As the Normandy closed in on Therum, Ashley was putting the finishing touch on her shotgun. It hadn't really been too dirty as she'd barely used it. She was an AR girl. But she had gotten it out for the assault on Chora's Den, since in close quarters a good shotty was simply king. It had been a short action, and the weapon could go much longer without really needing to be cleaned, but that was a poor excuse in the Gunnery Chief's mind. When a soldier had time to spare, and there were guns in anything less than pristine condition around, that was their job.
Putting the parts back together, the conversation with Shepard from earlier that day came to mind again. Ashley had mentioned her concerns about the non-alliance crew. She had known it was a stupid idea, it had been obvious from the start how Shepard felt about this, but she just couldn't shut the hell up for once. Ugh, he probably thinks I'm some sort of racist now. But it's not racism, It's just...caution. It's a dog-eat-dog galaxy. Humans need to look out for themselves. And I don't trust the Krogan. He's a mercenary, who says he doesn't work for...no, that's stupid. He helped us. And it was fun as hell watching him put the Turian in his place.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Tali coming up to her locker. Since she was already in her suit, 'suiting up' for her simply meant getting her shotgun and pistol out and attaching her shield generator, which took her a grand total of ten seconds. Tali was the one Ashley was the least worried about. She was a good one. Still, having her look at the drive core? That's classified technology! I wouldn't even blame her for copying it. I'd do the same.
When Ashley finished the shotgun, she noticed Tali was standing there awkwardly, wringing her hands together in front of her waist, looking at her. She was kind of cute like that. All fire in that alley they had met her in, but then she could be this shy. Ashley decided to help her out a little, so she shot her a smile. "Can I help you?"
"Yes, I...meant to ask you something. I talked to Pressly earlier, and he mentioned 'the second coming of Christ'. What does that mean?" Ashley laughed.
"Oh yeah, that must be confusing. Jesus Christ...well, it depends on who you ask. Most people will tell you he was an influential teacher over two thousand years ago. If you ask me or others like me...well, we believe that he is the son of God. He died for our sins, but then he came back to life three days later and showed himself to his disciples, before he was lifted to heaven. He said that he would come back one day to bring, well, salvation, peace, justice. Back in the day, most people from most of the places where most alliance personnel originates from believed in him, but these days, not that many of us are left."
Tali had listened silently throughout this haphazard explanation, cocking her head to the side a little. I'm sure that means something, but no idea what. I'll have to look up some quarian body language.
"So his second coming would be considered a good thing?"
"You could say that." , Ashley replied chuckling to herself. Come on, Shepard told you to play nice and she came to you first. Ask her something...
"So what do your people believe in?"
As she had hoped, that got the girl's tongue loose. From the little Ashley had seen of her, her people seemed to be her favorite topic.
"Well, we don't pray to a god. We revere our ancestors. We look to them for guidance, and we hope to join them when our life ends." Ashley nodded, she had heard of similar religions on earth, too. "I'm not so sure how many people really believe that, though. I don't think the ancestors have ever listened to any of my prayers...I think for most people, it's just something that holds us together."
No, you're not going to try and evangelize her now. That's probably a major faux pas in interspecies relations, and you already pissed the commander off enough today. Besides, does the bible even apply to aliens?
Their chat ended as the rest of the team began to arrive, so the Chief got up and started getting into her armor, too. Her locker was next to Shepard's, and so she, even though she didn't even mean to sneak a peek, caught a glimpse of it's contents. "I'm sorry Sir, but...is that a K98?"
Shepard had been busy putting his breastplate over his undersuit and startled a bit at the question, but then took a step back and gestured towards his locker. "Yeah. Wanna take a look at it?"
"Sure! Thank you!" Ashley was already ready, so she took the old gun up and checked it. It was an honest to god Mauser K98, with wooden butt and casing and everything. After she had confirmed that it was indeed not loaded, she turned towards an empty corner of the cargo bay and aimed down the sights.
"I watched a ton of world war 2 documentaries a couple of years back, Sir. Hard to wrap your head around holding one of the guns such a big event in history was fought with..."
"I'm more amazed by the fact Wrex was already old when they invented that thing.." , Kaidan chimed in.
"Damn right, LT. To know someone who was around during the bloody middle ages...it's insane." The big Krogan just chuckled. He had probably heard similar things before. Tali came up to her side. Looking to Shepard who was still putting on his armor, the Quarian asked if she might hold it for a second as well, to which he just nodded. Ashley handed it to her, and she inspected it thoroughly.
"I've never held or even seen a black powder weapon before. It's...ingenious. Simple, but effective. How old is this weapon? When was this...world war two?"
"A little over two hundred years ago, " Shepard answered, who had finally finished and joined the little circle that had formed around his gun. "...but this model is even older, more than two hundred fifty years." Talis eyes widened under her mask, but before she could geek out completely, he put his hands up and stopped her. "Relax, this one is just some thirty years old. Belonged to my stepfather. They're still producing them as hunting rifles, so guns like these are pretty common on many human frontier colonies."
"What are the scratches for?" Garrus asked, who had stepped closer to look over Tali's shoulder. Now that he mentioned it, Ashley saw them herself, scratch marks on the inside of the butt, two sets of five, and three on their own. Huh. Perceptive dinosaur man...
Shepard's features darkened. "Batarians." Ouch. He extended his hand to receive the gun back from Tali, who handed it to him. "Might tell you about it one day, might not." He put the primitive weapon back in his locker and closed it. "Come on people, ETA is fifteen minutes. Details are as follows..."
After John briefed the squad on the mission ahead, everyone mounted up. Since he had been familiarizing himself with the vehicle for the past couple of days, Garrus was on the guns. On the system controls next to him, he had placed Tali. That job should be right up her alley. He probably should have had her take a look at the Mako beforehand, too, but he was sure she was up to it anyway. John himself was driving, of course. The rest was in the back.
"So Tali, you've ever deployed in a Mako?" He knew of course that the answer had to be no, but a man needs to have some fun sometimes.
"No, Shepard. We don't have many ground vehicles on the flotilla, and certainly no tanks."
"Well, in that case, it will be a surprise!"
The rest of the squad chuckled knowingly. As alliance marines, Ashley and Kaidan would have done this before, Garrus seemed like the type to enjoy something like this, and Wrex...was a Krogan.
"It's actually a first time for me too, Commander. I have to say when I read about this, I couldn't help but think that you humans might just be completely and utterly insane." , the Turian said cheerfully. "I'm looking forward to it."
By this point, Tali was visibly nervous, even with her mask obscuring her face. "Looking forward to what? What are you guys not telling me?"
Garrus flaired his mandibles in a Turian smirk, the ones in the back lost it, and Shepard was struggling hard to keep it together, too. "Oh, you'll see. You'll see."
Jokers voice came over the comms. "Cargo bay cleared, Sir. Opening the ramp in five, four..."
"B-but we're eleven kilometers above ground! Shepard!?" He just grinned and put the pedal to the metal.
"Shepard, what- oh! Oh no! Oh KEELAH!"
"Weeeeeeeeehh!"
The rest of them hollering and whooping, safe for Kaidan who didn't seem to like it too much either, Tali pressed herself into her seat, eyes wide in panic, her hands grasping the console in front of her, her whole body tensed up. She remained in this position the entire way down, remaining silent after her initial outburst, until Shepard activated the thrusters, at which point she let out a surprised squeal, which thrust the rest of the squad into another fit of laughter. When the vehicle hit the ground, she finally relaxed, slumping into her seat for a couple seconds before opening her eyes again and turning her head towards John and his shit eating grin. "You..you...you bosh'ter!" Her eyes shot wide open and her hands bumped on her helmet as she tried to clasp her mouth with her hands. "Oh keelah! C-commander I am sorry, I-" They all lost it again.
"It's fine Tali, we had some fun at your expense. What is a bosh'tet, anyway?"
"It, ah, is not a nice word...it's related to ones...ancestry...I'd rather not say more if that's okay..."
"No problem. I'll get you to tell me of you're own volition eventually. Might buy some filtered dextro alcohol for that next time we hit the Citadel..."
She feigned indignation. "Commander! You would get a young woman drunk to take advantage of her?"
The squad howled with laughter, but before Shepard could make a comeback, Joker cut in. "Commander, I am getting some really strange readings here, like, off the damn charts. It appears to be coming from an underground complex a couple of clicks from the dropzone."
"Understood, Joker. Seems like our best bet."
He got the tank moving. Therum really was a hellhole. They made their way across jagged rock, fuel lines to their right, and a sea of literal molten lava to their left. John commented as much to the team, and everyone agreed that they would not be taking their next shore leave here. After about a kilometer, Tali suddenly jerked at her station. "Commander! We've got incoming, it looks like...Geth! A dropship!"
"The Geth are here? Looks like were just in time, and definitively on the right track."
The dropship flew past overhead, a strange design. It looked like some sort of bug. After dropping off two objects, it adjusted its course and made way in the direction of their objective. Hiding the Mako behind a ridge, Shepard hit the comms. "Joker, do you see that Geth dropship?"
"Yes, commander."
"Well so do I. But I don't want to."
"Understood Sir. Keep your heads down, ETA for fire mission is one minute."
The team obliged, and just a minute later they heard the earsplitting thunder of the Normandy flying low through the atmosphere, breaking the sound barrier and firing two rounds into the Geth. They did not hear the hits, they were drowned out by the Normandy's own noise, but Tali confirmed them on her scanners. "It's going down, pretty hard too. Should hit the ground...fre'eg, they're going down directly on top of our objective."
"It's fine. That crash should take out the brunt of their force. Good thing, too. That ship was big, and I wasn't thrilled with the outlook of fighting our way through line after line like some damn video game. Now, to these walkers. Garrus, you take the one further away from us. Tali, divert power to the shields. Everyone brace for ramming..."
"Ramming!? Shep-"
"Relax, Tali."
"Keelah."
…..
About half an hour later, their advance reached a point where the terrain became so bad that even the Mako could not manage it. A narrow defile led up towards the entrance to the underground complex, which pictures taken by the Normandy during it's gun run had definitively identified as a dig site. Thinking it over for a second, Shepard made his decision. "Williams, I'll need you to stay here and radio Joker. Get the Mako back onto the ship. That way, we can deploy it directly to the dig site if needed. The rest of you, with me." The chief nodded and they all climbed out of the vehicle as she took Shepard's place and got on the comm. Outside, they took position next to the entrance to the crevasse. "Alright, Wrex and I take point. Alenko and Tali after us. Garrus takes the rear. Questions?" Everyone shook their heads. "Then let's go."
The squad entered and made their way forward slowly, weapons ready and half raised. The first two hundred meters went by peaceful enough, but eventually, after a turn of the path, it got to a point where the defile opened up to a a slight, wide slope. Immediately upon coming around that turn, the squad came under fire. "Kaidan , Wrex, barriers! Everyone move!" John took point and ran for a group of boulders ahead. Under the fire of at least one heavy machine gun and one or more snipers as well as an indeterminate amount of other small arms, their barrier collapsed about halfway there, and so his shields took a lot of damage, but they held on, if barely. After making it there, Shepard quickly scanned his surroundings. Everyone was there. "Wounded?"
Four "No"s answered him. Good. Now he took stock of the situation. The enemy were hastily dug in about fifty meters ahead, just in front of a point where the path narrowed once more. Now that their ambush had been sprung, they had activated some of the portable kinetic barrier generators he had already seen on Eden Prime. His quick glance counted at least six troopers as well as one really big, bipedal platform. That was presumably the one with the heavy gun. Just as Shepard pulled back his head, the rock around where he had just been got hit by a torrent of plasma. "We need to take that big one down first." John calculated quickly. With Tali, Garrus and Kaidan, three of them were capable of overloading shields...yes, that would be their best bet..."You three overload it's shields. Than Wrex and I come up and give it hell. When the Geth focus on us, Garrus comes up and finishes it. Kaidan, you give him a barrier so he can line up a shot in peace. All clear?" Three nods came back – only Tali, of all people, held up a finger. "Tali?"
"Just one second...yes...hah! Got you , bosh'tet!"
The heavy weapon that had been forcing our heads down was momentarily silenced, before roaring to life again, but this time followed not by plasma impacting our cover, but the electronic shrieks of destroyed Geth. Tali stood up and began firing, and the rest of them followed suit, seizing the opportunity even if they didn't understand what had happened. When John got his sights on the enemy, the big one had already mowed down three of them, Wrex and himself gunned down another, the one right to that one was riddled with holes from Kaidan and Tali, and Garrus blew the last one's head to pieces with his sniper rifle. Just as it hit the ground, the big one turned back around again and opened fire on the squad, but one against five, it had no chance. Overload attacks took down it's shields and so it collapsed under their assault. Scanning the area for further hostiles, they took a breather. Kaidan spoke up first. "Holy crap Tali! I thought Geth couldn't be hacked?"
The Quarian somehow managed to convey smugness despite of her suit. "And that is true. But we Quarians built the Geth, we know their systems. If you're good and know how Geth operate, you can flood their basic programs with junk data and then manipulate their friend/foe identification while they are busy clearing it out. It only lasts a couple of seconds at most, but obviously, that can be pretty long in a fight."
Shepard was impressed. "How the hell are your marines not owning these flashlights then?"
"Well, it's really difficult to do and it gets harder the more runtimes are controlling the platform you are targeting. Most combat engineers can only do this to basic trooper platforms that house only one Geth runtime. That's still useful, but the Geth always have the numbers, so it just evens the odds. Hacking a Destroyer like I just did...I'm sure Admiral Xen could do it, and maybe some of her techs, but apart from that...I haven't really met anyone except for myself." she explained, somewhat sheepishly towards the end.
God, she's adorable. And a genius, apparently. Well, Adams already told me that.
"Destroyer, huh? You'll have to give us a lesson on Geth platforms when we're back on the ship. I should've thought of that sooner, honestly. Now, to the task at hand. Pictures from the gun run show that there's some scaffolding and silos at the entrance to the dig site. There's no way the ones we just took out were all that survived the crash, they just didn't want to let that good place for an ambush go to waste and those were all that fit into the cover available. So, there will be another gunfight just ahead. They will have the drop on us again, so I will throw a smoke ahead. Should get us to cover alive, and we'll proceed from there." Everyone nodded their understanding, and so they made their way towards our target. As they reached the end of the path, John threw the smoke and five seconds later, stormed forward with Wrex, the rest behind them. Sparse and inaccurate fire greeted them, mostly missing, the few shots that hit Shepard's or Wrex' shields ineffectual. Until the smoke was lit up in blue and a powerful impact slammed John to the ground. He caught himself on his hands and got back up immediately; whatever had just been fired at his team seemed to not have hit anyone directly. Everyone else was already scrambling back to their feet, too. "That was a siege pulse! They must have an armature, or..." Sliding into cover behind a large container, Tali immediately peeked out again for a second. "No, it's just an armature, thank the ancestors."
"One of the big walkers?"
"Yes."
John cursed. "Can you hack it?"
"No way. An armature holds dozens of runtimes, their computing power is far too high."
"Well, then we do it the old-fash-" He was cut off as a targeting laser appeared on his chest, coming from upwards and...behind them. He followed it with his eyes and was barely able to evade the plasma ball coming at him. The Geth that had fired it hung above on the scaffolding. Shepard brought up his gun, but just as he was about to pull the trigger, the thing made an impossible jump onto another metal beam over ten meters away. "What the...Tali what is that!?"
"No idea, never heard of them!"
"Great. We'll never hit these jumpy bastards. Wrex! Kaidan! Get 'em with biotics!" He leaned out of cover, just to pull back immediately, dodging the blast from another siege pulse that impacted on the crate he was hiding behind, blasting it apart. Suddenly exposed, Shepard's shields were assaulted by several small arms, leaving him no choice but to sprint for his life, finding new cover behind a pile of rubble, presumably from the excavation. It was solid, but John was now quite far forward and thus, isolated. Frantically, he scanned the scaffolding above for the new Geth. They'd have a field day flanking him like this. And indeed, one of them came jumping into his field of view, sticking to the wall of a silo like a Gecko, and lined up a shot. This time, Shepard was faster, and put t it down with a short burst from his rifle. At least they're not very tough, he thought as it went limp and fell to the ground. Relieved for now, he was finally able to assess the situation. Two more of the Geckos were lying on the ground as crumpled messes, probably victims of the biotics. The armature was in the background, pressuring his squad with its siege pulse. Fortunately, they had found more solid cover than their commander. For now, it held. In front of the walker were a couple of basic troopers; as John opened fire, he could already see one of them turn to shoot its brethren in the back. The rest was mopped up quickly, and so after another minute, only the armature was left. 'Only'. That beam would probably kill with a single direct hit. They needed an opening. Shepard hit his comms; trying to shout orders over the noise would have been a fool's errand at this distance. "Alright, I want three simultaneous overloads on that thing. Wrex, you need to get in closer. Show me what those slugs can do. I'll try and distract it."
Seconds later, it's shields lit up, not collapsed, but weakened. Immediately, the team came out of cover as once and opened fire, except for Wrex who stormed forward, sticking to cover as much as possible. Fortunately, the walker was focusing on Shepard anyway. Seeing it's cannon charge, he hit the ground just in time. His cover shook under the impact and he was showered in dirt and stones, but remained unharmed. Coming back up, he saw that Wrex had made it almost on top of the thing. A second later, it's shields collapsed. "Now, Wrex!"
The Krogan didn't need telling twice. Emerging from the boulder he had been waiting behind, he shot the armature. The slug glanced from the rounded surface of the walkers head, but the impact was still enough to startle it, and so Wrex closed in, pumping his gun as he ran, and threw himself under the thing's weaker armored underbelly. He fired again, and this slug went right through, wreaking havoc on the walkers insides. The telltale Geth flashlight going out, it slumped to the ground, the Krogan rolling out from under it, laughing.
"Ha! I knew I was right to stick with you, Shepard. Good fight."
Walking up to him, John snorted. "You're crazy. Glad I took you with."
Garrus stepped into their conversation, his mandibles flaring in a turian grin. "I won't lie, that was impressive. Not exactly a display of finesse...but I suppose when you're about half a ton of muscle and anger, finesse is overrated." Wrex gave the Turian a toothy grin, and I turned around to look for the other two. They were making their way towards them, dragging one of the Geckos along with them. He raised an eyebrow."What do you want with the thing?"
"This is a completely new type of platform, Shepard. We should take it with us to analyze it." , Tali answered.
He had to admit he wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of a Geth on his ship. "Is that safe?"
"Geth don't play dead, Shepard. If it still has power, it is possible that a backup of the runtime is still online, but it cannot physically do anything, and once we're on the ship I'll just disconnect the generator and then it is gone for good."
He nodded. "Okay. Good thinking there you two. " He turned around appraised the entrance before them. "Alright, let's get inside. Still need to find T'Soni."