Chapter Eight

The squad has been walking for almost an hour now, following the trail of damaged frondescence. The path left by the hovercraft's jets is faint, and at times vanishes completely, sending them searching in a wide circle for the continuation. The sun rises into the sky, settling at its apex to watch the squad's progress through the forest.

Shepard rubs his cheek where a branch had whipped back at him, then winces as he is hit in the other cheek. "Jack, could you be more careful with the—oof!" he says, stopping abruptly as he runs into Jack from behind. Shepard looks down from the trees. "What-"

Jack shakes her head, a finger to her lips. She gestures forward, and Shepard's eyes follow her hand.

Several hundred meters ahead of them, partially obscured by trees, stands a humanoid figure. It is facing away from them, and doesn't seem to have noticed their presence. Shepard immediately stills his body, and keeping his eye on the figure, whispers to his squad mates. "Stay here. Don't move."

"No, you stay here!" hisses jack. "You're injured, remember? What the hell are you going to do with a broken clavicle, huh? Besides, I can kill him from here with biotics."

"That would give our presence away! And it's a fracture, not a break, so just stay here and keep quiet!" He glares at her. "That was an order, in case you missed it." Without another word, Shepard slips off into the trees, leaving Jack and Legion behind.

He sticks to the backs of trees, moving stealthily through the foliage. His feet sink into the ground slowly, toes before heels. As he draws closer to the figure he begins to see more of the clearing they stand at the edge of. The soldier stands alone, and as Shepard's eyes focus he sees that the trees behind it are in fact a cleverly camouflaged wall, displaying a shifting pattern of leaves that does not quite match up with the surrounding forest. The building reaches up two stories, with an array of antennas jutting out of the roof. That must be the signal jammer, he thinks.

Shepard steps out from behind the last tree, putting nothing between him and the figure but a few meters of air. The figure stands a little taller than a human, but in the full body armor they are roughly the same shape. Shepard pads towards the Batarian soldier. He flexes his hands, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, and whispers something under his breath, so quietly that only someone with their ear to his lips would have heard it. Then the Batarian begins to turn around, and Shepard moves.

Before he has a chance to turn, Shepard drives his knee into the soldier's back. As the Batarian stumbles, Shepard grabs his helmet with both hands and yanks down, twisting his arms and stepping to the side. With a muted crack, the soldier falls to the ground. His arm twitches, and then stills. He doesn't move again.

Shepard staggers, falls to one knee as his shoulder assaults him with a blinding wave of pain. He sucks in a shaky breath through clenched teeth and forces himself up. Now is not the time for pain. Now is the time for action. Pain comes later. He picks up the fallen soldier's rifle and checks the clip, then looks over his shoulder and waves to the rest of the squad.

…

Legion moves the last pieces of code into place. Its own program latches onto the algorithms of the lock, overriding the loops set in place to check for a key. A further twitch of its mind sets all of the host values to True, sending currents through the mechanism of the door and opening the bolt.

The door slides away gently, revealing a vestibule and another, unlocked door. The squad steps inside and Legion reseals the door , pausing to destroy the key loops and reset the values to False. Nobody will be getting in after them.

The three check their weapons, preparing for whatever lies on the other side of the next door. Legion switches from the sniper rifle to a closer range battle rifle. Shepard holds up three fingers, then two, then one. He waves his omni tool at the door.

The squad rushes out onto a flight of stairs leading up to the second story and down to a basement level. Shepard doesn't wait to consider, jogging up the stairs. Legion clatters up the stairs behind him, but the shooting's already begun.

A door at the top of the stairs is open, and Shepard's gun clamors from inside. Jack bounds past Legion, throwing blue light ahead of her. Two Batarians lie bleeding on the floor, and a third smashes into the wall as Legion enters the room. It is instantly clear that they weren't expecting an attack.

Shepard crosses the room in three quick strides, sweeping his gun barrel up and down as he looks for more enemies. When he sees that there are no hidden adversaries he turns his attention back to a wounded Batarian lying against a computer console. The Batarian wears no helmet, and his shields must have been powered down. A row of bullet holes has torn through his armored torso.

Shepard prods the Batarian's arm, which is fumbling for an un-drawn pistol. "Drop it," he commands. "And we'll let you live. I have an application of medi-gel right here. All you need to do is tell me why you attacked us."

The Batarian's eyes flick away from Shepard to his gun.

Shepard frowns, leveling his own weapon at the Batarian's chest. "Don't even-"

The soldier yanks his hand away from Shepard in a sudden burst of strength, and before Shepard can react the Batarian has the barrel jammed under his own chin. As Shepard looks on in shock, the Batarian grates out something incomprehensible, and pulls the trigger. The pistol roars, echoing loudly in the confined space. Shepard backs away, lowering his gun, as the Batarian's body slumps to the floor.

Jack wiggles her fingers, biotic light vanishing from her skin. She regards the corpse apathetically. "That's a hell of a commitment. I wonder what he could have told us."

Shepard is silent for a moment, then he turns to Legion, gesturing towards the consoles. "Legion, can you make sense of any of this?"

Legion nods and steps around the dead Batarian, tapping into the computer station. "This is the signal control. We can disable the jamming signal from here, and contact the Normandy for pickup."

Shepard nods. He suddenly looks very tired. "Yes. Can you access the building's mainframe from here?"

"Yes, Shepard-Commander. We have access to all files stored on the system."

"Download them to your omni tool. I want answers, but we can't search the base now. There have got to be more soldiers around here, and they'll all be in here the second we shut off that signal. We'll have to hold out here until the Normandy arrives. Hopefully there's something in there that'll give us some kind of clue about all this." He looks around at the bodies strewn across the room, and Legion sees a muscle in his jaw tighten. "There had better be."