumed as the group focused more on keeping the corridors clear instead of debating the ethics of decisions made. Something thumped again somewhere in the ship, causing the deep tremors to echo several times over in the ship's frame. The deeper into the dark ship they moved, the more rhythmic the low frequency clunks became. Ten minutes of white-knuckling their guns in and the stress-inducing drum came regularly.
"Every forty-three seconds," Ralik announced to no one in particular.
"I'd care less if I didn't already have a pounding headache that matched it perfectly," Arla said, grinding her teeth with every word.
She has a headache too? Kevin noted. Just another red flag to add to the crimson sea.
Fifteen minutes of nothing but claustrophobic corridors and omni-light beams in and Kevin begin to hear incomprehensible whispers mixed with the ticks. "Anyone hear that?" he asked? "Sounds like people talking somewhere. Or everywhere." There were several nods. At least I'm not losing my mind. That, or we all are.
"Survivors?" Tyr'Garloh asked, hopeful.
"Can't make out what they're saying," Ralik noted. "Like thousands and thousands all at once stumbling over each other."
"That's just fucking great," Maela groaned. "I'm telling you, this boat's gone to whatever version of hell you believe in."
"That's not khelish, whatever it is," Arla pointed out. "Just… I don't know, babbling. Nonsense."
Half of the way to engineering, the thumping suddenly stopped. Its sudden absence made everyone else stop as well in expectation of an attack. After a few tense minutes of complete and nerve-wracking silence, they resumed.
Arla tapped Tyr on the shoulder once they started moving again. "Tyr, get the Peravaash on the comms and tell them what we plan to do. Make sure they know the ship is compromised, that we might be leaving in a hurry, and that the airlock might be hot when we call for extraction."
"Yes ma'am," Tyr said, and he fell to the back of the group to make the call.
The ticks resumed, and they were much louder than ever. Kevin could feel the thumps in his head pressing down him alongside the headache even though he couldn't hear them anymore. What the hell is going on in here?
Tyr soon returned and called for the captain. "Captain, we have a problem." As he spoke, he looked down a side corridor as per the usual where the ticks seemed particularly loud.
Kevin looked down that hallway as well, feeling his hackles rising. Five gray figures the size and shape of quarians were crawling towards them at high speed. Their forearms and lower legs ended in malicious points. None of them wore suits, and all of them sported stomach-churning technological additions that could only be the result of reaper tech. They had no face; tubes and mechanics made up their visage now. Their mouths were permanently pried wide open by what looked like the barrel of a gun jutting out from inside their heads.
"Holy fucking shit!" Kevin screamed as he lifted his pistol and immediately began to open fire. Tyr did likewise, and the cue was taken immediately and the team followed suit with similar curses filling the air amongst gunfire. One by one the speedy horrors fell about one-thrid the way up that corridor from the team's position. When the five things were no longer moving, everyone hustled over to get a better look at what they were dealing with.
"By the Goddess," Maela said, reaching a hand out and pulling back. "What… are they what I think they—"
"Those, my dear asari, are husks," Kevin stated rather bluntly, brow furrowed deep. He knew that mutated look from firsthand knowledge, though it was his first time seeing it done to a quarian body.
"Keelah…" Arla said, horrified. "Quarian husks. No… That means…"
"It means our job just got a hell of a lot harder," Targold said, eyes narrowing. "You said this ship held thousands of quarians?"
"Nearly a hundred thousand strong," Tyr said flatly. He saw where Targold was going.
"Then we're in a nest of nearly a hundred thousand of those shitheads, and we still have to get to engineering." The krogan smirked. "My kind of odds."
"Fuck that," Maela spat. "I think now's a good time to call in the damn artillery. Look at that shit!" She pointed one of the dead husks with her gun. "Look hard! This is what this ship is now! We need to get the fuck out!"
Arla put a hand to her helmet and shook her head. "Shit… Just shut up for a second! Shit…"
Her decision making was cut short when more husks came at them from down the hall they had just come from. Nine this time, some wearing broken and malformed exosuits stripped of all color and all disfigured to the point they reflexively sent shivers up the spine. Some crawled on the floor, some on the walls, and some on the ceiling. A few even fired on the cluster of the living. The shots were rapid, unsubstantial, and inaccurate, but when several husks were shooting at once, the otherwise unimpressive firepower suddenly became dangerous. Kinetic barriers held, but the speedy approach of the creatures allowed them to get far too close before they could be put down.
"Those came from behind us," Gaal'Meshiir explained. "If we stop moving, we get boxed in."
"Damnit!" Arla pounded the wall with the side of her fist and started back towards the intersection they recently came from. "Peravaash, this is Captain Tavval. Prepare for extraction."
Kevin heard Maela sigh in relief. What he didn't hear was a reply.
"Peravaash? Tira'Selh? Come in!"
Kevin looked at Targold. Targold looked at Tyr. Tyr looked at Arla. Arla looked at Maela. No reply at all.
"That was the problem I was about to inform you of, captain," Tyr said.
"Fuuuuuuuuuck!" the asari shouted at the ceiling.
"Damnit," Ralik murmured as he stared at his omni-tool. "Blanket jamming. Every channel is scrambled. Every. Single. One."
"Taetrus all over again," Arla said in despair. "We're on our own here." She shook her head and balled her hands into tight fists. Kevin could swear he heard the handle of her Tempest threatening to collapse. The quarian captain suddenly howled in anger, spun around, and emptied a thermal clip into one of the husks on the floor. Naturally, everyone jumped away at the sudden fury.
"Arla, what the hell—" Kevin started before Arla bowled right over him.
"Move it. To engineering." She ejected the thermal clip and it flew away, glowing in the darkness. "I'm not losing two-thirds of another team sitting on our asses. If we can't extract, we do our original job and get the power back and I'll drive this ship right into Tikkun myself."
"Hah!" Targold yelled and pounded his fists together. "This one's got a quad after all!"
The ticks surrounded them again. Kevin had protests for that idea, but now was not the time and the whispers were getting louder. Orders given, the team started a fast march towards engineering.
The husks kept coming in groups; sometimes as few as three and sometimes as many as fifteen or more. More than once the team had to back-step in order to avoid getting caught in a messy melee situation. Targold was their battering ram for most of it, however—he preferred to keep moving forward even after he took a nasty cut to the side of his head barely deflected by his plate. Maela had offered him medi-gel, but the stubborn tank refused and moved on.
"I could use a few new scars," was his only rationalization.
Kevin could tell each fight was killing Arla on the inside. It was especially evident when the husks coming at them were smaller in stature yet no less mutated. Every once in a while he could hear her say "I'm so sorry" after a group was felled. This is the reapers' favorite game, he thought. Turning one's own kind against them in the most horrific way possible.
They were two-thirds the way to engineering now, according to Ralik's estimations. They had fought through at least two dozen groups of quarian husks and if they hadn't already experienced the constant battle at the frontlines of the reaper invasion on Taetrus, they might have started to slow down from the excessive combat.
"There should be a large room down that corridor," Ralik noted. "Well, large by quarian standards. Some kind of atrium or auditorium?"
"Something like that," Gaal'Meshiir responded. "Meeting place, mass education, and on occasion, a great place for children all over the ship to watch vids."
Something big roared there too, cutting off the conversation like a knife through a taut string. It was the same mechanized roar they'd been hearing since their arrival. The thumps started to resume again, and of course they seemed to emanate from that direction as well.
"Should we check it out or go around?" Kevin asked.
"Go around," Arla commanded. "We don't have time to fight whatever the hell's in there and we're having enough trouble keeping the regular ones off our ass."
"We should be able to get to engineering through an alternate path a deck down," Ralik said as he consulted his omni-tool.
Nods were had all around and the team took a sharp left into a corridor that led down some stairs—and another batch of husks charging up at them from the black depths. Having to crawl up towards the team didn't seem to put them at any particular disadvantage, and their sudden charge allowed them to get in melee range.
Kevin and Targold immediately switched tactics and went into CQC mode. Kevin shifted his pistol to his left hand and used his right to pull the black monomolecular blade from the scabbard on the small of his back. He immediately went into his first swing with lethal force, chopping off the whole of a weaponized quarian arm before it could pierce him, then brought it quickly back to stab right into the thing's neck. It leaked a mix of grey-blue fluid wherever he sliced; a far cry from the red he was used to seeing.
He reflexively ducked as Targold grabbed a husk by the forearms and hammered it into the wall once before using it against its own. The creature still manage to fire off a few rounds from its mouth at Targold's side before the krogan remembered to crush its skull. Luckily those shots were handled by kinetic barriers. Kevin and Targold worked together with a strange synchronicity to end the last four husks in the group. Everyone moved on without a second thought.
"Fuck this headache!" Maela shouted as they passed through a circular room crowded with crates. "I can't concentrate on shooting shit when the damn whispers won't stop!"
Kevin and Arla both stopped, looked at each other, then they looked at Maela.
"Oh hell," Kevin muttered. "Arla, remember back on that planet when we were inside that mountain?"
She nodded. "The headaches, the hallucinations, the whispers… Yeah, I think I know what's going on."
"I remember that too. How?" Gaal'Meshiir said, two fingers to the side of his helmet. "And that conversation when we were trying to hack the conduit…" He stopped short and looked over at Arla. "Uh…"
Kevin slapped the quarian marine. "Those are my memories, Gaal. Private memories. Get out of my head."
"Keelah, I didn't do that." Gaal said, perplexed and somewhat abashed. "What the hell?"
"Indoctrination," Ralik said flatly. "I read a report on experiments performed on some salarians on Virmire dealing in reaper-based indoctrination. It seems our symptoms are… frighteningly similar to theirs in the early to middle stages."
"Our fuse is shorter than I thought," Arla said. "No time to waste unless you want to end up a drooling servant of the reapers."
"Goddess. Why do the reapers have to be so fucking fascinating? A race of machines knowing the perfect ways to get into organic heads without any direct interface…" Maela shivered. "And ways to completely alter the genetic makeup of an organic host at fundamental level…"
"We're almost there," Gaal'Meshiir said, needing to change the subject. "There's a huge amount of debris blocking the main entrance to engineering ahead, probably about two more minutes."
Kevin flicked a thumb towards the asari. "We can handle that. It won't—"
A massive mechanical roar sounded off behind them from the top of the stairs they had only just descended. The entire team turned around as the roar echoed around the circular room, guns at the ready.
What moved down the stairs was absolutely not a husk. It was so big that it took up the entire corridor. It didn't so much as walk or crawl down the stairs as it did hover. It had no real shape, but rather looked like an extremely complex and condensed web of tens of quarian husk bodies woven in a large net around some kind of central core. Six bright orange eyes, three to each side of the central core, glowed bright and angry. Sharp, pointed husk arms and legs poked out like the thorns all over it, each one segmented like an insect legs. Red arcs of electricity traced all around the husk net and occasionally snapped at walls or any other metal surface near it.
"What in the actual hell is that?" Kevin wondered aloud. He took a step backwards, feeling no immediate need to be any closer to the horrifying amalgamation. He spotted multiple areas where the skulls of several quarian husks—mouth guns and all—were crunched together to form multi-barreled weapons. "Goddamnit, how do we fight something like that?"
As if that weren't enough, a swarm of reaper-infused combat drones exploded out of it and began tracking towards the group. A roar followed them.
"Right now, we don't!" Arla stated as she tapped on her omni-tool. A combat drone rather familiar to Kevin was microfactured on the spot and it hovered by Arla with purpose. Arla reached out to the drone as if petting it affectionately. "Alright, Tula'Rok. Buy us some time." The drone chirped and flew at the oncoming swarm as Arla began to head out of the room towards engineering.
It wasn't alone, however. Several other combat drones appeared from other quarians in Arla and Tyr's combined fireteam, outnumbering the reaper drone swarm by a few. In an instant, the circular room was alight with pure chaos akin to a space battle, drones flying this way and that, energy weapons and electrical discharges turning the whole place into a no-man's land. Kevin's brow furrowed and he started to gather dark energy to himself.
Arla grabbed Kevin's arm. "Kevin, no! We don't have time to poke at it! Come on, while the drones are keeping it busy!"
"Damnit!" Kevin shouted as he turned from the room and followed the group. Another roar followed them out.
Gaal'Meshiir skidded to a stop in front of the engineering blockade and waved everyone over. "If we're quick we can use all that shit blocking the door as a way to keep that thing off us."
"I get you," Maela said as she started to lower the mass of several of the same gargantuan ship parts that Arla and her group couldn't even budge earlier. Right away several quarians and Targold were heaving up these large pieces and dragging them back the way they came. When Kevin arrived and joined with the biotic lifts, the blockade began to come apart piece by piece. With everyone working in tandem, the barricade dissolved, moved, and coalesced once again behind them.
And not a moment too soon. The creature's drones slammed up against the barricade several times before they met their predetermined end. The thumping resumed soon after. Arla and Gaal dropped the last piece against the stack and backed away with the rest of the team. The pounding was faster than ever and the angry drums beat to a rhythm everyone seemed to understand.
I'll be waiting.
They didn't have time to contemplate what to do about it just yet, however. With one final glance towards the barricade, Kevin and the others headed for the huge engineering doors. This door was split into four triangles, one on each side with their points touching at the center. It wasn't completely shut for some reason, but this served them well—they might not have been able to get it open otherwise. Everyone shimmied through, though Targold had a hell of a time squeezing through the thin aperture.
"Fatty," Kevin said over his shoulder as the krogan's armor momentarily caught on one of the door's points. Ahead of him was engineering, dark as pitch, a host of lightbeams scattering off distant engine parts. Skittering and ticking echoed from everywhere, inside engineering. There was an air of defeat about the room, and the quiet only served to make one point quite apparent.
"There's no survivors here," Arla flatly announced as her omni-light focused on a quarian husk crawling across one of the engine's two tall, wall-mounted mass effect cores. "I don't think there ever were." Indeed, other lights illuminated various pools of old quarian blood scattered about. The bodies, as had become typical for this trip, were gone and crawling around the engine room. "Xelvas'taersh, search and destroy. Try not to damage the engines."
"Yes captain!" was the immediate reply and the entire team began fanning out. Shots rang out as husks came into view and were shot down in quick succession. The husks eventually all seemed to come out of a trance and started rushing the team, causing them to back up towards the door. The firefight was quick, but incredibly tense. It was only a minute or two before the totality of the husks in the room were eliminated.
There was collection of powerful slams against the barricade behind them and the skittering and ticking faded into silence. The silence that should have given them some solace only gave them apprehension as a meager replacement.
"They stopped?" Maela asked no one in particular.
"Gaal'Meshiir," Arla ordered, "take four with you and do a sweep and clear of engineering."
"Yes ma'am," he replied with a salute and he chose four marines to go with him. They started immediately to the right of the door and began with a perimeter sweep.
Kevin quickly noticed that the pounding in his head was the strongest it had been since they boarded the ship. It made his eyes feel like they were going to explode from their sockets. A quick glance at Arla and a few others made it clear that everyone was feeling it. "Yeah… whatever it is, it's got to be in here. My head feels like it's going to explode."
Ralik brought up his omni-tool. "Agreed. I'll work on getting some lights on in here so we can see what we're dealing with. Tyr, care to assist? Quarian tech is still moderately foreign to me."
"Of course. Primary lighting junction should be this way."
The two of them headed off to the left with lights and guns at the ready, just in case. The rest took a moment to set up some defensible positions around the engineering door in the event that something broke through using huge crates and what looked like broken engine parts. By the time they had finished, a number of emergency lights had come on. They weren't particularly bright, but they managed to illuminate the enough of engine room to serve their needs.
And there it was, dead center of the four power reactors jutting from the floor in a square at the center of the room; a huge gnarled structure seemingly made of impossible architecture and clearly of reaper origin. Massive cables snaked all over engineering, siphoning energy from power conduits connected to the reactors. It seemed to pulse with an otherworldly energy that was more felt than seen, and each throb of the head synced up to that pulse.
"Would you look at that," Targold mentioned rather casually. "It's like everything the reapers touch gets cursed with the ugly."
"Room is clear," Gaal'Meshiir reported. His job had been a lot easier with the lights on.
"If that's the source of the indoctrination, we need to get it shut down right the hell now," Kevin said. "Arla and I have already been exposed to this, and I don't want to find out if the effect is cumulative."
"Ugh, yes. Please, the whispers and the headache needs to stop before I lose my mind," Arla noted. "Thoughts?"
"Jamming appears to be sourced in this room as well," Tyr'Garloh noted with a nod towards the pulsing reaper construct. "We cut that off, we can tell the Peravaash what the hell is going on."
Ralik scanned the cables. "An entire Homeship's-worth of power is running that. If we try to cut these cables, we'll just electrocute ourselves. If we could cut the power to the reactors themselves…"
"We can cycle it," Tyr said with urgency. "If we can get control of any of the terminals in here, we can cycle the power and perform a reactor coolant flush. Should give us at least half an hour before things go live again."
"That's our plan, then," Arla declared. "Let's get those reactors down and we can finish off this nightmare."
Suddenly, the Ulansal rocked slightly while deep a metal thunk-thunk-thunk and accompanying metallic groan shook through the entire ship.
"The hell?" Gaal'Meshiir said, his sentiments quickly mirrored by several others as they all looked amongst each other, guns raised.
"That sounded like a ship was clamping on," Kevin realized aloud. "Didn't we tell them to wait?"
Arla was frantically shaking her head. "Tira'Selh was under direct orders not to board again until we called for them! They'll get swarmed!" She turned towards the others, growling. "Get that thing cut NOW!"
"Move away a short distance." Captain Arla'Tavval ordered over the comms just minutes into the mission. "Things are far worse here than we thought. Keep alert and be ready to move on any of my commands."
Tira'Selh looked nervously at the others on the bridge of the Peravaash. "As you say, captain." A few taps on the terminal in front of her and the pilot disconnected her ship from the Ulansal.
That was over four silent hours ago.
"Shit!" Tira'Selh cried in dismay as one of her most powerful assets in her game of Kepesh-Yakshi were removed. "I'm pretty sure that's an illegal move, Jela. Damn cheater."
Jela'Nuhk leaned back in her co-pilot chair, quite satisfied with herself. "It's not illegal, you just suck ass at strategy."
"I'm telling you, we need to dock," said Cer'Amerlos, the marine that Arla left 'in charge' of the Peravaash while they were on the Homeship. "Something obviously went wrong."
"That's exactly why we can't dock, Cer," Tira countered. "Unless they call for us, we could just be bringing whatever went wrong on board." Her voice was calm, her posture relaxed, but her mind was racing and her heart was trying to run away with her breath. She needed to be in control, seen as confident. She couldn't have anyone questioning her ability to fly this ship, especially if things have gone to hell. The game was helping—until she started losing so miserably.
Cer'Amerlos pounded his fist against the nearest bulkhead. "This is bullshit! She left me in charge, why won't you follow orders?"
She rolled her eyes. "Because we both know that this ship doesn't go anywhere I don't want it to, no matter who is in charge. Look, I know how you feel, but we need to follow protocol on this instead of our gut." Her words felt like a betrayal. She absolutely wanted to dock and board to help figure out what happened.
"Get your impulses under control, Cer." said Jela'Nuhk. "We're Xelvas'taersh, not patrol fleet. Give them some confidence and time. They'll come out of it like they always do."
Cer gestured towards the comms terminal, dark and still waiting for messages. "We should have at least heard something by now. Further orders, check-ins, status updates, anything. This has disaster written all over it." He threw himself into the last unoccupied co-pilot chair and ran a hand down over his visor. "I hate waiting like this."
"Then maybe you shouldn't have volunteered to stay behind, dumbass." Tira said with a lighthearted chuckle.
Her laugh didn't do much to improve moods. The silence from the strike teams was so oppressive that it was almost painful. All of Squad Zero was aboard, as were most of the highest profile Squad One marines. The best of the Xelvas'taersh was in there and not a single word had come back. What could the few left behind hope to do if their best had been killed? As if the silence wasn't uncomfortable enough. Tira had been busying herself with wholly unnecessary calibrations and engine tweaks to keep her mind occupied and alert. When she had run out of those, she agreed to a game with Jela. Better that then let the radio silence eat at her sanity. Even then she wasn't sure they could last another hour wondering.
"Peravaash, do you read? Damnit, Tira, where are you?" crackled the comms. It was Lan'Karthal and he sounded frustrated, tired, and possibly injured.
The sudden noise made on the bridge everyone flinch and Tira nearly fell out of her chair from trying to respond so fast. "This is the Peravaash! Keelah it's good to hear from you guys again!"
"Thank the ancestors… Tira, it's bad over here. We're hurt and the captain's comms are offline." He grunted as if raggedly leaning back against a wall. "She wants you to dock and lock the ship so we can exfil immediately before things get worse."
The hologame blinked out as everyone except Tira stood. Something did go horribly wrong. Tira's hands went straight to the controls but her fingers stopped just millimeters shy of the haptic interface. "The captain told us to wait for her commands," she said to the other marines on the bridge. The comms were decidedly off for that. "I know it's a technicality, but…"
"Now's not a good time to be debating semantics, Tira," Jela said as she grabbed her gun off of a nearby console. "Let's go pull them out of hell."
"Agreed," Cer said, already armed and heading aft for the boarding corridor, all too eager to finally be doing something.
Tira nodded to herself and entered the approach and board commands into the terminal. The process for boarding an unmoving ship was largely automated, so she too took up her M-15 Vindicator and headed aft behind the others.
Half of the way back, Jela took a left into the Peravaash's med-bay. "I'm going to get things ready for the injured and pull out some anti-biotics."
"Okay," Tira quickly replied. The ship shook and clanked as the boarding umbilical clamped onto the Ulansal, causing a resounding thunk-thunk-thunk with a metallic groan to echo up and down the Ulansal. The sound of the boarding umbilical's far side door was almost immediate, as were the echoes of the footsteps of who she assumed was Lan'Karthal.
Tira had just gotten Cer in view through the corridor to the boarding room when she heard him ask Lan, "Where's the rest?" The only reply Cer'Amerlos received, however, was a series of point-blank rifle rounds. His shields never stood a chance, and a spray of red blood spattered the wall out of sight behind him.
Keelah! Tira's breath left her on the spot. She stood in the final doorway, too stunned to step into that last room. Time seemed to slow down as she watched her fellow Xelvas'taersh fall backward, dead long before he even hit the ground. She saw Lan'Karthal step into sight where Cer had just been standing, hardly looking as disheveled or battered as he'd sounded. He looked down at his fallen fleetmate then turned his head to look at Tira.
The sight of an assault rifle turning on her shook her from the momentary stupor. She gasped, stepped back, and pressed on the panel to shut the door just in time—two rifle rounds ricocheted off of her kinetic barriers and the rest blocked by the thick bulkhead. Worse, she saw grotesque gray things crawling like massive malformed insects the size of a quarian swarming into the room behind Lan. Her first instinct after that was to go to her omni-tool and overload the door's access panels. Several panels near the door sparked, smoked, and burst small flames, and the access panels went dark.
Tira tried to catch her breath in vain, her mind and heart racing. What just happened? Did Lan'Karthal just… shoot his own? Some imposter maybe? What the hell were those… things? Loud thumps against the door made her jump backwards and stumble, her rifle raised despite the door separating her from the threat. The thumping subsided to an endless ticking that pervaded the corridor. Tira didn't know what else to do—she backed up and ran for the bridge.
As she ran, she stopped at every door and overloaded the access panels. "Jela!" she called over ad-hoc comms. "Jela, head for the bridge! Forget the anti-biotics!"
"What? I heard gun shots, what's going on? Is everyone alr—"
"Jela, I… I don't know. It was Lan'Karthal, but he just killed Cer! He shot at me too! Just hurry to the bridge, I'm burning out the doors to keep him out!"
"Oh Keelah…"
Four sabotaged doors later, Tira met Jela'Nuhk up on the bridge. "It gets worse," Tira sputtered between breaths. "Something came with Lan aboard the ship."
"Something?"
"Yes, something! Lots of something! I don't know, they were crawling, grey, and they didn't attack Lan…" She fell into her pilot's chair intending to do something. But what?
"Well, let's space the little shits, then."
Tira took a deep breath. There was something she do. She set to work without a word, commanding the Peravaash to unclamp and move away from—
Access denied.
Her hands froze. "Wait, what? I'm the damn pilot, I have root access…"
"What's wrong?" Jela asked as she gingerly leaned on the back of Tira's chair.
"I'm… I'm apparently locked out of my own airlock control. I can't unclamp the ship if I can't get that airlock shut." She tried a few workarounds, but there was only so much knowledge of human ship systems she knew and nothing she tried could get her through. She wasn't a hacker or programmer any more than most pilots—her specialty was crazy flying, not crazy software. Every attempt failed and she slammed the counter through the haptic interface in frustration as more and more systems seemed to vanish from her control.
Jela shook her head. "Lan'Karthal doesn't have anywhere near the kind of access for that. He has to be hacking from his end somehow."
"I'm not even sure that's Lan. Either way, we can't space him and we sure as hell aren't going anywhere. We need to think of something else."
"Tira'Selh." Came Lan's unnervingly calm and somewhat smug voice over the comms. "Tiraaaaa. I know you can hear me. Why do you struggle?"
"Asshole," Jela said as she attempted to get camera feed from that room.
"What are you trying to accomplish here?" Lan continued in that calm, melodic voice. Lan was never calm and melodic. "Your little strike teams, our doomed battle with the geth over Rannoch… What is the point? The harvest is at hand." Whatever the harvest was, he seemed glad it was 'at hand'.
One of the terminals on the side of the bridge lit up with camera feed of the room and it made Tira's eyes go wide. The room was completely covered in those crawling things. Lan was standing in the center, arms at his side, just staring at the door that she'd first overloaded as if he weren't completely surrounded by monsters. He then looked up at the camera as if he could tell they were watching him.
"The galaxy is bathing in fire and we're out here poking at dead ships. Look how utterly misguided we are. The geth aren't the real power to fear. They're just the tools!"
"Keelah… What the hell is all that? Are… are those…" Jela shivered at whatever she was thinking. They both shivered when every one of those crawling things seemed to look up at the camera at the same time. Their 'faces' looked more like quarian visors—featureless and lacking in all things quarian.
"We could be preserved for eternity, but we'd rather just cause our own extinction time and time again. We've already made that mistake once, and the geth are the testament to our utmost ignorance."
A number of the monsters skittered out of the room and through the door that Tira had shut and she swallowed hard. They were getting through doors she destroyed the access to! "Oh shit."
"The geth at the planet we call Rannoch aren't even geth anymore. They serve a higher purpose now. Unfortunate… for us, perhaps."
"Tira, what the hell is he talking about? The geth the flotilla is heading to fight right now… not geth anymore?"
"Nevermind that, Jela. We need to think of something else. The ship is compromised and we don't have very long before they make it up here."
"Well, what can we do from up here?"
"The reapers have come for us, Tira. They come to cleanse this galaxy, harvest and exterminate us all like little more than the growths we used to clean from air filters. You and I will be no different. Isn't preservation preferable to extinction?"
"I might be able to force an eezo core detonation or overload the engines…" Such miserable options. Her only course of action is to blow themselves up to stop the likes of Lan'Karthal? "I don't even know what systems I have access to anymore."
Jela slowly shook her head. "Dramatic. And we still don't even know if the captain and the others are alive. If they are, we'd be killing off their only means of escape."
Tira ground her teeth. Running out of time and options, she had to decide on something and it had to be done fast. "I might be able to hardlock the ship, shut everything down and require DNA verification from the captain." A feature courtesy of the ship's creators. "It might not stop Lan, but it'll keep the ship out of his hands long enough for… well, for the captain to return and take it back. If… If she's still out there."
"If she's not, we might just be handing the ship over to whatever Lan has planned…" She looked back to the camera feed, but Lan was no longer there. He had ventured further in and more and more creatures followed in from the Ulansal. "I'm willing to guess that he's going to go straight for another homeship with this ugly-ass payload."
Tira realized that Jela was right. If the captain wasn't going to retake the ship, they would be further endangering the Migrant Fleet by letting Lan use the Peravaash as an easy way in during the chaos of the battle with the geth. With everyone so focused on the battle, hundreds of thousands might be killed before they can be contained…
Ticking filled the room outside the bridge and a calm knock on the bulkhead signaled Lan's presence.
Jela looked Tira right in the eyes and took a quick, quivering breath. "Blow it. For the Migrant Fleet." She held up her gun and took position behind one of the seats, ready to fight to her last breath. "Send these assholes back into the void!"
Tira let out a long breath and put her hands to the haptic interface. To her surprise, she still had access to the systems she needed in order to force a chain reaction failure in the element zero core. She began the steps, fighting with everything she had to do what she needed to do. What I need to do.
"Tira… Peravaash come in… Anyone! Tira'Selh, Cer'Amerlos? Can you hear me?"
By the ancestors, it was captain Tavval!
"What the hell are… doing? Do NOT… ship! I repeat, do NOT dock the ship!"
Jela looked over to Tira, sighing in relief. "Well, at least we know it's the real captain." She wouldn't have asked them to dock the ship with a danger like Lan and his minions lying in wait.
Tira wasted no time. She immediately started the hardlock process, knowing full well that it would only end with them facing down Lan and his abominations. Once the process had begun, she opened comms to her captain. She only had a short time to get a message out before the hardlock shut down the entire ship.
"Tiraaaaaaa," Lan called to her, through the bulkhead this time, nearly sing-song in the way he mocked her. "Delay delay delay as you might, you cannot hope to win the fight."
"Captain Arla'Tavval, this is Tira'Selh and Jela'Nohk aboard the Peravaash." She took a deep breath and grabbed her Vindicator, swallowing hard. "I… I am so sorry captain. We docked due to call for help from Lan'Karthal."
"Lan'Karthal is alive?"
Lan knocked again. "Ever so alive! Isn't that right, Tira'Sehl vas Failure?"
"He is, but the call was a trick. He betrayed us and killed Cer'Amerlos. There are lots of… things here on the ship with him. The Peravaash is entirely compromised. I am hardlocking everything as we speak."
"Wait, that'll—"
Tira looked to Jela, tears in her eyes. "We failed you, captain. I failed you. I am so, so sorry… Please find it in your hearts to forgive us."
"Tira, wait wait wait!"
"Long live the Xelvas'taersh!"
The power on the ship shut off just after 'Xelvas' and darkness filled the bridge. Not more than a few seconds later, the door out of the bridge began to open by fits and starts as it was pried open by the monsters. Beyond that growing gap, ghostly blue specs filled the blackness. Two of those specs, somewhere, were Lan's.
"Long live the Xelvas'taersh," Tira repeated, her voice quiet and quivering.
The bridge lit up with rifle fire as the two quarian women made their final stand.
"Tira! Damnit, girl, respond!" Arla tried over the comms.
It was the fourth time without a response. Kevin heard her growl in fury and ducked as she threw the cable link she had been holding across the dim engine room. It soared over his head and hit the far side hard enough to disfigure it before clanking to the floor.
"Can we even get back to the Peravaash from here?" Gaal'Meshiir asked as he reconnected a final power cable. They were trying to reroute the power back to the ship's engines despite the way the now-powerless reaper device had essentially snaked throughout the entire system. They still wanted to at least save the ship and take care of the ugly business later.
Tyr'Garloh was busy on his omni-tool. With the cables rerouted, it was time to finish off the cycling process. "There are maintenance hatches out of this room that go up a few decks. We can find a way—"
Fire, smoke, and heavy shrapnel burst from the wall at the back of the room that separated them from the majority of the heavy machinery that powered the ship's thrusters. A collection of sizable explosions followed shortly after, each in different places on the same wall. Everyone ducked, the quarians instinctively grabbing for purchase on anything in the event that the blasts caused a hull breach.
Once the deafening reverberations finally died off, Maela pulled out her pistol and looked around. "God-fucking-damnit! What happened?"
Arla stood with the rest, cautious. "Tyr, check that out. Ralik, bring up the schematics and find me a way out."
Tyr, who rather bluntly invited Targold to act as a meat shield in the event of another blast, headed for the back wall. Amusingly. Targold obliged with a grin. Ralik pulled up his omni-tool and immediately projected a slightly larger than normal holographic representation of the entire engineering room. Some quick, yet precise taps later, four hollowed out columns—one maintenance hatch at each corner of the engine room—glowed brighter than the rest.
"There we are," Ralik said with a nod as he showed the captain.
Arla looked intently at the holograph, then to an upper corner of the engine room where one of the columns would be. She nodded. "That one. Get up there and make sure it's open. We're getting out of this shit right now." After Ralik had jogged off towards the nearest ladder, she glanced over her shoulder towards Tyr to monitor his progress and it looked like he had just finished a detailed scan. "I need some good news, Garloh."
Tyr shook his head. "Then I should apologize in advance. From what I see here, those things cannibalized a downright offensive amount of the Ulansal's engines to assemble some of that amalgamation they built." He shut down his omni-tool, waved away a dense plume of smoke, then strode towards Arla. "This ship isn't going anywhere any time soon, if ever."
Kevin sighed and tried to rub his temples, an emotive gesture he hadn't lost even after all these months of wearing an exosuit. The ability to bring the ship back into the fold afterward was a crucial of their plan. Now they can't even do that. Maybe it really IS best that we just scuttle the damn thing, he thought with dismay.
"Why can't we ever just catch a break?" Arla muttered with a shake of the head.
"Some days I do feel cursed," Tyr said, exasperated.
"How did the reapers plan on using the ship to undermine anything if it has no engine to move it?" Kevin asked contemplatively. There had to be something else. Push it, maybe? Rebuild the engine? His thoughts were cut off by the loud, echoing clank of the door to the maintenance hatch that Ralik was investigating smacking the floor.
"Sorry!" Ralik yelled down. "Hinges were barely attached at all!"
"Not our problem right now," Arla said rather curtly before nodding toward Ralik. "Let's move before we get any more surprises. I have a traitor to space from my ship."
Everyone got moving and made their way up the shaky ladder, which was made even shakier when Targold, second from last and just behind Kevin, started on it. Kevin wasn't very confident the old thing would hold under all the weight. Somehow it did, and soon everyone except Targold and Maela behind him were in the maintenance shaft. That's when the krogan's bulky armor got caught on the entrance, which was just smaller than the shaft itself.
Several failed attempts to squeeze in later, Maela voiced her impatience. "Move it, fatass! I don't want to be under you when this piece of shit for a ladder finally comes loose!"
Targold growled and used his armored fist like a hammer, punching the inside of the hatch until the aged metal gave way and warped extensively. With an awkward turn of his body to fit his hump through the newly enlarged space, he was finally able to climb in. Before he could even get both legs inside, however, another series of explosions from the engine caused the entire ship to rock. The ladder fell out from under him and he gripped the broken hinges as his footing fell away, Maela still aboard. Targold climbed in without much strain, giving Kevin a view of the asari looking up at them with wide eyes.
Maela climbed the last few rungs in a panic, then tried to jump from the top. She merely kicked the falling metal out from underneath her, leaving her mid-air and moving in slow motion towards the hatch. Kevin quickly gathered a small amount of dark energy to himself to be used to lower her mass to nothing, but he quickly realized that the slow motion wasn't his perception of the events. Maela was actually floating, rather slowly, towards them. The ladder under her bounced off the floor as the bottom rungs smacked it and proceeded to float upwards with a slight spin to it.
No gravity, Kevin realized, embarrassed it took him this long to figure it out. The explosions must have finally knocked out whatever was keeping it on. He used the small amount of dark energy he did manage to gather to biotically give Maela a chain of low-mass fields to 'fall' into, much the same way the ship's mass effect cores did to assist in space flight. As a result, her progress towards the hatch increased dramatically until Kevin was close enough to reach out, clasp her hand, and pull her in.
The panting asari took a moment to calm herself down. "Fuck my life. Thanks, Folner. I'd shove my tongue in your mouth, but you keep insisting you wear that damn helmet."
"You need to stop trying to die." Kevin grinned under his helmet, wishing she could see it.
"Let's keep moving," Arla growled from the front of the line. "No time for you two to bump suits." A quarian idiom for 'fuck around', both literally and figuratively, that Kevin had learned from Nor.
"She sounds jealous," Maela muttered as the line started to move.
Kevin gave her a sideways glance through the edges of his visor. "Not now, T'Vess. We have enough problems to deal with without you agitating the captain. Again."
"Maybe if someone fucked her up the ass she wouldn't need that stick—"
"Maela!" Kevin growled, looking directly back at her this time. "Not. Now."
The asari rolled her eyes but she complied and fell in line without more commentary.
A couple minutes of silent climbing passed. It wasn't really climbing; more like swimming through the maintenance shaft, each person using their hands to tug on ladder rungs, displaced frames, or anything else they can find purchase on to pull them through the weightless square tube. When the sudden stop came, it caused each person to bump into the one in front of them.
"What's going on up—" Kevin started to ask before he was hushed by the others up front. The following silence answered his question in the form of the quick, light ticking of metal on metal coming from somewhere ahead of them.
"Keelah, no breaks to be caught at all." Arla readied her Tempest SMG and aimed ahead through the maintenance shaft. Tyr, Ralik, Gal, and one of the other quarians Kevin still didn't know the name of crowded up front around their captain, each allowing the other just enough space to see and aim their weapon. "Hold!" Arla shouted as the ticking changed from a distant sparse echo to something like a waterfall that just broke free of a dam.
Kevin couldn't see much of what was going on since Targold blocked most of the view forward and the crowd at the front blocked anything else. He didn't need to, though. That sound was unmistakable. He heard Arla shout for them to hold one more time, and he heard a loud metal clank echo in from somewhere in engineering. It sounded just like when Ralik pulled off the hatch… Oh shit.
Kevin pulled out his Phaeston. He was going to need to put out more shots than his pistol would be good for. "Whatever you're going to do, Arla, do it soon! We're about to be turned into an ugly reaper sandwich!"
Targold, Maela, and a few other quarians did likewise as those on the other end and created a veritable wall of guns with Kevin. He heard the captain give the order for their side to fire, and the shaft filled with a deafening cacophony of gunfire. Nobody gave any orders for his side to shoot, they simply started when the grotesque forms could be seen crawling up behind them. The husks did manage to fire a few shots back at them, but they didn't have enough velocity to punch through anyone's kinetic barriers, layered as they were. The skirmish was fairly short, but when the gunfire finally died off, Kevin could hear Ralik telling them that they had moved up. After Kevin and the other had disentangled themselves and started after the other group, Arla called back to him.
"Damnit. Kevin, the way forward is clogged with corpses. Can you work some of your biotic space magic and clear it out?"
"Sure. Just… give me a sec." Kevin was second to last in line, so there was a bit of zero-g acrobatics involved in order to allow him to squeeze passed the others so that he could get to the front of the train of hunched bodies. Things got especially awkward when he had to climb around Targold, but he was able to slip by. Up front, he pulled himself to Arla and looked at what he had to work with. The quarian husks, leaking blue and gray from dozens of punctures, weren't tightly packed but there were enough to make squeezing through an unnecessary challenge. "The slow way or the quick way?"
"The quick way, if you please." Arla said. With Kevin's suit pressed against hers, a great deal of the edge in her voice seemed to have fallen away.
"Alright. Everyone hold tight to something." He waited for everyone to press themselves to the sides of the shaft, grips firm on random outcroppings or what rungs hadn't been shot away. Once he was sure no one would be blown out, he gathered a moderate amount of dark energy and encompassed the blockage ahead in a low-mass field. He then gathered a second well and used it to push at the bodies. The two conflicting mass effect fields distorted, then exploded violently. The concussive force crushed some of the corpses at the front and then launched the rest away from the team. It also apparently blew open a hatch that led to one of the upper decks that Kevin hadn't even known was there.
Ralik was already on it and had his omni-tool out the second that he no longer needed to hold to the wall. "Maternity deck, captain. The clean rooms for birthing are at the fore of the ship, this area appears to be a residential zone for new parents."
Arla motioned for everyone to exit the shaft there. "Good enough, we can use the communal stairway to head down a few decks to get to the airlock."
Kevin was at the front of the line now, so he climbed out first with his omni-light illuminating the black hallways. They were clear, for now, but riddled with signs of struggle. Everything was a mess; doubly so now that the artificial gravity was out. It looked like something out of a classic science fiction horror vid—some of the lighting had been restored now that the reaper device was no longer siphoning power from the backup grid, but none of it was steady. It was dim, often flickering, and only in a few rooms as the hallways were apparently exempt from backup power. The backup system must have been pretty well-drained with that thing double-dipping into the main and reserve power, Kevin figured. He turned on his boot magnets so that he could walk normally despite the failed gravity field.
"What should we be expecting?" Ralik asked as he climbed out of the broken hole in the corner of the hall.
"It shouldn't have been as densely populated as the lower decks," Tyr noted, "and weapons of all sorts are strictly forbidden. If something got to the people up here, they'd have had no defenses. Rooms here are each their own unit with their own ventilation. They're intended to be able to seal in case there is a virus outbreak on the ship to mitigate illness and losses in the young ones."
Arla joined the growing circle in the middle of the hall. "Don't get itchy trigger fingers. We have no way of knowing if the bubble rooms or residentials have people hiding in them. It seems pretty unlikely by this point, but…"
Kevin placed a hand on Arla's shoulder and continued for her. "If we can save even one quarian, we can call this a victory. Just keep a keen eye."
Just as Maela climbed out of the maintenance shaft, an echo of a closing door bounced up the corridor from somewhere behind Kevin. Several of them turned to look while aiming lights down that straight hallway, its seething darkness broken by the flicker of struggling lights in various rooms.
"Should we check it out?" Tyr asked the captain.
"We have to go that way anyway. Let's get going before the husks find out where we've gone."
"I'm so fucking done with this creepy hospital shit," Maela said under her breath.
Indeed, the relative abundance of medical equipment and the sterile nature to this deck reminded Kevin of a standard, if low-budget, hospital. He had seen enough horror vids to figure out the rest.
Next to Kevin, Arla hesitated. "Keelah, if I see another child with no bubble…" She sighed with resolve and straightened up. "Check each room as we pass. No need to risk a husk ambush."
And with that, the team was once again off to trek through darkened, dead hallways. They moved forward much as they had before, cautiously progressing with intermittent pauses to check large clean rooms as they went. The rooms were full of evidence of a fight, but just like before, there were no actual quarians to be found—even when the room was quite obviously occupied prior to the invasion. In the distance ahead, they heard doors open and close every once in a while. That horrible tension they had experienced when they first boarded the ship had returned.
"I'll bet we let something loose by bringing the power to the doors back on," Targold grumbled. "Hopefully just more husks."
The realization didn't exactly curb the feeling of hair trying to stand on the back of Kevin's neck. With the whispers more or less gone from his head, the silence was terrifying.
On and on they went, battered room after battered room checked. No survivors. The sound of a closing door met them again, this time seeming just a couple rooms ahead. Kevin shut off his omni-light and used hand gestures to signal to Arla that he was going to move ahead and check for signs of ambushes. Arla knew of his past and his borderline paranoia in dealing with the gangs of Afterlife, so his experience made him singularly adept here. No more ambushes—he was going to be the hunter this time.
Arla nodded in response and used some quarian-specific gestures to order the others to silence. She also ordered Ralik and Tyr to follow Kevin at a distance just in case.
Kevin swapped out his Phaeston for his modified Phalanx. He needed familiar precision for this, not raw firepower. Almost absent-mindedly, he felt for the handle of his knife. He pulled it and held it firm in his left hand in reverse—the blade opposite the thumb side—then brought it up so he could rest the wrist of his pistol hand across the arm, blade and firearm both aiming away. Ducking low, he stalked forward against the wall passed a few flickering rooms. He only stopped at each long enough to peer through the window on each door to make sure there wasn't anything waiting for him. He half expected something to be staring back at him through every one.
As he was peering into his fourth room, he heard a door open and close just ahead along with what sounded like a mob of footsteps. He flashed his omni-light ahead and caught something looking like a mass of legs scrambling into an unlit room just three doors ahead, staying just out of the majority of their light. Heart pounding in his ears, Kevin slipped up beside that door, trusting Tyr and Ralik to watch the doors he passed by and didn't check.
Will it come back out? he wondered. It seems to be systematically moving to every fourth room. He waited. One minute. Two. Did it know he was out there? Was it waiting for him to stumble blindly in through the easy kill zone inside that door? He used his knife to tap the door gently, mimicking the ticking sound that the husks made when they crawled about in hopes of causing some kind of motion to determine just what he might be dealing with. Nothing.
Some of his old urban warfare training surfaced. When clearing dark rooms, scramble flashbangs were typically used as a non-lethal way to disable potential combatants for a long enough time to round them up. Failing that, if the soldier knew those in the room were focused on his point of entry, a bright light right into their eyes could blind or dazzle them just long enough for the soldier to gain the advantage. Kevin stood up and eyed the door panel next to him and he signaled to Tyr. Through ad-hoc comms, Kevin said, "Have a combat drone ready, I'm going to open the door. Have it hover right in front. Use as bright a light as it can manage with a wide cone. Maybe we can dazzle them."
Tyr nodded and tapped on his omni-tool. Shortly after, a microfactured combat drone looking like little more than a sphere of layered lights materialized and darted to the door to hover in place. A white circle shone on the center of the door in question, faintly illuminating the otherwise dark hallway with reflected light.
Kevin looked to the flickering door panel, ducked low next to the door frame, then reached up behind him to tap it. He expected something to shoot down or at least lunge at the combat drone, so he only peeked his head around the opening door slab as it retracted into the wall. What he saw caused him to sigh in deep relief.
There were five quarians in a tight cluster at the far side of the room just standing there, staring at the combat drone. His relief immediately plunged into caution at the strange circumstance; they weren't huddling or cowering, nor were they preparing to mount a desperate last stand. They were simply… there. His mind, heightened by adrenaline, immediately ran a gamut of ambush checks and his eyes darted this way and that as he tried to spot any wayside attackers that might be using the five as bait, or some kind of hidden contraption that might serve as a last-second snare or trap. He found none, at least, not from his advantage.
"Five Quarians," Kevin said aloud, both to alert those inside the room that they weren't reaper husks and to notify those out in the hallway what he was seeing. Immediately those behind him started a quick, excited sprint towards the room, but Kevin held up a hand to get them to wait a moment. Something just felt off about this whole thing, but he couldn't identify what.
Another extended look at the quarians in the room told him that they were all men, all unarmed, all unnaturally stoic, and… that one of them was even familiar. "Herj'Mokett? Is that you over there?" He could hear the Xelvas'taersh behind him muttering impatiently. Had they finally found survivors? Maybe this ship isn't completely lost after all.
It took Herj an awkwardly long moment to reply. "Y-Yes, that's me. Who—Who is out there? We don't have weapons." He held up a hand to block the light from the drone.
Kevin breathed out. Maybe they just thought we were part of Lan's little mutiny and tried to get away quietly? Maybe they're just recovering from the indoctrination we just shut off? He stood up and cautiously stood in the doorway, still monitoring for hidden threats. None came. "It's the Xelvas'taersh team that found you earlier. Captain Arla'Tavval vas Peravaash and the rest are just up the hallway."
Herj'Mokett and the others looked at each other, but they didn't seem outwardly relieved. Kevin knew how badly extended indoctrination could mess with one's mind, so he tried to take that into account. After a few silent seconds, the group started to walk towards the door. Kevin backed up to give them some room, and the drone's light dimmed as to not blind them quite so much. Herj'Mokett let the others file out first before he approached Kevin.
"Not going to punch me this time, are you?" Kevin quipped, a stupid grin under his helm.
"Not likely," Herj replied as he stood right before Kevin to place a hand on his left shoulder in thanks. That hand felt heavy for some reason.
Damn, am I really that tired already? Kevin wondered to himself. He respectfully met Herj'Mokett's eyes and was about to ask about the survivors when the light from the drone gave him a good look inside that dark visor of his.
Kevin's heart started to beat out of his chest. The inside of Mokett's helmet… There was no quarian face there. Just… Emptiness and some metal framing to hold up glowing things that he had originally thought were eyes. Red flags in his mind went from plentiful to overwhelming, and as he started to recoil and gasp to shout alarm, he felt a sharp piercing pain jolt through the shoulder where Herj'Mokett's palm was resting. That pain burned, and the burning immediately spread from his shoulder down his torso.
Kevin screamed and tried to bring his knife up to end the creature, but his left arm would not obey. What was once Herj'Mokett didn't bother with Kevin any longer and simply started off towards the rest of the group in a full sprint behind his four brethren. Kevin's body continued to fail him as the agonizing heat continued to spread and he fell to his knees, unable to pursue. Poison? Some kind of neurotoxin? Why would a quarian even have that?
His mind seemed to disconnect and grow distant as the pain flooded his body and caused him to begin convulsing. He could not react, could not do anything as he fell to the floor, but he could still think. His mind was well-accustomed to moments of sheer anguish thanks to the many Neural Cascades he'd suffered throughout his adult life. In a strange moment of clarity as he continued to recoil away from the painful existence of his physical self, he began to realize.
No. Not quarians. Geth. Goddamn geth. Just like Siri after she died. Kar'Welkas…
Soon his mind, disconnected as it had been, began to fill with loud whispers. Indecipherable, yet somehow intelligible. Shortly after that, a warmth spread through his brain. A warmth he feared more than anything. A warmth that had taken all of his childhood friends. A warmth that should have killed him, yet had been forestalled by an asari.
It seemed death was here to claim him twice over, and as his world suffocated under thick layers of torment and misery, he somehow heard his name cried out by a quarian who had once been his love.
