The synthetic growls of the Geth alerted me to their presence, and my catlike reflexes immediately sprang into action. As in, I dove into the nearest cover available like a coward without a second thought. Though it seemed to be the right choice at the time as a hail of bullets subsequently sailed over my head. Shepard reaffirmed this notion as she and the rest of the crew followed my lead, rolling behind the panels on the tram as well.
"Geth ahead!"
Oh wow. Thanks for the heads up Williams.
"Williams, push up after the next volley! Alenko, hit them with a lift field! Shield, you better give us suppressive fire!"
Oh god.
It happened fast. Too fast. Alenko was the first to pop up, hitting what I determined to be the nearest geth with a flare of his biotics. Blue sparks flew throughout the air as a sphere of azure was sent flying out straight from his hand. I could hear similar sparks crackling from Shephard as she followed it up with her own biotic salvo, and of course, Ashley simultaneously rolled out of cover as all of this was happening.
Now or never I thought absentmindedly, furrowing my brow as I leaned out left from the safety of the large panel hiding me.
The bright light of a Geth was the first thing I saw. In response, I immediately brought my predator level with my eyes and pulled the trigger. And the force from the recoil racked my body. Despite this event, I pulled the trigger several more times before a bullet skimming my arm sent me back into cover. A bright blue light surrounding my body flashed for a second before becoming invisible again.
Oh THANK GOD. Alright. This thing's got shields. Good to know. Good to know.
"Look at that, you actually got one," Ashley snidely remarked shortly after, now sitting safe again behind cover. "Looks like your gun wasn't as useless as you thought."
I peeked back out from my hiding spot to see that the Geth she was referring to lay dead in the middle of the tram, silver fluid pooling around it. "Alright, I might have missed the one I shot at earlier," I lied through my teeth.
Yeah...that was a lot easier than I thought. Didn't I only shoot like thrice!?
I only had seconds to ponder this as I heard another growl from a panel ahead of me. I hadn't really appreciated how much of a boon the third perspective was in the game until then.
But actually. How the hell am I supposed to fight without being able to see where they are!?...well...shit.
I gritted my teeth as I popped up from cover, attempting to take care of the pathetic nearby Geth myself. I had a second to register the 7 foot synthetic monstrosity standing before me until it sprayed a volley of shrapnel straight into my face. The force of the blast knocked my ass right back down behind cover. And then the Geth Destroyer subsequently ceased to be as it was littered with ammunition moments after. A faint whhhrrrrrrp sound came to my ears as my shields began to reset.
"What the hell are you doing Shield!?" Shepard yelled as everyone got out from cover and advanced further down the tram without me.
It was that close.
If it wasn't for the shields integrated into my armor, I'd have a missing head like the marine I had just made up. It would have been over just like that.
I sat there shell shocked as the fire fight continued, shots whizzing over my head. Beads of sweat dripped down my face, heart feeling like it was about to burst from my chest.
That would've been it. I would've died on Eden Prime before Shepard even reached the beacon. If I hadn't woken up with this armor, I'd be dead.
I brought my hands to my face to feel if my beautiful visage had been scarred by the Geth. As I padded my face, it didn't FEEL shot up, despite the absence of a helmet.
-definitely need to remedy that as soon as possible.
I rolled my head back to stare at the blood orange sky. Its hue now seemed much darker than before.
"SHIELD!"
I woke from my stupor, her voice giving me the impression that the group had advanced much further than I had realized.
"Coming!" I shouted as I quickly gathered my thoughts, clenching the gun in my hand even tighter. Then with a deep breath, I sprang up and stormed out of cover, making a beeline straight down the middle of the tram. I sprinted down the aisle, aiming for what I thought was where Alenko was kneeling. Too late did I notice the remaining Geth at the end of the train, all exiting from cover as I did, each of their guns clearly trained on me.
The lights coming from their heads peered into my soul.
And this is where the story ends.
Before I knew it, they had all been dropped, and I slowed to a brisk jog as the Chief shouted "Clear!"
"Looks like you're good for something," Shepard muttered sarcastically, approaching the console of the tram.
"I'm not exactly a marine," I muttered back, probably being the first truthful thing I've said all day.
Alenko looked at me concerned before he set his eyes back straight ahead as our train jerked forward. "Orders Commander?"
"The Geth will most likely be setting an ambush ahead of us. If the beacon is there, there's a good chance we'll see a large number of them too." I gulped. "Blow them away as soon as you see 'em."
I gulped again as I realized we were headed into an area that was about to do the same to us.
"Scared Shield?" the gunnery chief remarked as the train hummed, beginning to speed toward our destination.
I froze when I realized she was talking to me. Panicked, I decided to just blurt out "Nope. Haha, bring em on. Haha."
A lie of course, as that one brush with death was more than enough to send me into a fit of terror.
As the rest continued their conversation, I stood where I was on the mobile platform silently, wind blowing past my face. I really wasn't looking forward to our next encounter.
When the tram stopped, we had a few seconds of repose before the Geth popped up. Bullets...AND rockets began to rain down from a walkway above, which we had passed under earlier before pulling into the station, and the Geth even had additional support from the docking station. Shepard didn't need to yell for me to take cover as I immediately took off and dove behind the nearest crate on the spaceport's adjacent platform. In contrast, the rest of the team leaped straight into action, making short work of the Geth now assaulting our position. The only member who eventually paused in the middle of the fray was Kaidan, who when ducking back into cover, glanced back in my direction. I almost thought it was impossible to see someone's eyes grow so wide. I immediately spun around, fully suspecting a Geth to be standing behind me. But all I saw was a giant cylinder hunk of metal.
Oh right, the bombs. The bombs made for the space port. The bombs made to specifically level the spaceport and anyone in it. Geth bombs. Those bombs.
"Demolition Charges! The Geth must have planted them!" Kaidan shouted over the next volley of Geth fire.
"What?!" Shepard yelled back.
"Hurry! We need to find them all and shut them down!" Ashley shouted back, returning fire at all the Geth who were simply standing in place as they emptied their heat sinks.
Wow, I would have never known. Thanks for pointing that out Ashley. Bombs need to be shut off. Who woulda thunk.
I leaned out of cover and got a couple potshots off, apparently staving a particular Geth off long enough for Kaidan to run back to the detonator behind me and start disarming it.
"Shield, stick with Kaidan! Make sure to cover him!"
"Will do!" I yelled back, peeking back around my crate to suddenly find a rocket headed straight towards to me.
I blinked once before the rocket suddenly whizzed upwards from its trajectory, creating a deafening explosion above us, with the aftermath of the shock wave sending me reeling onto my butt. The Geth rocket trooper responsible was flung shortly after off the bridge, noticeably enveloped by a shimmering aura of violet. When I made eye contact with Shepard, she only grunted and turned her attention back to the Geth.
"Done!" Kaiden yelled already sprinting past me, scimitar in hand, up the ramp toward the second floor of the spaceport. Wide-eyed, I scrambled after him, blindly determined to follow the soldier in front of me.
Several minutes later, and Kaidan had defused the bombs in the corridor and atop the sky way too. Shepard and Williams were aggressively putting down whatever synthetic soldiers popped up in front of them across from us. In fact, with Kaidan focused on the bombs and me basically hiding, the two had practically cleared the entire spaceport themselves. Once Kaidan finished disarming the charge on the sky way, I followed him (albeit crouching) back towards the Commander and Williams, who were continuing down the main corridor perpendicular to ours.
That was when the Geth Prime reared its ugly head.
Now, the regular Geth troopers I have to admit, were slightly underwhelming...when they weren't shooting at us. They seemed to be around my height, possessed no extremely menacing traits, and were basically regular ol' robots that resembled the lamp from Pixar. The colossus standing in the corridor across from us on the other hand was significantly more threatening. It was colored blood red, standing out from the sterile white walls of the spaceport, and towered above a stack of crates next to it, making me guess the thing was at least 10 feet. And it also held a Geth spitfire in its hand, from what I could tell, which was basically a giant portable Geth gatling gun. Horrifying. I could really only think of one thing as it turned in our direction.
I wonder what Powell's up to right now.
"Look at the size of that thing!" Alenko spurted out as its gun began to thrum. Across from us, Williams barely had time to fall back to Shepard's position before the crate she was hiding behind was blown away by a sudden burst of energy.
"Lieutenant, I need an overload ASAP!"
"You got it Commander!" Snapping back to reality, a dazzling display of electricity shortly enveloped the Prime before its shields were visibly dropped. Wasting no time, Shepard immediately slammed it with a lift and as it helplessly floated in the air, Ashley and I unloaded the rest of our ammunition into the monstrosity. I unintentionally closed my eyes while firing, so I wasn't quite sure if I was actually helping or not. In any case, I opened them in time to find its limp frame hit the ground, as Shepard's mass effect field wore off around it.
What the...I know for a FACT you can't use Lift on Primes...so...how did Shepard just do that? Welp, guess that's another question I can add to the list.
I sighed and took a moment to compose myself before I followed Kaidan over to the rest of the group.
"It looks like the area's clear Commander."
"I can see that Alenko. Come on, we need to go find that beacon."
Either Shepard's biotic game is unbelievable or...something's fucky.
In light of the mysteries ongoing, our group moved towards the ramp leading down to the Prothean relic. And as we did, I felt something still gnawing away at the back of my mind. I'm pretty sure it was just due to the earlier exchange though. The firefight had really taken its toll. I could barely hear the conversation between Shepard and Kaidan because of the ringing in my ears, and you know, the shock of almost dying thrice really did rattle my mind. The pumping adrenaline in my system didn't help too, making it kind of hard to focus on where I even was at this point.
Oh my god. Three times. Three times I've already escaped from the jaws of death. Death by shotgun to the face. Death by explosion. Death by giant robot. All of them fairly traumatic. What the hell. I mean...three times. Three...
I gasped dramatically, as I realized we had missed the fourth.
Kaidan turned around. "What is it?"
"There's another detonator!" I exclaimed, attracting the attention of Williams and Shepard as well.
"What are you-"
Shepard didn't have time to finish the thought as the howls of husks filled the air. The shrieks themselves filled me with as much terror as the thought of being atomized did.
"Kaidan, I need you down here now!" Shepard yelled as she emptied a shotgun round into a husk that had just tried to leap on top of her. As Alenko began to move, I tugged on his shoulder.
"There's another detonator behind those crates!" I tried telling him over the added fire of Geth entering the battle. He blinked at me once before Shepard yelled again.
"ALENKO! I need some biotics NOW!" He blinked at me again before turning away.
He hadn't heard me.
"Shepard behind you!"
The Commander didn't need Williams' warning as she spun around and threw the Destroyer behind her clear into a stack of crates with a mass effect field.
What do I do. What do I do. What do I do-
I looked to Shepard below me. As her gaze met mine, we ended up staring at each other for several seconds before I turned to sprint away, towards the end of the Station's balcony. The look she had given me as I ran off racked my conscious with guilt.
...but why do I feel guilty? I'm not hiding dammit! I'm saving their damn lives!
Or at least I was going to try as I turned the corner we had previously ignored. And of course, there was the bomb, having been hidden behind another wall of crates.
So...how hard can this be? All it took was some button mashing in the game. Once I finish, I'll be a hero and the group will take me with them on the SR-1 fo sho.
Once I actually looked at the rig in front of me, I realized my fantasy's fault.
...this really isn't like the game.
The bomb had a screen containing symbols that I could only discern to be Geth in origin, with wires weaving in and out between the cylinders constituting it. I had absolutely no clue what to do. There were no triangle or y buttons in sight. I ended up staring at it for a good long while before I noticed the symbols on the screen next move from two columns to one. I could tell I was out of time. I was just about to yank out a handful of wires when I heard him.
"Do you need a hand with that?"
I barely had time to glance up before Kaidan saddled up next to me, immediately pulling out some wires and begin to type away on his omnitool. And this is how it went, as he repeated this process several times, pulling out a cable and then sending a series of commands to the detonator's interface from his handheld.
The detonator's screen went blank when Kaidan finally shut down his orange device.
"Thanks," I said, stunned at how close we had all just been to death.
"Should have been a little louder, I almost didn't hear you." I opened my mouth but closed it again as he asked his next question. "How did you know there was another bomb?"
Alright. Note to self- stop doing this. Knowledge really is a two edged sword. Mental note - Keep track of what you say and how you say it.
I was still thinking of how to answer his question when Shepard yelled for us to get back to her position. After walking back down the ramp, Kaidan defended me from the Commander, and how we all would have been blown sky high if I hadn't alerted them to the last detonator. As he did, all I could really focus on were the Geth and Husk bodies littered across the cargo bay. My attention was especially drawn to the Husks. They strongly resembled cybernetic skeletons-
Which they were...
-And god did they look terrifying. Their faces were hella unsettling.
The Husks depicted in the trailer for Mass Effect 3 really were spot on hm...and I'm going to be damned before I let the Geth do that shit to ME.
I noticed a Husk's mouth to my left still opening and closing, resembling a fish out of water, seemingly gasping for air. In response, I lifted my Predator and shot it in the head to put out its misery. I shot one more time for good measure.
...because you should never forget Rule #2. Double tap.
God would I do great in a zombie apocalypse.
Unfortunately, I was in an entirely different genre. Kind of. As I pulled the trigger a second time however, I felt an abnormal rush shoot through me. Like Jon Travolta had just stuck me with a hypodermic needle full of adrenaline. And surprisingly, it felt fantastic. It was amazing. Like I could suddenly take on that seven foot Geth destroyer that had knocked me back on my ass. My vision even became a little blurry too. Although that was concerning, I brushed it off, chalking it up to the fact that I was a bit woozy. Deciding to turn away from the dead Husk lying in front of me, vision getting blurry, yellow, and a bit trippy at the same time, and still feeling manic, was when the main center piece of the docking area finally caught my attention.
It was the first time I had actually noticed it too, strangely enough. And I don't know how I had missed it in the first place.
The Prothean beacon.
The enormous black obelisk ahead of me towered over the entire spaceport, with a faint green light emanating from its bodice. Its design was sleek, essentially just a large slab of metal, but it was still breathtaking. And I couldn't find a single seam in its design. How the Protheans could have built the thing without any visible seams was beyond me. And then, I again wondered how the hell I hadn't noticed it before with how freakin' large it was.
Was it even this big in the game?
I stared at it absently for a good amount of time before eventually returning to our current situation and pulling myself away.
...Mmmm okay. Odd. It's not THAT interesting...
I looked back to see Shepard wave Kaidan off, stare at me and then turn back around without saying a word. Apparently Kaidan's defense of my actions was convincing enough for Shepard to not reprimand me for my apparent cowardice.
Then she radioed Joker. "Normandy, the beacon is secure. Request immediate evac-"
Kaidan and Williams walked past Shepard and I to get a closer look at the beacon.
"This is amazing. Actual working Prothean technology! Unbelievable!"
Oh shit.
"It wasn't doing anything like that when they dug it up. Something must have activated it."
The entire reason the beacon was in the game slipped my mind...again...just like everything else. Dammit.
I glanced back over my shoulder. Shepard, who was still chatting with the Normandy, was also walking towards the ramp at the opposite end of the spaceport.
Shepard, oh my god, what are you doing?! You're way too far from the beacon! Oh noooo-
I began to open my mouth before a bright flash of light briefly stunned me. I turned back around to see Kaidan grabbing his head; his L2's most likely flaring up from the display of light. And I found Williams was to be the one being pulled toward the beacon. My eyes widened in response.
OH shit oh shit-It's happening...Is this-
I furrowed my brow.
...I'm the one who's supposed to receive the visions.
I began to sprint toward Williams before I suddenly felt Shepard shove me aside. With freakish speed, she then jumped up and threw the chief out of the energy field that was surrounding her. Losing my balance, I landed flat on my face right below the woman.
"SHEPARD!" Williams shouted as she sprang right back up from where she was flung.
"No! Don't touch her! It's too dangerous!" Kaidan said behind me, restraining her, apparently having already recovered from his short-lived headache.
Then I begun to feel a weird sensation travel throughout my body. Looking down at the metal boards of the floor, I found them surprisingly getting smaller and smaller. I then saw Kaidan and Williams come into view below.
Shit.
As I levitated in the air upside down, I had just begun to grasp the situation before I felt Shepard's boots touching mine. Then I felt her give a strong push.
"Alenko grab-" she tried to shout before a further burst of energy emanated from the beacon.
Her action had actually had me floating back towards the ground before my head was blasted with a deafening scream.
I shut my eyes when the sound assaulted my ears, the unpleasant cacophony that came after it sounding like nails being dragged along a chalkboard. Immediately after I shut them, textures, shapes, images, pictures, scenes, worlds flitted by one after another. The incoherent chattering/screams of long forgotten races accompanied them. The chaotic nature of the message pervaded my brain, snaked through my every thought. The sounds and images slithering through my head were too much, and I screamed in horror only to find no sound leaving my mouth.
Then everything became Black, then nothing.
I gasped for air upon release.
I had seen the vision on my television numerous times, but it did not even come close to conveying the horrors I had just witnessed. If I hadn't been insane, I surely was now. I very, very, VERY, slowly began to open my eyes.
...wait...wasn't-
A bright flash of green assaulted my pupils one last time as the beacon then shattered in front of us. The front of my body was seared by the following explosion, and I gotta tell ya, the impact of the explosion itself really fucking hurt too. I could hear Kaidan yell in agony, the light show from the beacon causing his implants to flare up again. And I personally hit the ground face first, which just added to the scene of unpleasantry.
I could hear Shepard land with a thud farther behind me.
"Shepard!" Williams yelled again, immediately rushing to her side first.
I groaned as I tried push myself off the ground.
This has not been a pleasant day.
Author's Notes:
So you might ask "Stache, did we get a POV from Shepard in the last chapter?" And to that I would respond "Who are you talking to? You're alone in your room. Weirdo."
Actually, if can see the story summary, I have three characters that I plan to have POV's for, which are the OC, Shepard, and Joker (who'll probably just have like 3). The next chapter might favor our current hero a little bit but we'll definitely see the other two come Chapter 5. And I can safely say they will be much longer than the 5 lines I had given Shepard in Chapter 2.
You might also ask "Stache, I keep getting notifications for when you update your story. But I don't see any new chapters? Why are you spamming my mail!?"
To that question, all I can say is Sorryyyyyyyyyy.
As one can tell, this story is in desperate need of editing. After hammering out a chapter, I'll go over it a couple times before I'm semi-satisfied with it and then upload it here. Then I go over it again for any wording I don't particularly like and put up POV blocks. Once I'm done, then I publish publicly to the story. Of course, there are STILL many mistakes or things I don't like, so I'll go back, edit it, and reload it. I've already done this a couple times to those who get the updates (IF you guys are even alerted to this stuff).
Tbh, I don't know if those of you following get alerts for chapter editing or just for new ones being added but I advise you disable the alerts for when an existing chapter is edited if that's actually a thing. I know you all might not even notice the changes rereading the chapter, but I do, at least, which is reason enough for me to comb over these things time to time. And I gotta tell ya, one can only read a line so many times before it begins to look like gibberish.
Anyways, just wanted to give an explanation for why it seems like I'm spamming your inbox with updates on my story. Its not because I'm trying to boost views to inflate my own ego. It's big enough as it is. It's honestly just because I'm fixing the story so I don't cringe every time I rereading it myself.
In any case, thanks for understanding!
Until next time, catch y'all later!