Chapter 3 – Hop to it
Just over half an hour later, Tessia and a helmetless Scott were stood on top of a pile of broken geth, heavily breathing from exhaustion, their weapons still drawn but shaky in their hands.
The two almost looked monstrous, armour splattered with mud and synthetic blood, dangerous intent brandished through gritted teeth and cold glares.
Scott was the first out of the two to realise no more of the enemy were coming. His expression softened and he raised his shotgun into the air; "I'm king of geth mountain!"
Tessia's even darker expression completely switched to one of child-like glee; "That makes me queen then!"
"I'm just knackered," added Rebecca who was sat off to the side cuddling her helmet, "I dunno how you guys do it. Sometimes I think I should have just stayed in the workshops."
"Tally up!" announced Scott, returning his shotgun to it's magnetic-like hold on his back along with his assault rife, "Though, doubt any of you scored as high as me. Killed me plenty, scored a round twenty! Boom!"
"Ouuuuuhh," winced Tessia, "just missed out by two."
Scott wiped the tip of his nose with his thumb, unable to hide a widening grin as he proudly rested a hand on her shoulder; "Don't worry about it, that's just what happens when you challenge the Lawton."
Tessia canted her head and blinked cutely; "I meant for you sweetie, I got twenty-two."
Both of Scott's arms flopped down and his mouth hung open; "What?! Are you serious?! Nooooo! I was so close!"
"What about you Becky?" asked the asari trying not to giggle too loudly.
"Fifteen," replied the engineer meekly.
Scott sighed in relief; "At least I didn't lose to Bex."
Rebecca then looked to her omni-tool for a moment; "But Fido got eight, so that actually adds up to twenty-three for me."
Despite being out-scored by a single kill herself, Tessia burst out laughing at the defeated expression on Scott's face.
Scott shook his head and then waved his hands around; "What? Your drone doesn't count."
Rebecca shrugged; "That's like saying guns don't count and we should be out there killing bad guys with our bare hands."
Scott pointed at his fellow human; "Now that's an idea! Next wave, melee attacks only!"
"No!" objected Rebecca who noticed that Tessia was seriously considering the proposal.
Tullius finally re-joined the group after his walk from the cliff. The four stood in silence for a moment.
Scott and Tessia braced themselves, ready for a scolding regarding their carefree and dangerous attitudes on the field.
The silence was finally broken as Tullius looked towards Tessia; "Thirty-one."
The asari blinked; "Wha…"
"Your challenge… thirty-one, how did I do?"
Scott quickly looked between Tessia and Tullius before jumping down from the pile of geth body parts. Lowering on one knee, he bowed his head to the turian; "We are not worthy to be in your presence, you are the true king of geth mountain."
Tessia followed suit, hopping down and performing a curtsy, keeping her head down; "My lord."
Half playing along, Tullius beckoned them to stand up; "Rise my subjects, you may still best me by the day's end."
Rebecca calculated the total quickly in her mind as she pushed herself up from the ground; "Ninety-six geth altogether, that's gotta be a record for us."
"Something tells me that's not all of them," assumed Tullius, "they wouldn't leave their ship unguarded."
Scott looked around the battlefield; "Still no sign of the other squad. What are the lamp-heads up to?"
"Let's move on towards the ship," suggested Tullius, "hopefully some answers will be within. Stay on guard."
Both humans put their helmets back on as the team began to walk to the geth ship.
Scott turned his head as he heard Rebecca sigh; "Sup Becky-Bex?"
The engineer could feel herself blushing underneath her helmet; "It's nothing, just thinking about something."
"Awh, go on."
"Well," started Rebecca, trying her best not to sound overly enthusiastic, "the geth are so… interesting. I wish we could find one that didn't want to kill us, we could learn so much from them."
To Rebecca's surprise, Scott didn't tease her, instead he replied with; "I heard Shepard got one of the geth to work on our side."
"What?" asked Tessia with confusion in her voice, "I thought they all shared the same mind, how did one turn good?"
Rebecca answered this, unable to hide her excitement on the topic; "Their AI is extremely sophisticated and has evolved, you could argue that they're capable of being unique living individuals. The simplest way to explain is that the geth split into two factions after meeting the reapers. One side continued to stay on the outskirts of the galaxy, only attacking other races when under threat. The other side…"
Scott chimed in; "Welcomed their mechanical overlords with open arms and became their bitches."
"The 'heretics', as they became known to the other geth," Rebecca nodded.
Tullius continued surveying the area as they walked, eager to check behind the scattered debris as they moved on, anticipating an ambush every twenty seconds.
"Oh, so one geth from the goody side was chosen to split off and join Shepard's fight," Tessia smiled with understanding before flashing Rebecca a grin; "Get them to work for us."
Rebecca turned to the asari while walking around a broken generator; "Yeah, right."
"It'll be easy for you Bex," added Scott, "just PM them on the net."
"I'm sure that was the first thing the quarians tried," replied Rebecca sarcastically.
"Seriously," joked Scott pretending to type on a keyboard, mimicking the drafting of an e-mail; "Dear Platform-14867, please tell your homeboys we should band-up and save the universe. Let's stop mucking about and kill some reapers together. Yours sincerely GethLover57. PS: Soz about all the times I hacked your mates and made them shoot each other…"
Rebecca realised he was referencing her first encounter with the geth, a time when her only tactic was to hide and repeatedly use a sabotage omni-program until the room was clear; "Hey, I only-"
Scott finished his mock e-mail with; "And giggled about it every time in a cute but clearly insane manner."
The engineer's helmeted head flicked between the other two members of the team in embarrassment and then straight back to Scott before coughing and then hissing a quick; "Shut up."
Tullius chipped in now; "Remember that talk we had about being a slight more covert? Anything could be lying in wait behind the debris around here."
"You mean like this one?" asked Scott suddenly dashing up to the nearest trashed bank of machinery to his left.
"Don't-" started Tullius.
The moment the human lowered his hands on the surface of the burned-out console, there was a clanking sound as if something metallic scraped down the side.
The other three quickly raised their guns as Scott froze, not even daring to utter the 'oops' running through his head right now.
A silence followed that all three expected to be broken by the appearance of a geth unit from behind the console.
After a full ten seconds went by, Scott raised an index finger and quietly readied his shotgun before slowly creeping along and around the left side to flank the possible threat.
His teammates continued to cover the right side, slowly starting to fan out in case of a fire-fight.
The infiltrator slowly walked around the corner to the blindside and gasped at what he saw.
Rebecca's trigger finger twitched but she held back due to a lack of target; "What is it?"
Tullius relaxed upon noticing the human returning the shotgun to his back, however, the turian's irritation was quite apparent; "I'll shoot you myself Lawton."
Rebecca began to wonder how the turian hadn't already shot the ridiculous man during the last few missions. She re-visited her belief that Tullius had the patience of a saint.
Tessia shook her head; "Scott, you often remind me of Leeroy, a human vanguard I used to know that constantly flung himself into danger… He died by the way."
"No wait, I know this," said Scott now crouching behind the machinery and bringing up his omni-tool, "there's a container-unit attached. Treasure-sense, tingling."
"What is he doing?" asked Tessia.
Rebecca canted her head, beginning to recognize the part of the ship that the debris originated from; "I do believe he is completing a side-quest."
Tessia looked to Tullius; "The humans are speaking in strange code again."
"Just watch," smiled Rebecca under her helmet, "I've never met a man who's got better senses when it comes to finding credits or useful items hidden inside junk."
Scott suddenly reappeared from behind the console holding up a brightly coloured orange box above his head; "Trweasure!"
"The black box!" exclaimed Tessia.
Scott lowered the item to inspect it suspiciously; "Looks kinda orange to me."
"That's normal," said Rebecca walking forward and holding out her hands, "although the model looks rather unique. May I?"
Scott handed the box over to her; "As if I'd ever deny you a new gizmo to play with."
Placing the black box on the surface of the console, Rebecca excitedly booted-up her omni-interface programs; "Should be simple enough to access, just gimme a second."
Tullius studied Scott's stance, wishing that he could see his facial features for a better read; "Good work on finding the box, but we're really going to have to have a chat later about your suicidal tendencies."
"Sorry boss," sincerely apologised the human.
"Problem," mumbled Rebecca, pausing her program, "it's got various protection layers blocking non-crew members from accessing it. Also… take a look."
The other three members grouped around the display of the engineer's omni-tool and instantly recognized the flickering logo.
"Cerberus," said Tullius in disgust.
Scott looked around at the scattered debris; "So this was a Cerb ship? Haha! Serves them right."
Tessia frowned and then stuck out her tongue as if there was a bad taste in her mouth; "What were those jerks up to and what's the connection with the geth-bots?"
"We won't know for sure until Watkins breaks the security," said Tullius with full confidence in the engineer's skill, "how long?"
"It will take a while, they've really upped the security," said Rebecca, "but I could try cracking it on the fly rather than hold up the mission."
"Good," said Tullius, his tech armour flaring into life around his body, ready for any upcoming close-combat, "see to it, but don't get too distracted, we're heading into the geth ship."
.***
The daunting ship being a hybrid of at least two known models didn't matter to the team as none among their number had knowledge of geth ship layouts or what to expect to begin with.
The narrow metallic corridors led to similar plain and windowless compartment-rooms containing banks of geth technology.
Tullius led the group, using his omni-tool to unlock doors that took them deeper inside the ship.
"This seems too easy," grumbled Scott with his shotgun ready, "only two bog-standard guards at the ramp and nothing since?"
"We've spoken about this," said Rebecca just behind the two, cradling the black box in her right arm while running an omni-program on her left, "stop taunting the universe into killing us."
Tessia, self-proclaimed defender of the occupied Rebecca, was taking up the rear; "Maybe they all flooded out when we thrashed the ninety-odd from earlier and there's none left."
"A hopeful notion," started Tullius opening the next door to reveal a line of five geth, "but…"
Scott began to ready a cryo-blast when the turian leader raised an arm and quietly but firmly voiced a; "Wait. Quiet."
The squad remained in defensive stances for a moment as they watched the five geth ignore their existence. The synthetics had their backs to the doorway and were connected to various equipment several metres away. They were unmoving, seemingly occupied with whatever task they were performing.
Glancing over to the left, Tullius noted an unguarded doorway to another corridor.
"I think…" whispered Rebecca, pausing to see if her words had any negative effect, "as long as we don't engage or mess with anything, we can just sneak through."
Rebecca, Tulluis, and Tessia all turned to Scott.
After a few seconds, he realised why they were doing so, and grumbled with a hint of disappointment; "Okay… I won't touch anything."
Staying in their ordered formation, the team crept forward, quietly turning left and ignoring the distracted geth.
Although leading ahead, Tullius kept glancing back, only relaxing when Tessia gave him a quick smile and nod to show they were in the clear.
Upon reaching the middle of the next room, Tullius turned to the group, his voice still hushed; "Good so far, it looks like we have three options here."
Scott looked around, taking note of the coloured-coded holographic locks on the three doors adorning each of the surrounding walls; "Two of them green with minor security, like all the rest we've been through… and then there's that orange one over there."
Tessia smirked; "It is rather inviting isn't it?"
"It's decided then," announced Tullius, guessing it would be the most likely place to find at least one of the objectives, "Watkins is still working on the black box, you're up Lawton."
"Oh yeah, let the hack-master do his thing," said Scott flexing his fingers as he walked towards the door, his omni-tool flaring into life so he could run the interface program.
Rebecca rested her back against the wall just next to him, fully engrossed with her own task but still able to quietly ask her teammate a couple of questions; "Hey mister hack-master, you're using that geth bypass algorithm I set-up right?"
"Of course."
"And you've selected the correct ID mask so that you don't set off any alerts, right?"
There were a few seconds of hesitation from Scott before he quickly tapped a couple of commands into his tool; "Err, yeah, don't want a visit from the neighbours do we?"
"Noooope," agreed Rebecca.
Tessia had unlocked and glanced down one of the other doors while waiting, but only found more passages leading deeper into the ship. She returned just a few moments before Scott tricked the highly secure door into granting access.
"Booyah," said Scott in a soft tone, still paranoid about being heard.
After the squad crossed the threshold, the door quickly closed behind them with a loud shunt.
As a red coloured lock hologram appeared on its front, Scott looked to Tullius and calmly asked; "Trap?"
"Trap," agreed Tullius with a nod, "guns ready."
The large room was subtly different to the previous parts of the ship that they had travelled through. Tessia began to inspect one of the various metal columns that rose from the floor, noticing that some connected to the ceiling while others cut short by a few metres.
"Our radars are being jammed," stated Rebecca attaching the black box to her ammo belt so that she could free her hands up.
"BAH!" cried out Scott, his armour shield shimmering and sparking for a few seconds, "what was that? Like an overload but…"
Rebecca began to step towards him when she noticed her own shield read-out in her HUD acting oddly; "My shield's draining, dampening field or something. You probably got hit by-"
Noticing a red laser sight, Tullius grabbed Scott by the shoulder and roughly pulled him out of the way just as a red beam sizzled across the projected path.
"Get to cover!" ordered Tullius as he and Scott hid behind the nearest pillar.
Rebecca froze and could only let out a small scream as she noticed a red dot on her chest. Time seemed to stop for her but she still couldn't react, all she could think about was her imminent death.
There was a flash of red and a voice, surely signalling her end. Rebecca closed her eyes just as her world crashed violently. She expected to be still standing but with a large hole through her torso, instead she found herself on the floor with a small headache.
Her eyes flickered open to see Tessia was on all fours over her, the asari's concerned expression directly above Rebecca's helmet-covered face.
"Tess," gasped Rebecca, her head rolling to one side to see a melted hole on the wall nearby, then back up to her, "th-thank you."
"No problem sweetie," smiled Tessia.
Scott gave Tullius a grin and a thumbs up regarding the view; "Hot action."
The turian simply shook his head and then checked the corners of the room as Tessia stood and helped the engineer up, the two resting their backs against a different pillar.
Rebecca's near-death experience filled her with adrenaline and she promised herself not to freeze up again; "Right, I'm ready."
"Where's that coming from?" asked Scott with panic in his voice.
The three followed the direction of his pointed hand to see a red dot on the ground and moving slightly off towards the wall before returning to the floor again.
"The ceiling!" concluded Tullius quickly.
The four held their guns tightly, turning to take a step away from the pillars and get a better view of the origin. The red sniper-like beam led back to the 'eye' of a strange-looking geth climbing across the ceiling as if it had suckers or hooks on it's hands and feet.
Rebecca whimpered at the sight; "Not ready, not ready!"
This unusual geth's body was made of a white and black springy synthetic substance that resembled organic muscle tissue, giving an almost 'skinned alive' look.
"There's another one," pointed out Tessia as it climbed the left-most pillar and revealed itself.
"Not seen these guys before," said Scott, switching out his shotgun for his M-8 Avenger assault rifle.
With quick aim, Scott fired a barrage at the one now crouched on top of the left pillar, but the target jumped with unexpected speed over to the left.
"Spry little buggers aren't they?" noted Scott, his eyes catching up to see that the strange geth had jumped to the next nearby pillar.
"The Alliance call them hoppers," informed Rebecca who had clearly done her research.
"Fitting," mused Tessia as she fired a shot from her heavy pistol. This time the intended target and the other nearby hopper leapt in different directions, both then pausing for a couple of seconds, their red 'eyes' glowing brighter.
"Scatter!" yelled Tullius as two red beams shot out towards Tessia and himself.
Rebecca let loose a charged shot from her arc pistol, causing one hopper to lose it's line of fire after relocating itself; "Damn they're fast. How are we supposed to hit them?"
"Shoot them more!" cried out Scott, squeezing and holding the trigger of his rifle.
The hail of chipped metal instantly made one of the hoppers jump across from a wall to the top of a nearby pillar. Scott didn't let up, his constant fire following and causing the geth to transfer to the side of the next pillar.
Rebecca studied the hopper's movement as Scott quickly reloaded and started to fire again, his aim purposely herding the geth towards the other side of the room.
The hopper then dropped down low against the far wall, giving Scott an easy straight-forward target; "Got you!"
In his eagerness to get 'first hit' on this newly encountered enemy, Scott hadn't been paying attention to the positions of his equally distracted teammates.
Scott let go of the trigger, but not before a few bursts had sparked across the shield of his squad leader.
Tullius turned around, obviously irritated at the friendly fire and barked out the first insult that came to mind; "Amateur!"
"Sorry, my bad," said Scott, holding his hands up before quickly diving to the floor and rolling to avoid a quick blast from the hopper he had been chasing.
Rebecca, who had been closely watching everything, yelled over to Scott; "Small window! They only stay still when charging up an attack!"
Scott glanced to the floor for a moment as he took this information in. He then snapped his fingers as an idea formed; "Lightbulb!"
Taking a couple of shots for cover, Scott dashed over to Rebecca, narrowly avoiding another blast of red death. Upon joining her, the two quickly slid around the corner of a pillar to avoid line of sight, causing the hoppers to reposition again.
"They're tracking you," said Rebecca, "think you pissed them off."
Scott quickly placed his free hand on both of her shoulders, something he often did when wanting something; "Bex, keep on one of them, but only use charged shots, no quickies. Be ready for our classic omni-combi, you'll know when."
"Ryoukai," replied Rebecca, instantly assuming that he wanted timed jumps from the target, rather than her using rapid fire and increasing its movements.
"Also… you better get moving, sorry," warned Scott solemnly.
"What do yo-" started Rebecca before his tactical cloak activated and made him seem almost invisible.
She could just make out which direction he was running off to before she lost sight of him. Her eyes then locked on to the two red beams of light lining up towards her.
Rebecca broke into a run under a hail of lasers; "Oh yeah, just redirect all the aggro at me why don't you! Damn infiltrator!"
As she ran past Tullius, he fired a shot off towards a hopper; "We'll keep the other one busy."
Tessia also joined in after hearing the hints of the potential plan over the comms, firing her pistol and splitting the two hoppers up in different directions.
Rebecca slipped around one of the pillars and grumbled at her jammed radar, realising how much she habitually relied on its aid. Cautiously, the engineer peered out and spotted her pursuer.
Fully hiding again, Rebecca held her arc pistol with both hands, charging its power up by keeping pressure on the trigger.
The hopper turned it's head just in time to see the female human re-appear from cover and let go of the trigger, launching a bolt of electricity in it's direction.
The panicked attack was off by half a metre, but it still had the desired effect. Rebecca kept the pattern going, the charge-up and following blast of her arc pistol being quick enough to not allow the hopper a chance to retaliate.
Just as Rebecca fired her fourth shot, causing the hopper to leap to the left again, she noticed a white omni-tech cartridge flying through the air, heading for the pillar where the hopper was just about to land.
"Cry-ooooooooooo!" called out Scott, appearing at the origin of the shining trail, confident that his predicted attack would land.
The cryo-blast collided with the geth unit in a burst of frost that started to seize it's arms and legs up.
Rebecca held out her left arm in the direction of the hopper and clenched her fist before flicking out her pinky finger and thumb. The only recently programmed hand-gesture-shortcut successfully ran the incinerate routine, much to Rebecca's delight.
The flaming orange disc-like cartridge soared through the air and impacted against the chilled hopper with a much bigger explosion than normally expected.
Scott put on a deep voice and purposely stuttered to mimic a video game announcement; "C-c-c-combo!"
The hopper fell from the pillar, parts of it shattering upon reaching the floor, the rest just burning away as it's final twitches slowed and then stopped.
The two humans nodded to each other for a job well done and then turned to deal with the other hopper. Before the two could even get a visual, they noticed their HUD radars flickering back into life.
Tessia was stood over the motionless body of the other hopper, putting a round in it's chest just to be sure.
Scott held both his hands out, his palms up in slight disbelief; "How did you guys get that one?"
The asari took a few different poses with her pistol as if she was modelling for a gun magazine; "I distracted it…"
Tullius shrugged and then holstered his sniper rifle; "And I took it out from a distance after using a quick overload."
The humans looked down to see a single bullet hole clearly in the centre of it's 'eye'.
Scott looked to Tullius, then the perfect headshot, then back again; "You scare me sometimes."
"Be thankful we're on the same side and I'm not shooting 'you' in the back," said Tullius in his normal deadpan way.
"Um, yeah, again, sorry bout that boss," apologized Scott for his earlier mistake, "but those things were well nimble, it's a shame we couldn't…"
Scott paused for a moment as he realised something and then looked to Tessia; "Hey blue, why didn't you use that stasis power thingy you have? We could have kept them still. Too easy?"
Had Tessia actually possessed eyebrows, they would have been raising; "The earlier battle wore me out a bit. Despite popular belief, asari can't just constantly fling biotics about all day, especially on a big mission like this. It's a huge drain on my energy. Can't be fainting on you guys now can I?"
"Oh yeah, makes sense," replied Scott recalling that many human biotics would have already been exhausted or practically dead by now.
"Reminds me," said Tessia as she walked to a door on the other side of the room, "we all have to go to Ryuusei's sushi place after this. The bill will be immense, I hope you have some credits on you."
"Me?" asked Scott.
"Did I not mention the forfeit for coming last in the tallyathon earlier?"
Tullius eyed the door, noticing that it was protected by another high security lock; "Well, let's see what they were guarding…"
.***