Yes it still lives!
Hello to returning readers, thank you for still being here and welcome new readers. The games may be old but the love is still fresh.
"Do we have a lock on Saren?" Shepard leaned over Joker's shoulders as she stared at the translucent display and the surface of Ilos behind it.
"Yes, I have an 80% accurate reading of a turian lifeform with a biotic signature. Only know of two other spiky guys in this quadrant and they're not biotic."
Garrus and Nihlus trilled at each other, acknowledging the other's presence.
"Alright, I want you to drop the Mako right on his head."
"There's not enough room," Pressly yelled from the back.
Garrus accessed his console through his omni-tool and had to agree. The valley was not long enough for an approach with the Normandy.
"There has to be another place," Kaidan said, scanning the surface from his station.
"There isn't," Pressly said, louder than necessary. "The next valley is separated by a mountain range."
"And we don't know if we can even get to him from there," Shepard grumbled. "We have to get down there, before he disappears into these underground structures we detect there."
"I can do it," Joker said.
"It's impossible!" Pressley yelled from the back.
"I can do it!" Joker said, loud and certain. "I can do it if you keep the Mako on the vector I'm giving you," he said to Shepard.
"Okay," Shepard said, "you drop the Mako, I bring it down safely and then you get out of here, keeping stealth. I want you back at the Citadel as fast as possible."
Joker, for all his ease and cavalier behaviour with his commander, knew exactly when it was time to shut up and follow orders. "Yes, Commander," he said, furiously typing in his calculations.
"We can't go back to the Citadel!" Pressly yelled from the back, obviously not having gotten the memo about shutting up and following orders.
"You can and you will, I'm not keeping the best ship of the Alliance tied up here, while Sovereign attacks the Citadel." She put her hand on Joker's shoulder and said to him more quietly, "Wait with communications until you're at least in the Artemis Cluster. Find Hackett, he'll be ready."
Joker nodded, his fingers nonstop working on the interface. Pressly looked like he wanted to protest but Shepard gave him a look that made him instantly straighten and turn back to his console.
She opened a comm channel and made a ship-wide announcement. "Ground Team, get ready, we're dropping in the Mako in ten. The rest, prepare your stations for space combat on your way back to the Citadel. I'm counting on all of you, Shepard out."
She turned back to Joker, giving him an affectionate clap on the shoulder. "Make it happen, flyboy."
"Sure thing," he answered, leaning forward in his seat as his finger flew over the interface.
Kainda, Garrus and Nihlus followed Shepard out of the cockpit, past the stations with the ship controllers and engineers. They saluted respectfully as Shepard walked by and she answered with a quick salute herself to every single one. Hurrying to the elevator, Liara joined them, dressed in unfamiliar armor and a collapsed helmet under her arm.
Nihlus sighed when the elevator started and shifted his weight to the side. Garrus had noticed that he was still limping, as much as he tried to hide it. He was walking without a cane but Garrus wondered if he did that to hide his injury or because he didn't need it anymore.
When the elevator spilled them out into the cargo bay, Shepard made short sound to get Nihlus' attention. "A word, Nihlus?"
Nihlus sagged against the rail in the elevator and trilled sadly. "I know, I know, I'm not well enough for ground combat."
"Indeed," Shepard said. "As much as I would like to take you with me but it would be irresponsible."
Nihlus sang out his disappointment and understanding in subharmonics and Shepard seemed to sense what he meant.
"I know," she said, "you wanted to confront him and I hope you still get that chance but for now, you're going back with the Normandy. You are going to explain to the Council and the Alliance why we took her and have the Citadel prepare for an attack, if there's still time for that. Kick their asses." She gripped his arm and stared into his eyes. "Listen, nothing happens to this crew, you hear me? You'll make sure that there will be no negative consequences for anybody on the ship. I don't care if you have to dance in front of a mirror with a chicken and say 'Spectre Authority' three times over your shoulder. Nothing happens to them."
Nihlus looked bewildered at her. "Yes, Commander, it'll be my pleasure," he said, grinning, but also trilling his confusion for Garrus to hear.
Shepard gave him a nod and walked over to the lockers to put on her armor. Snapping on her armor with swift, well practices moves, she spoke quietly to Tali and Liara. Both looked nervous, their body language almost identical. Watching them in contrast to Kaidan and the marines, calm and speaking only in short remarks, made it obvious that they were not soldiers.
But Shepard had insisted on taking them both with them. Liara obviously because of her knowledge about the protheans and Tali actually on Garrus' advice. While working with her on the shielding algorithms of the Normandy, Tali had beat him several times in figuring out the complicated algorithms. They didn't know what kind of systems the protheans would throw at them and it was a no-brainer to bring Tali and her deductive abilities with them. Her proficiency with a shotgun didn't hurt either.
Nihlus turned to Garrus. "Dancing with a chicken in front of a mirror?"
Garrus trilled his own confusion back at him. "I don't know, this official expert on humans has officially given up on understanding what that means. Just make sure the crew isn't arrested or she'll have your head."
Nihlus' face lit up. "Yes, having the head on a plate, I've heard that saying before. What a gruesome thing, certainly not what I had in mind for me and my wonky fringe." He twitched his mandibles, and his hand played with the hem of his headscarf. "I promise I will do everything I can to keep the rulebook wielders away from this crew and this ship." He held out his arm and Garrus grabbed it and held it for a moment, humming his greetings and well wishes at him.
"See you on the Citadel," Garrus said.
Nihlus hummed back at him, putting all his hope and worry into his subharmonics.
Garrus knew that there was a chance that he would not see Nihlus again but he shoved that thought aside as he hurried towards the cargo hold. His official mission was to get Saren but in his mind he knew that his most important mission was to protect his mate.
It was cramped in the Mako when they had all piled in. Everybody needed to be strapped in for this drop. A tense silence loomed over their heads as Joker verbalized his approach and counted down to the moment of drop off.
"And go! Good luck Commander," he said over the comm and the Mako jerked as the cables pulled it forward through the porthole and released it over the jagged cliffs and towering ruins of Ilos. Garrus held his breath as the Mako fell down in free fall, hurtling towards the surface with no landing terrain in sight. Shepard's hands tightened around the control sticks. She used the thrusters to stir the falling vehicle around spires that had once been towers and massive buildings and now stood around like decaying statues.
Murmuring rose in the cabin, even the hardened marines began to get nervous as no flat terrain came in sight. Another cliff rose up and Shepard lifted the Mako over the edge with a push from the thrusters and then let the Mako drop down on the other side of the cliff, narrowly avoiding the ruined structures as she went head first towards something that looked like a courtyard. Garrus was beginning to doubt this operation, there was no way the they could land the Mako safely in this area, coming down at this speed.
He was about to voice his concerns when Shepard looked over her shoulder to him and winked. She pulled hard at the controls, bringing the Mako's front up so that all they could see through the front windows were the green clouds in the sky, fired the thrusters and with a thud set the Mako down, skidded forward a few steps and came to a halt right in front of a rocky archway.
Nobody said anything. For a moment the whole cabin collectively took a deep breath.
"Disembark," Shepard said, fastening her gun to her armor and holding out her pistol. She jumped out first, followed by Oman and her trusty grenade launcher, the other marines and Wrex. Garrus nodded to Madhav, who stayed in the Mako with Langenfeld and followed Kaidan and Tali out. He bumped into Liara, who had jumped out but apparently was now frozen in shock and pressed her back against the Mako as if she wanted to melt into the plating.
Garrus had no time to reassure her, a troop of geth emerged from the natural archway, shots hitting the Mako right next to them. He grabbed Liara's arm and dragged her behind the vehicle. She blinked once, visibly pulled herself together and then send out a biotic shockwave that staggered the geth enough so that Garrus and her could make it over to the boulders where Shepard and the others cowered.
"Did you see him?" Shepard hissed when she cowered down to reload.
"See who?" Garrus asked.
"Saren. Bastard went through that gate just as I got out of the Mako."
"Gate?"
Shepard pointed to a vertical rock face, overgrown with green moss. "That's a gate, big enough for the Mako." She looked over the boulder and shot at an approaching geth until one of the marines took it out. "I want you and Tali to hack that gate open."
Tali held her shotgun tighter and nodded. "Understood Commander."
Fewer geth came through the archway and Shepard ordered her squad to move forward, drawing the attention away from Tali and him. Garrus switched to his assault rifle and provided the cover Tali needed to work on the access panel.
The air tasted heavy and moist and everything was overgrown with lichen and moss. The ground felt slippery on every step and sometimes soft but Garrus didn't dare to look what exactly he had stepped into. Ilos had been taken back by hardy flora but they didn't know if it also had wildlife. So far, the only movements he could see were geth troops. He took out two geth approaching but then the battle moved away from their position and he turned to Tali. "Can you get it to work?"
Tali tilted her head and her glowing eyes blinked behind her mask. "There is a problem. The power is cut."
"Mechanically or by security protocol?"
Tali turned to him. "What do you mean, mechanically?"
"Did they cut the power lines for the gate from the other side or did they just issue a lockdown via security protocol?"
"Security protocol."
Garrus got up and checked the perimeter for the rest of the team. "That's at least something. We can probably find a station somewhere on this side to unlock the gate and as long as it still has power we can open it." Even though they were on the day-side of the planet, Ilos' sun didn't do much to illuminate the planet. The light was so dim that he switched his visor to night vision mode. It made everything look bright green and let infrared sources like electronics stand out with a red glow.
Tali took her shotgun in her hand and nodded to him to indicate that she was ready to move. Garrus stepped forward, consciously covering Tali as they approached the stone archway. The fighting had moved to the back of the courtyard and Garrus spotted a red glowing console along a wall that he wanted to check.
Tali came up to his side as he walked over, looking for movement behind every boulder and statue scattered around the courtyard. "You don't have to cover me like that," Tali complained and her glowing eyes were angry slits behind her mask. "I am good at this, I even did Ashley's training."
"Sorry, it's a habit I guess? And with your suit..."
"I have shields." She raised her shotgun and stepped around him to take the lead.
Garrus chuckled. How foolish of him to underestimate the women Shepard surrounded herself with.
Tali had reached the console and checked it for power. She crawled behind it while Garrus kept watch. The battle had moved far away from them but his scanner was still jammed and that wasn't a good sign. He adjusted the settings in his visor, even geth had to emit some kind of heat signature from their processors.
A movement at the peripheral of his vision made him snap around just as the familiar whirr of geth servos reached his ears. He started shooting, taking the surprisingly agile geth out as he rolled out of its line of sight and pushed Tali along with him.
"Bosh'tet!" Tali shouted, pulling her shotgun out from under her and shot the geth in the chest. It fell with a screech, only to reveal another one. This one was aiming a rocket launcher.
"Jump!" Garrus yelled, grabbing Tali's arm and pulling her over the hip-high wall next to them. The drop was deeper than expected, instead of level ground, it was a ramp leading up from the lower level. The shock absorbers in Garrus' armor crunched as he landed on the ramp. His head hit the ground hard, making him dizzy but he held on tight to Tali, buffering her fall and he skidded on his back into another hip-high wall. From above, the debris from the console and the wall they had just jumped over rained down on them. The rocket had hit right where they had been standing.
Tali raised her shotgun and shot the geth that looked down through the gap into the headlight. It fell forward with a high pitched whine and crashed headfirst onto the ramp. "Bosh'tet," Tali said again and pushed herself off Garrus. The good turian inside of him made him trill an apology to her for the close contact but she didn't react. He couldn't move anyway and had to wait for the health systems in his armor to fix him up.
"Can you get up?"
"Yes, just a moment." Garrus looked at his omni-tool and checked over his own vital signs. According to his armor's scanners, nothing was broken, he only had a few dents in his plates and a scratch on his fringe. He sat up, waiting for the short dizziness to pass. Bright spots danced in his vision. Tali stood before him, her omni-tool glowing as it scanned their surroundings, her shotgun at the ready.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"Yes, nothing serious."
"I hope so, Shepard would kill me if I got you killed," Tali said with a grim tone in her voice.
"Don't worry, I'm sure she wouldn't kill you," Garrus said, putting a humorous trill into his subharmonics.
Tali made a noise that sounded like distorted grunt through her speaker. "She would kill a universe for you, I hope you know that."
"I..." Garrus stuttered, unable to form words about that terrifying feeling of overwhelming love that ran through him.
"Come on," Tali said, pointing her shotgun to an area further down the ramp they were standing on. "I get a reading for electrical circuits from there." She waited for him to get back on his feet and lead the way to an overgrown structure.
Garrus felt the painkillers taking hold and let out a sigh. The headache faded and his vision cleared. The sound of the battle was somewhere behind them and higher up, down here, everything seemed to be eerily quiet.
The overgrown terminal was a disappointment, as were the next three they found. The terminals were happy to display various warning symbols but seemed to have no connection to the security grid.
Tali hissed something under her helmet and turned back to the ramp. "We have to look up there," she pointed to the higher ground where Shepard and her troops had been fighting, "according to the maps I downloaded, there should be something like an elevator connecting to the lower levels."
"Understood." Garrus took up the lead this time, walking up the ramp until he could look over most of the courtyard. It was quiet and his scanner wasn't jammed anymore, a good sign for sure but he only relaxed when he saw Shepard on the other side with her helmet off.
They walked over to them, stepping over the smoking remains of dead geth on their way.
"There you are," Shepard called out and waved them over. "Could this be an access elevator? What do you think?"
"Agreed," Tali said. "We got maps from other terminals and I think if we go to a section 11 levels down, we'll find a major node of the security network."
"Great news!" Shepard gave Tali's shoulder a soft pat and then pointed to a console next to her. It had been cleared of the vegetation and was blinking in angry red. "Now we just need to hack this access console to get the elevator to work."
"Are you sure it's the control console?" Tali asked.
Shepard shrugged. "It's the only one that has schematics about the elevator stored. I think it's our best bet."
"Yes, I agree," Tali said, already poking around in the innards of the console with her omni-tool.
Garrus did his own scan and then joined Tali on the floor to remove more protective cover from the console. It looked like nothing he had ever seen before and he wasn't even sure where to start.
Kaidan and another marine came over to them and set the toolbox from the Mako on the ground. Tali was diving into it and retrieved various cables from it. Garrus was impressed that she even had a starting point as he was staring at the arrangement of circuits and wires and blinking lights in front of him like a schoolboy looking at his first toy Cersor, broken in pieces.
"What's your plan, Tali?" he asked.
Tali laid her head to the side and made a squeak that almost sounded like a subharmonic trill. "I don't know enough about how this system works, I thought we could try to reroute the main power to this section here," she pointed at a circular area, "for I think this one controls the power to the elevator itself."
She made a connection, held the omni-cable to the blinking circle and shrieked as sparks flew out of the console and an angry sound came out from the display.
Shepard looked at it as if it smelled bad. "I think it said 'unauthorized access' or something like that."
"You understood that?" Garrus asked, trying to keep the worry out of his voice.
"Not really word for word," Shepard said, her fingers hovering over the display. "But I got the gist, you know?"
Tali stood up and waved her omni-tool over the display. "Can you read this Shepard?"
"Only parts, I know this here means that the console is locked and I think this here means something like override."
"Good, maybe we can get to it from here," Tali said, sounding way more enthusiastic than Garrus felt. He kept on scanning and mapping the inner hardware of the console, trying to find a technical solution in case Tali's software solution wouldn't work.
He turned to Shepard. "This is going to take a long time."
She nodded and turned to the marines. "You heard him. Get comfortable, we'll be here a while. Spread out, set up watch."
In a short time, the marines had arranged boulders around their position to protect them from all sides and one had started on preparing food. The human ability of preparing and eating food in any situation was truly legendary.
That was good at least. Things would turn bad soon enough.