Loud voices echoed through the run down corridor as the group approached the little hall where the ExoGeni survivors were holed up. After listening for a couple of seconds, John recognized them as Lizbeth's mother and that slimy little jerk Jeong. Lizbeth herself , who had been properly contrite and cooperative, but not too helpful, had apparently caught on quicker, because she took off without warning, running towards the commotion. He cursed under his breath and sped up himself.
As they entered the room, a jarring scene presented itself. Some of the guards had the scientists standing tightly together at the far wall, while most of them just stood around visibly indecisive. In the center was Baynham, half sprawled, half sitting on the ground she had apparently made close and surprising acquaintance with just a moment prior, Jeong standing over her with a pistol in his hand that was probably the source of the big bruise on Juliana's cheek. He whirled around when Lizbeth entered the room with a cry, running straight past two startled guards who now scrambled to react to the new arrivals, quite obviously unsure of wether or not they were supposed to raise their weapons. Willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and intent on avoiding any unnecessary bloodshed, Shepard spared them a glance that expressed clear as day just what he thought of that idea, and they caught the hint. Relaxing a bit, John took a couple of steps further into the room. With quiet satisfaction, he noticed in the corner of his eye and by the movement he could hear behind him that his team was already spreading out. Garrus was in the Mako, but if push came to shove, the four of them would manage. He did not expect it, though. These rent-a-cops were not going to throw their lives away for Jeong, especially not after what they were about to hear.
"Drop that gun, Jeong. I know everything. How you consciously exposed the colonists to the Thorian, what the Thorian is, it's goddamn mind control, even your dirty business with Cerberus. Your entire company is fucked, Jeong, and as the man in charge here, so are you." He made a pause to let the words have their effect on the room, but while he could see the guards look at each other horrified and the guns of those who had been watching the civilians drop out of their hands and into their slings, as well as Jeong's face go pale as expected, there was apparently more fight in the little weasel than Shepard had anticipated.
"D-damn you, Shepard! I knew it was too much to hope for the Geth to get rid of you. I told you not to stick your nose into matters that are none of your business! This planet is under corporate jurisdiction!" He paced around frantically. "The...the company won't have this. We reestablished contact. All proof is to be..." , he shot a quick glance towards the scientists herded together in the back of the room, "..terminated."
John couldn't believe what he was hearing - not the content of it, but the fact that this guy was actually telling him this. "You fucking idiot. You just confessed to conspiracy to murder in front of a council Spectre." Jeong flinched. "You're just digging your grave deeper and deeper, Jeong. It doesn't matter anymore what ExoGeni wants. As it stands, I am the law on this planet. These guards won't lift a finger for you, let alone die for you. Which is all they would achieve anyway." It couldn't hurt to make the balance of power crystal clear for anyone slow on the uptake.
Which Jeong apparently was. "We'll see. Gotta do everything yourself..." he muttered, and started to raise his pistol. A moment later, it fell from his hand as a single shot made most of the unprotected people in the room jump with it's, in this confined place, deafening noise. Jeong fell to the ground, screaming and holding his injured shoulder. A good shot, he decided. A good measure of force.
He turned to one of the guards and began to bark orders. "Get some medigel on this fool and tie him up. If he dies or get's lost, you'll answer to me." He turned to another one. "The rest of you, set up a fucking perimeter! We just walked in on you and you didn't notice us until we were already on top of you, and we weren't even trying to sneak up on you! If we had been Geth, you'd be dead now! Get your heads outta your asses, for christ's sake!" Half a dozen pairs of confused and terrified eyes looked back at him. "NOW!"
He allowed himself an amused snort as they finally got moving and scrambled to do as they had been told. Wiping the smirk off his face, he walked over to the Baynhams, Lizbeth helping her mother up. "Now to you." The two women looked back at him cautiously, and so did the rest of the civilians further back. "I know that not all of you knew, and that of those who knew, not all were happy with what was being done here. But you were still a part of it, and that means it is your responsibility." Juliana nodded, but brought up her hands; wether she was trying to calm him or herself was anyones guess. "Wait a moment, please. What is this...Thorian, and what do you mean they exposed the colonists to it?"
Her daughter sighed. "The Thorian is an ancient, plant - based life form ExoGeni discovered in the depths underneath Zue's Hope. The problem is that it emits spores that...can parasitically invade the nervous systems of other life forms. We first noticed it in local animals, so naturally we wondered if it could affect intelligent life as well. So we ran tests on the colonists, disguised as a routine medical checkup...and we found that the spores had already taken hold. In all of them." Seeing the shocked expression on her mother's face, the young woman looked to the ground, taking a deep breath. "The company decided to just wait and see what would happen. I complained, but...they didn't listen. I..." , she gritted her teeth. "...I didn't have the courage to do more."
Juliana turned around, looking at one of the other scientists in the room, a middle aged woman with dark skin. " Deacons! You...I cannot believe this! I recommended your department to my daughter so that she would learn from you, not so that you could play Mengele together! This..."
Christina clearly wasn't willing to be lambasted. "Don't be so dramatic. I know that we...made a mistake, but we do not know how far this control even extends in sapients, and we still have time to-"
"No we don't." ,Shepard interrupted her, " And I know pretty damn well how far that control goes. Right now, the Thorian has the entire colony banging and clawing at my ship's hull. They tried to kill my soldiers." Baynham covered her hand with her mouth, a shocked gasp escaping her, and similar sounds could be heard from Christina and the others. He stepped in closer, towering over her now. "So you better tell me now that you have some contingency plan to undo this, or I will put in a very, very bad word for all of you with the judge."
It took her a few seconds to respond, clearly struggling for words, and for her composure. Looks like this one has a heart, after all. Would've been better if she remembered that a little earlier, though. "Dr. Deacons, if you can't give me something, we're looking at a bloodbath. There are kids in that colony. Kids!" She just continued to nod as tears finally welled in her eyes.
"M-my god, we never...we didn't want this! They...you saw what Jeong was like! The company is ruthless, and they don't take lightly to leaks - "
"I don't care about your sob story! You are not the victim here. Now, since evidently not a single one of you possesses a spine, show me that you at least have brains. Give. Me. Something. Now."
Deacons nodded, straightening her back and managing to hold his stare as she regained her composure. "Yes, yes, we...it wasn't really designed as a contingency for this problem, but my department has also been working at...non – lethal chemical weaponry. Our current project is a paralyzing nerve agent. The effects are temporary, and it leaves no lasting effects...at least we haven't observed any yet... we...only tested it on Varren so far. It's mostly intended for police forces, crowd control and the like, you understand..." she trailed off for a moment. "When we fled, we took some of our stock with us. It was the department's main project after all...if we could find a way to deploy it..." She shrugged her shoulders.
Shepard, who had taken off his helmet during the talking, rubbed his chin. "Hm...could we maybe fix a detonator to your stockpile and try to blanket the whole settlement with it? We could get it into position with biotics..."
Deacons shifted her weight. "I do not think we have enough of the agent for that. We will have to find a way to apply it more precisely."
Silence fell, but only for a couple of seconds until he found Tali stepping up next to him. "Shepard. Our grenades have easily removable mantles. Depending on how they are storing this gas, I think I could turn down the detonator's power enough so that it just opens the vials, or canisters or whatever, instead of turning them into shrapnel. So basically, I could rig us makeshift gas grenades."
He gave her a thankful nod and they both looked back towards the scientist in front of them, who was now nodding enthuiastically. "Yes...yes! We store the agent in plastic canisters. The danger for the colonists should be minimal. And the method is precise enough that you might actually manage to get them all!" She looked back at them with visible confidence. "This is the way."
John turned towards Tali and pulled his two grenades from their pouches at his hip. "Looks like my favorite Quarian saves the day again." He grinned and handed them to her, before turning and making his way towards Wrex. "Wrex, please get the rest of the grenades from the Mako. We're going to do this nice and clean."
One hour later, John leaned on the weathered stone of the Zue's Hope spire and peeked through a gap in the wall, trying to get a good look at the settlement. His team was assembled behind him, keeping watch in every direction - but he expected no more contacts until they actually moved into the colony. There had been two guards as well as roughly a dozen nightmarish creatures – plant-like humanoids with empty eye sockets and long claws instead of fingers, ' Creepers' , Garrus had named them – up at the skyway entrance, but they had cut through these, presumably thorian in origin, monsters, and then silenced the two wildly, and rather poorly aimed, firing men with a well placed gas grenade.
Ever since then, for the entirety of their slow and cautious approach down the stairs towards the settlement, there had been nothing but silence. Shepard had no way of truly knowing just how intelligent this Thorian was, but from what he had seen, he suspected that it was quite smart indeed. The resistance at the skyway had clearly just been a lookout post; the Creepers had most likely been intended to try and get an idea of what they were capable of. If this was true, the real resistance probably awaited them the exact second they stepped through the archway at Zue's Hope's level of the stairs – there was no better position. If he were in the Thorians position, John reasoned, he'd have the majority of his forces waiting there with their guns aimed right at the exit, ready to fire away, and probably an entire horde of these Creepers standing by to prevent them from breaking out of the killzone.
His ruminations proved correct. From his elevated position, he was able to make out half a dozen colonists occupying the exact same positions they had held against the Geth earlier – but now, their robotic demeanor was even more pronounced, barely a muscle twitching as they stood stock still, guns indeed aimed at the stairs. These people would have some serious soreness when they came to...he frowned. Some pain was going to be the least of everyone's worries if he didn't find a way to do this cleanly. They couldn't just force their way through the door; they would face too much fire at once. Between their strong shields and perhaps a barrier from Liara, they might be able to get a grenade into every significant position before their protection collapsed; but it wouldn't be enough. That way, they would be left with nothing but their armor to protect them from the fire of any colonist who might be left standing and who, since they couldn't afford to use grenades on a single person, would have to be taken down 'manually'.
And that didn't even take the Creepers into account that would no doubt be there, too, even though he couldn't see them right now – but that meant nothing. Not only was his field of view from here extremely limited, these things had already proven that they could make themselves quite small and remain unnaturally still.
John sighed, opening his visor to scratch his itching nose. "Come on people. Let's try to find a better position a level down..."
They got going and a minute later, he was moving cautiously along the wall again – they were close now, and he had no idea what the auditory capabilities of these 'creepers' were. Finally, he found another rift in the stone. Keeping a low profile, he crept close to the edge until he could see through the roughly half a meter wide opening. What he found damn near froze the blood in his veins. He was looking in a roughly 90 degrees different direction than he had been from the other hole; this way, he could see what lay to the left of anyone exiting the tower at the point where they too would have to. Hidden behind the corner was not only another gun position held by four mind controlled colonists, but also a solid two dozen – if not more creepers, curled up into a ball the same way they had seen it up at the skyway.
Just as I thought...it's not stupid. If we try to force our way through that door, the best scenario is being forced to kill some of the civilians. Just as possible that we get torn to pieces. Who knows how many more of them there are.
He activated his comm and spoke in a low tone, making sure no sound escaped past the confines of his helmet. "Garrus, get your marksman rifle out and come over here." Not taking his eyes off the enemy, he waited as the occasional low noise and shuffling announced the closing in of his turian friend. A couple of seconds later, he was at his side.
"What's the deal, boss?"
"Have a look."
Shepard stepped back from the rift, allowing Garrus to see. Evidently, he caught sight of the issue quickly, his mandibles flairing – Shepard had, in the past, expressed his worry about Garrus going without a helmet whenever possible, but the Turian had insisted on doing so as this way, he got the most out of his tactical visor.
"I'll be damned, this Thorian has layed an ambush." The Turian looked down, beginning to fiddle with his rifle's optic. "I take it you want me to thin their ranks a little?"
John nodded. "It's a good position. Even trained troops would have a hard time silencing you here, and from what we've seen, these mind controlled colonists couldn't hit a dreadnought."
"Alright. Say the word when you want me to start."
John nodded and began creeping his way back to the others, who had watched his and Garrus' backs the entire time. "Listen up people. The Thorian has laid an ambush for us – if we go through that archway now, it's going to be a tough fight. Creepers and dug in colonists. No way we can manage without shooting back at the civilians. Fortunately, we have a good position to lay waste to these Creepers. That should force the Thorian to pull it's forces back into the cover of the buildings." He sighed. "We will then break out using smoke and make our way to some proper cover ASAP. We'll probably get swarmed by Creepers, but as long as we have some decent cover, we should be able to focus on them first and then have all the time in the world to deploy these gas grenades." He wasn't half as calm about this as he was making it look for the others; urban combat was messy at the best of times, and when your goal was to not actually shoot at roughly half of your enemies, it was bound to make it only worse. Their prospects of getting through this day without spilling innocent blood were worsening by the minute.
He looked around; Wrex had barely looked over and was already pointing his gun down the stairs again. The old mercenary needed little explaining of anything; and he probably was acutely aware of just how difficult this was about to get. Liara and Tali though were looking at him wide eyed; inwardly, he cringed at the thought of what he was about to put them through. This was an operation of a delicacy that even an N6 team would respect. "Get ready for anything. I won't lie to you, this won't be easy." He put one hand on a shoulder of each of them. "But there's noone I'd rather be doing this with. I know you will give it your all, and you will do well."
A final nod, and he gave them a gentle shove, sending them off, back to their positions watching their back, while he and Wrex looked down the stairs, guns at the ready. "Garrus, fire."
After less then a second, the loud report of the turian's rifle boomed through the air, and just a moment later, it did so again. The model Shepard had bought for his friend had two independent barrels and ammo blocks, enabling it to shoot particles of substantially different calibre – and substantially different heat generation. This allowed the rifle to keep up a high rate of fire effective against softer targets, as it was doing now – another shot rang out, followed by a cacophony of clattering as the mind controlled colonists began returning fire in Garrus' general direction - while also having the option of punching through heavy armor and barriers in a single shot when needed.
Garrus snarled. "Get ready. They're not retreating. They're coming in here."
"What!?"
"I said they're attacking!"
A moment later, further talk was cut off by the snarling and moaning of the husk-like Creepers as half a dozen of them brust through the archway at the foot of the stairs in quick succession. Wrex wasted no time, turning one of them into a mess of green goo with his shotgun. Shepard snapped his rifle up and began unloading, firing full auto – against the Creepers, weight of fire was everything, and not only was it hard to miss at this range, even if he did, there were enough of them coming uo behind so that he'd hit something hostile no matter what. Two down, and then a third one. Already, more of them came pouring into the tower, while the lead one lunged up to steps at a time, only stopping when his head exploded just as he had gotten past about a third of the stairs between the team and the green tide. They're closing way too fast.
"Tali! Liara! Get over here!"
He did not stop to look if they had heard him, and he didn't need to as just a moment later, the familiar crack of Tali's shotgun went off just to his left, quickly followed by the rapid fire of Liara's SMG. The four of them were just standing there now, cover not a concern, blasting away wildly like the heroes in some cheesy action vid – and still, every shot was a hit as more and more of the monsters poured into the room. In the back, Garrus gun went silent. "I'm overheated!" , the Turian's voice blared over the comm. Some seconds later, a blue bur came to a halt at the rightmost corner of John's vision and became Garrus, assault rifle in hand. "None of them left in my field of fire anyway!", he shouted, but even at less than a meter distance between them, Shepard heard it purely through his earpiece as the sound of now five guns blazing drowned out everything.
Ever since the two women had added their firepower – it could just as well have been ten seconds, or an eternity -, the creepers had made no more headway up the stairs, but now, the abused gun in John's hands finally, with a pitiful wheeze of hot air, gave in and stopped fring. He unceremoniously dropped it and whipped out the shotgun from the small of his back; as he did so, he noticed that Tali and Liara had already run into the same problem and were now shooting their pistols, their main weapons lying at their feet, cooling down. Even with Garrus here now, their volume of fire had decreased. And the Creepers were closing in, every one that went down in a spray of ichor and torn off body parts having made it one step further, closer to them. Five meters...down. Four and a half- down. He glanced down to his rifle. Seconds to go. The shotgun overheated and he dropped it, pulling out his Spectre Grade hand cannon instead, delivering one headshot after the other, which actually proved more effective than delivering center mass shots with his run of the mill shotgun. He could see Tali shooting him a quick, wide eyed glance as she bent down to pick up her shotgun. The image of what the claws on these monster's hands would do to her envirosuit flashed through his mind, and he snarled as he killed another one. He glanced down again. Just two seconds more...he holstered the pistol and bent down to retrieve the rifle.
We can't keep this up. I need to...
He began nestling for the grenade at his waist; they had decided to leave three of those as they were, one on him, one on Wrex, and one on Garrus, and now he found himself extraordinarily relieved they had done so. Pulling the pin, he lobbed it over the heads of the creepers who by now had closed to a mere three meters in front of them. A moment later, the entire room was showered in the disgusting green goo that seemed to make up the insides of the creatures. Tali squealed. Wrex laughed.
The creepers that had been closer to them kept coming. Suddenly, five of them went down at once; the enormous shell of one of Wrex's 20 mm slugs sailing through Shepard's view a moment later explaining what had happened. The ones who had been blown up at the foot of the stairs had already been replaced with new ones.
How many of these fuckers are there!?
Wrex continued to tear rifts through the tide with his slugs and that kept them at the foot of the stairs for another fifteen seconds, but then another large swathe of them burst through the archway. John's shotgun, which he had in the meantime had to switch back to, overheated again; his rifle was nowhere near cooled down. To his right, he saw Garrus using his pistol, and to his left, Liara and Tali were doing the same. Wrex was cursing at his Claymore which had finally stopped working as well.
He crushed the lump that formed in his belly at the thought of what he knew he had to do, and drew his machete. "WREX!"
The Krogan snapped his head around to him, grinned the toothy grin of his people, and laughed. "Ha! Show me what you're made of, Shepard!" And then he charged down the stairs laughing. Taking a deep breath, John followed, paying no heed to the startled looks of the other three. He shot a creeper through the head as he approached. The next one swung his claws at him, but he took them off at the wrist and then shot that one as well. Another cut disposed of a third one. Then there were two at once; he found himself pushed back up the stairs, and one of them got him in the lightly armored inside of his left upper arm, but he eventually killed those too. A quick glance revealed Wrex practically covered in the things, one of them clawing at his leg even as he squashed it under his foot, another one holding on to his armored hump. John could just catch a glimpse of one's head basically exploding as Wrex used his giant gun as a club before he was beset again. Three of them this time. He shot at one's head – and missed. He had banked on hitting, and so the thing was inside his guard immediately, his blade out to the side and his pistol arm swatted aside. Claws scraped against his chestplate, harmless for now. John brought back his left, hitting the thing in the skull with the grip of the hand cannon. Dazed as it was, it let up for just long enough for him to sink the machete into the base of it's skull.
Before he could do anything else, he was knocked to the ground. One of them was on top of him suddenly; he had lost grip of his weapons. John caught one clawed hand at the wrist, then another. He felt teeth, or something else sharp, biting into the back of his knee, and failed to suppress a short scream. Gritting his teeth, he headbutted the one sitting on his torso, but that failed to do much; instead, the beast dug it's teeth into the thick fabric protecting his neck.
The suit was almost impossible to cut in this place, but the pressure alone was enough. Breathing became hard. John thrashed in the Creeper's grip, but all it did was getting the jaws even better surface area. His eyesight began to fade, and his limbs felt heavier by the second. He was still frantically trying to decide wether he should let go of the beasts arms to try and wrestle it's head away when the point was rendered moot as it simply tore them free of his weakening grip. He punched it, and that finally got it off his neck, but now the clawed hand was coming down on his armpit, he wouldn't be able to -
Blue light consumed the world, and the pressure on his chest and leg was suddenly gone. John tried to rise, but it was hopeless. He was so damn tired. Get yourself togeth,,,
The next thing he knew was Tali's mask and Liara's visibly tired face staring down at his, muffled sounds quickly becoming louder in his ears. "-pard? Shepard!"
"F-fine!" He raised his hands and blinked. "I'm fine. I think." He spat blood and found himself noticing that his lip was cut up badly – he had to have bitten it during the fight. "Fuck."
Three fingered hands pushed him back against the wall he was leaning against. "Keelah! You're not fine! You're -"
"I bit my lip, that's all. I'm okay. Really." Mask or not, Tali, who had crouched down and brought her face directly in front of his, seemed profoundly skeptical as she looked at him, but after a moment she let it go, breaking eye contact and shaking her head. "Bosh'tet .You scared me."
John snorted. "Sorry, maam. Now, are you gonna help me up?"
A moment later, he was on his feet again, taking in his surroundings. He was standing at the base of the stairs,the entire room covered in green ichor and the body parts of Creepers. It was silent; neither the shuffling of feet of more Creepers rushing in nor gunfire could be heard. However, he noticed that about a dozen colonists had apparently joined the Creepers in the assault. Wrex stood at the entryway, surveying the area outside.
"Looks like we won, but...what the hell happened?"
"Biotics." He turned around to Liara, who was looking at him somewhat sheepishly. "I was about to push them back down the stairs when you and Wrex took off. So I, ahem, waited for an opportunity, but it didn't come. You seemed to be having trouble, so I saw no other way, and I..." she trailed off for a moment. "I tried to apply the force around you, but it's really difficult when that thing is basically sitting on top of you, so you got pushed around a bit as well. I am sorry."
John looked at her dumbfounded before breaking out in laughter. "You're sorry? You just saved my dumb arse, Liara." He shook his head, amazed by his oversight. " Jesus, how didn't I think of that ? Could've saved me a lot of trouble. Good job." He nodded at the Asari, who almost beamed at him for it. Steps could be heard coming down the stairs, and turning towards the sound, he found himself looking at Garrus.
"There you are." He pointed towards the colonists on the floor. "Mind telling me what happened to these?"
The Turian shrugged. "I guess your and Wrex's fisticuffs convinced the Thorian that we were about to break, but apparently, there aren't any Creepers left, or at least not here. So it sent in it's new slaves. They came in guns blazing just as Liara had obliterated the Creepers, so all we had to do was pop a gas grenade and it hit them all at once. That probably tought the thing not to bunch them up, and so the ones left outside all retreated." He flaired his mandibles. "A dozen down, about three more to go, and we still have lots of these grenades. The odds just got a lot better."
John nodded and turned around, hissing in pain at the pain in his right knee as he walked over to Wrex and looked out the archway. "Indeed they did. Looks like they've gone to hiding around the buildings. Will be messy, but nothing compared to...this." He spat blood again. "Fucking hell. I really didn't think the Thorian would be so aggressive. Thank god it was though. Imagine if we had tried to force our way through their positions. We'd be dead."
John stared at the pre-fabs in front of them for a while, playing out the possibilities and avenues of attack in his head. "Alright, people. From here on out, it's still going to be difficult, but the worst part lies behind is. We will make our way to the Normandy first to pick up Kaidan and Ashley."
He turned around to the three looking at him, while Wrex remained vigilant. "Let's go. Anyone got something to add?"
He hadn't really expected a response, and he certainly hadn't expected Tali to step in and grab his arm. "Yes. You're bleeding, Shepard." He looked down and saw the inside of his left arm covered in red. "Oh."
"Sit down. I'll take care of it."
He sighed and obliged. "Thanks. I guess we can use a minute of rest anyway."