Chapter 5 – The Guard
Now inside the entrance of the reactor, the eight operatives carefully began to explore.
Overhead lighting and various machines were active, confirming that the power was truly restored to the building.
"Guess the geth really have moved in," stated Tessia.
"Like I said," retorted Teela'Shal sounding slightly offended.
As the group moved into a large unlit room, the door loudly closed and locked behind them, plunging them into darkness.
Scott was the first to speak; "Well that can't be good."
"OK everyone," said Slater, "torches on."
Just as he finished his sentence, the lights in the room flickered on to reveal that they were currently trapped in a room with a very clear threat.
Towering at twelve-foot high, and coloured in red armour plating, stood a geth prime. It's three 'eyes' flickered as it evaluated the intruders.
A series of angry sounding electronic squelches echoed out as the prime raised it's pulse cannon, confirming that the eight intruders were in trouble.
Scott looked to Teela'Shal; "Oh bosh-tits."
"That's not how you pronounce it, idiot!" yelled the quarian, running off to one side while firing her submachine gun.
The disruptor-charged three-round-burst fire from her M-4 Shuriken did nothing to perturb the prime from firing a large bolt towards it's prey.
Although the shot missed, the strength of the blast was enough to force the quarian into a forward roll before she rose back up and continued running.
"Spread out!" yelled Tullius as three rapidly fired shots threatened the team.
The moment there was a pause in fire, the turian worked on his omni-tool, activating an overload to weaken the prime's shielding.
A collection of sparks registered the hit, but looking at the predictive read-out on his omni-tool, it had barely made a dent; "Those are some strong shields."
Tessia launched a warp attack that made an audible thud against the now shimmering shield. The asari took a breath and then grinned as she readied her next attack, only to see the prime's shield spark from another overload and put out the light blue flames.
Feeling that her effort was being wasted, Tessia looked over to Teela'Shal; "Hey, you're messing up my biotic combos with your tech skills."
"No, you're messing up MY tech combos with your biotics!"
"The hell! I'm trying to-" started the asari.
Tullius interrupted, knowing he was the only one of the other seven that possessed even a small amount of biotic power; "Tess, for this battle, stick to weapon attacks only, save your strength for afterwards!"
"Understood," nodded the asari, the blue glow around her hands fading as she drew her pistol, aiming for the tall geth's three red 'eyes'.
"One, gap," muttered Rebecca counting the timing of the prime's pulse cannon attacks as Leon and Scott dodged about on the other side of the room, "two-three-four, gap."
The prime lowered the cannon and held it's free hand out, summoning a white spherical combat drone.
"Drone!" warned Scott despite it's appearance being rather obvious.
The white sphere moved back a bit before firing an omni-missile towards the squad, making them scatter further around the room.
After the sound of the explosion died down, Slater called out to Leon; "How's the shield doing?"
The salarian was constantly running his energy-drain program whenever he had the chance, stealing shield energy to boost his own; "Nearly depleted, should be able to attack directly in twenty seconds."
Tessia shot the combat drone twice, causing it to dematerialise and allowing the squad to concentrate on firing at the main target.
"Keep it up!" praised Slater as Grogg and Tullius dodged four more cannon blasts before retuning fire.
"Shield down!" confirmed Leon, the vague shimmering of protection now gone.
With eight team members all constantly attacking, everyone knew that even the top-grade armour of the geth prime wouldn't last long, but caution still had to be observed against such a dangerous enemy.
"Booyah!" yelled Scott running up to the back of the prime's right leg and firing point blank with his shotgun to maximise damage. Despite the direct hit, the prime acted as if it was being pestered by a small insect.
"Scott!" cried out Rebecca as she watched him narrowly miss a swipe from the prime's huge arm.
Grogg stepped up, activating the fortification program on his omni-tool to cause protective Foucault currents to spread over his bright pink armour; "That's not how you do it, lemme show you how it's done!"
The krogan roared a blood-thirsty laugh and then charged at the prime's leg, the shoulder barge almost toppling the large machine. The follow-up headbutts and punches caused visible damage but the geth stood strong.
Something small and black suddenly ejected from behind the prime's back but everyone was too distracted watching it's next move to notice. Grabbing it's pulse cannon with both hands, the huge mech practically batted the still-laughing krogan away before firing a volley of blasts.
Rebecca suddenly yelped and staggered forward, feeling like she was being peppered by a machine gun as her shield received countless small impacts from behind. Her instant reaction was to roll off to the side and turn around so that she could see what was attacking, her shield only just staying intact as she returned to a standing position.
She decided not to act surprised if it happened to be friendly fire from Teela'Shal, but the quarian wasn't at the right angle for it to have been so. Her eyes locked onto the true threat.
"When the hell did that get there?!" exclaimed Rebecca, recognising the small floating black device as a geth turret.
"Idiot," snapped Teela'Shal, "it was thrown behind you during Grogg's attack, keep your eyes open."
Trying to suppress her annoyance towards with the rude quarian, the human engineer held out her left arm, knowing that she was the only one in a good position to deal with the additional threat.
Clenching her fist, she then forcefully flicked out all of her fingers and caused an overload within the turret, instantly causing it to explode.
"Sweet!" cheered Scott, seeing this particular custom hand-gesture shortcut in battle for the first time.
Rebecca was secretly smiling at Scott's reaction to her technique but the smile quickly faded when Teela'Shal let out an unimpressed 'humpf'.
Everyone's attention was brought back to the prime as it fired four shots and then summoned a white combat drone again.
Teela'Shal called out to the team; "It's prioritising drone deployment, take it out as soon as possible and the prime will stop attacking for a moment to generate another."
"Well observed," commented Tullius, taking out the drone in a single hit and noticing that the prime's attack phase was interrupted so it could redeploy another drone.
Abusing this knowledge, the squad were able to focus their fire more frequently and soon the prime seemed to spasm, a digital cry echoing throughout the room.
"Take cover!" yelled Teela'Shal, "it's going to explode!"
The post-mortem explosion sent those who weren't already now on the ground, swiftly to it.
After the last broken fragment of the geth prime hit the floor and the room was quiet again, Scott sprung to his feet; "Well, that was bracing."
"Everyone alright?" asked Tullius, looking around at the team.
The rest all slowly returned to their feet, answering in the affirmative to the question as various personal shields could be heard re-charging.
Leon dusted himself off, briskly walked towards the door opposite their entry-point, and began hacking it; "A prime being stationed inside was quiet the surprise."
Tessia placed a hand on her armoured shoulder, sure that her skin beneath was likely bruised; "Bet it wasn't expecting eight of us to turn up at once, still, the geth must be really guarding something."
"The artefact… it…" grumbled Slater before shaking his head clear, "it's the artefact, they don't want to lose it again. I have no doubt that it'll delay or completely stop whatever plans they have if we take it again."
Tullius ignored the tinnitus he was currently suffering and nodded; "Agreed, the faster we retrieve the object and escape, the better."
"Grogg," cheered Scott remembering the krogan's close range attacks, "you were awesome."
The krogan laughed heartily; "That was fun!"
Rebecca rotated her shoulders from recent aches and added a side comment towards the nearby Scott; "Just remember you're only human, please try not to get so close to something like that again. You nearly got squished."
"You're right, I need a T5-V battle-suit like Slater, that'd be so sweet…"
"You're not listening."
The door opened with a shunting sound and two worried words from Leon; "Oh my."
The team turned to see a horrific sight I the next room, causing Grogg to grunt in disgust; "Looks like they weren't just guarding the artefact."
Surrounding the normal reactor machinery and piping, stood five long metallic spikes reaching high towards the ceiling. Each had a dead human body impaled about two metres down from the blood covered tips.
"Ohhh crap," stated Scott, recognizing the spikes and knowing the name they commonly went by, "dragon's teeth…"
Rebecca took half a step back in dread but was unable to look away.
The bodies looked twisted in agony, barely recognizable as human, their skin a blue-grey, riddled with cybernetics and what looked like raised computer circuitry in placement of veins. She correctly assumed that the spikes likely contained nano-machines that had re-written the genetic structures of the corpses.
Scott gently placed a hand on Rebecca's shoulder; "They're not human anymore, they're just husks. First time really seeing them right? This is how they're made… it's some freaky shit."
Tullius took a step towards the two humans under his command; "There could be more reaper units within this facility, both of you try your best to remain calm."
Both humans jumped as an eerie gurgling and moaning sound could be heard from above.
One of the husks had awoken and began to grasp at the large piece of metal piercing it's body, before pulling itself up towards the tip of the spike.
Scott gripped his shotgun, memories of badly-filmed zombie movies entering his head.
Leon watched on in awe; "Fascinating, first time I've seen the re-animation of the host body after conversion, simply fascinating."
Knowing that the husk would attack the moment it dropped itself to the ground, Tullius raised his sniper rifle and fired a precise shot, blowing half it's head off.
It slowly sunk back down the spike, truly dead now.
After the ringing of the shot, and the sound of squelching flesh coming to a slow stop on the spike, another eerie moan could be heard.
Everyone looked up but none of the remaining newly created husks were moving.
Tessia crossed her arms; "If that's you making sounds Scott, I will destroy you."
"Ahead!" warned Leon.
A lone husk was rapidly staggering forward from the dark corridors further on.
"More of them!" cried out Teela'Shal as six more appeared behind it.
Rebecca quickly used her omni-tool to switch her HUD radar to show movement; "There's even more coming in from the right!"
Seconds later, this was confirmed as eight more appeared from a side room, practically scrambling over each other to hunt the squad down.
Slater stepped forward and called out; "Both teams on either side of me, form a line and fire when ready."
After lining up with his team on the right, Tullius was the first to fire, using his sniper rifle to take out one of the furthest targets before it even remotely became a threat.
On Slater's command, Leon, Teela'Shal and Rebecca, all launched incinerate cartridges from their omni-tools, causing three husks to be engulfed in flames and igniting a further two nearby.
To Rebecca's horror, the flaming husks just kept on running towards the team but follow-up fire from Scott's M-8 Avenger assault rifle dealt with them.
Wild flames highlighted more husks entering the area, their shadows flickering like dark spectres against the surrounding walls.
Tessia used her biotics to lift and slam one target into a group of newly emerging husks, while Grogg happily flung himself at anything that got too close, punching and smashing the husks into barely recognisable mush.
Scott heard a whirling sound off to his left and his jaw dropped in awe. A compartment opened up from the right shoulder of Slater's battle-suit to reveal a small but dangerous-looking stinger missile-launcher.
"Oh my gwad," said Scott in excitement as he watched three miniature 'hawk missiles' fire out from the launcher.
The resulting impact took out a few husks that were grouped together and caused Scott to geek-out again; "I really need to get me one of those suits!"
Slater's emotionless helmet simply nodded towards him.
"So bad-ass," whimpered Scott to himself before feeling a slap on the back of his shoulder.
"Pay attention," warned Rebecca, allowing Scott the chance to react to a husk that was nearly on him.
"Ouh-shit!" panicked Scott, firing out a cryo-blast to half freeze the 'zombie' before shattering it's head with a swift strike from the butt of his shotgun.
A few explosions later, the entire squad were left watching Grogg wrestle with the last husk, smacking it back from a grapple before charging at it and sending the limp body across the room.
Scott looked around to everyone; "That wasn't so hard."
"Wait," said Tessia, still facing ahead, "what is that?"
A strange shape was crouched over one of the husk corpses, cast in shadow from the flames but becoming clearer as the fire died out.
It was a different species of husk, derived from mutated batarians, a 'cannibal'.
True to it's designated handle, it was feasting on the remains of the human husk on the floor, somehow gaining additional armour-plating from processing the flesh and synthetics it consumed.
"I got it," grunted Grogg, unclipping an inferno grenade from his belt and throwing it with accuracy far across the room until it landed just behind the cannibal.
The fiery explosion took out the creature and the surrounding dead bodies.
The eight-person squad silently scanned the area, looking for any more movement, until Leon spoke; "Human and batarian husks, intriguing, it appears that they are being created here."
A thought occurred to Rebecca; "The geth ship! We thought it was weird that there was a prison aboard. The logs said that several different species had all been captured at one point or another."
"Huh?" blinked Scott, trying to keep up with the thought process.
Leon explained; "Exactly, if not experimentation aboard, the geth were likely transporting subjects to this location to be converted into additional reaper forces for the war."
Tullius stroked his mandibles before gesturing to the Retrieval Squad; "I would agree, although it's strange that your team was captured near the reactor yet not brought directly here. Why were they holding you for so long?"
The salarian smiled as if he was happy that there was still a mystery; "Pleased that I'm not the only one curious about that fact. Many theories, but none I can validate."
Slater crossed his arms; "The situation has become more dangerous, but the objective still stands. We should split up into teams of two to cover more ground and search faster."
The rest of the Retrieval Squad turned to him but said nothing for a moment, Leon replying seconds later as if to simply break the silence; "Understood."
Tullius could feel the eyes of his squad upon the back of his own head and decided to speak up against the idea; "Forgive me, but wouldn't it be more beneficial staying in our large number. We've already proved that our combined firepower can take on most threats."
Teela'Shal looked from Tullius and back to her leader as if she was also thinking the same thing.
Slater reloaded his rifle and turned to the turian, his voice taking on an impatient tone; "You're free to leave if you disapprove of my commands. My team will follow my orders professionally, what about yours?"
Everyone turned to see the reaction, but Tullius was as calm as always, slightly lowering his head; "No disrespect intended commander, I apologise. We will of course follow your orders to the letter. If permitted, may I request that Scott is teamed up with myself?"
"Aww," whined Scott who had been hoping he'd be teamed up with the 'cool' destroyer or the very visually appealing asari.
Upon seeing Scott's reaction, Slater quickly answered; "Agreed, Leon's with me. Grogg I want you to team up with Tessia."
"Fine with me," replied Grogg with a shrug, guessing the order was to balance the two-person teams better.
Teela'Shal and Rebecca slowly started to look towards each other, realising that they were the only two left. Despite both of their faces being concealed, the quarian's disgust and the human's great concern came across clearly in their body language.
The quarian began to speak but was abruptly cut off by Slater; "No arguments, there are many chambers and we need to explore them all. I want us in and out as fast as possible, but we don't leave until we have that device. Understood?"
Everyone answered in the affirmative.
"Good," nodded Slater, "call-in to me when you find it… good luck everyone."
The large group began to slowly peel off into four small teams, each taking a different path through the maze of the large complex.
.***