Through
"He's dead, Commander," Garrus said, standing from where he crouched next to the still form lying in the dust. "Multiple blows to the face... enough to crack the visor plate.... but nothing more. Decompression did the rest."
"Miserable way to die..." Nayar commented quietly, his head cocked as he looked down at the hardsuited body. Blood painted the inside of the suit's visor, hiding the occupant's face.
Wickham fidgeted and looked away, down the sloping terrain of the asteroid onto which they had dropped so abruptly. Garrus followed her gaze past the one-room prefab outpost festooned with broadcast antennas and down into the small valley. There, the team's next objective jutted into the sky; a towering cylinder belching a constant stream of incandescent plasma into the midnight sky. In the airless environment, the fusion torch was eerily silent, its titanic might felt only as a powerful subsonic rumble transmitted up through his armor from the rocky floor.
A few kilometers behind them, the first of the three torches was now cold. Shepard's team had found the bunker-like base station empty but for a few human corpses and one surviving engineer. The terrified man had surprised the team on its way out of the bunker, but hadn't been able to identify the attackers.
Garrus turned the facts over in his head, trying to see the bigger picture that continued to elude him. The dead engineer at his feet hinted at the killer's particular cruelty. Where a single shot would have sufficed to end the man's life, the killer had opted instead to allow the man to suffer decompression, an agonizing end in the airless silence of the asteroid's surface.
"We're on a timer here," Shepard said crisply. "Keep moving."
The tension among the team was palpable as they maneuvered down the rocky slope, the low gravity allowing them to tread with unnatural lightness. Garrus privately hated low-gee environments- they made maneuvering difficult, as any quick move could send you flying, unable to change your course until you hit a solid surface again. Training had taught him to appreciate surfaces to which he could mag-lock his boots, but the rocky ground offered no such consideration.
All during the trip to the Asgard system, Garrus had tried to resist the urge to go over his data again and again. There wouldn't be anything new in those scant pages, and it wouldn't help quell the fear that there was something he'd missed, some obvious, glaring thing, replete with humiliation for dragging the busy Spectre away from the Citadel for a few suspicious lines of code.
Trudging across the desolate asteroid created a conflict in and of itself. On the one hand, there was the vindication of his instinct, beyond even what he could have imagined. But on the other was the feeling he didn't want to be right anymore. A little embarrassment would have been something he could live with if it meant there wasn't, in fact, an ecosystem-obliterating hunk of rock and ore bearing down on Terra Nova; a colony of over four million humans.
The question of who would do such a thing burned at the edges of Garrus' mind as the team approached the door of the second torch bunker, flanking and scanning as they went. Citadel conventions specifically prohibited the use of Tier I kinetic impacters, but it made no sense that this would be the work of a major military, anyway. Garrus couldn't help but wonder if the ghost of Saren wasn't reaching out from beyond the grave to hurl his hatred against the humans one last time.
Saren could be cruel when it had suited him, but the geth weren't- they would have simply shot the fleeing human. Garrus sometimes wondered if the geth had any concept of suffering or pain in the way organics did. Sometimes, when they died, they seemed to cry out, a digitized gurgle that buzzed and cracked as their white conductive blood spurted out of them. But to Garrus, it only ever sounded like a speaker shorting out.
Who, then, was trying to destroy the colony? The data gathered at the Citadel was fragmented hints, and Garrus had yet to determine if it had originated at the Citadel, or was only passing through one of the countless communication hubs that serviced all of Citadel space.
Garrus glanced behind them as they approached the bunker door, but saw only empty rock and star-filled sky. Still disquieted, he turned back to see Shepard key in a code sequence provided by the surviving engineer, and the heavy, toothed portal cycled open.
Inside the airlock, pressure and air reasserted itself with a soft hiss. Garrus shifted his weight, glad to feel the leverage of proper gravity return. The inner door to the airlock cycled open, and the humans' visors opened in response to the clean atmosphere as Shepard slipped into the entry hall. The walls were reinforced concrete, sealed and buttressed with thick beams at intervals. Like the first bunker, the outer section consisted of material storage, with a haphazard collection of heavy-duty crates pushed up against the walls. The commander bypassed them without a glance, approaching the inner door that led to the machine room.
"Sigs," Wickham said quietly from right behind him. The gentle glow of her omni-tool cast a ruddy light along the concrete wall.
"Count?" Shepard asked.
"Five within fifty meters," the chief answered.
"Load it up, but hold your fire until we confirm hostiles." Shepard gestured to the far side of the doorway. Nayar quickly took up position, gripping his assault rifle in front of him.
In Garrus' HUD, ghosted markers appeared as Wickham plugged the locations of the armor signatures into the team's network. The power output of military-grade kinetic shielding systems were hard to conceal at close range, and Shepard's tone confirmed her skepticism that they were merely engineers.
Shepard touched the door panel and the portal slid open. Beyond, transformers and other monolithic machinery rumbled away, interlinked with pipes and cabling that ran along the ceiling. These powered the massive magnetic containment field and regulated the fuel that governed the fusion reaction inside the torch.
Garrus followed the commander as quietly as he could as they advanced into the room. In other circumstances, he might have suggested they power down their own shields in the interest of stealth, but it was a gamble. Shield capacitors did not recharge instantly, and Shepard obviously did not think it worth the risk, preferring instead to hope the enemy was not running constant scans, and be better protected in case of surprise.
Shepard abruptly held up a closed fist. Now well-versed in human military hand-signs, Garrus froze along with the others. Over the sound of machinery, Garrus could hear voices. The commander waited a few seconds, then edged forward along the broad pipes.
"Vakarian, Wickham, flank," Shepard murmured, gesturing left along the far wall.
Garrus responded with a curt nod and turned away, creeping along the wall in the shadow of a huge, humming transformer unit. As he went, he tuned his audio pickups to drop lower frequencies, trying to zero in on the voices.
"... just have some damn patience, Kath."
Something in the tone of voice, the accent, pricked at Garrus' memory.
"Patience? Hah!" a second voice sneered. "We should have left the instant Balak started up with his revolutionary nonsense. Not a lot of good merchandise to be had on an asteroid, is there?!"
"I don't like it any more than you do," the first voice replied. "But reneging on contracts is bad for business."
"Maybe if Balak just stopped shooting everyone, this wouldn't be such a waste of time," a third voice interjected. The slight modulation told Garrus it was being transmitted through a helmet speaker.
"These are lousy takes anyway." There was a heavy thud somewhere ahead.
The armor signatures were getting close. Garrus held out a hand, and Wickham stopped obediently, giving him space to edge up to the corner of a support piling. He peeked quickly around, taking in the scene before retreating, lest the glint of light off of his visor give him away.
Standing in the center of the space beyond was a loose cluster of humanoids, all armed and armored in a motley assortment of gear. Three wore bulbous helmets, but the two talking were bareheaded. Garrus recognized the four-eyed aliens immediately.
"I see them, Commander," Garrus reported softly. "Five batarians, next to the main transformer stack."
He heard Shepard growl wordlessly over the comms. Beside him, Wickham craned her neck to peek around the corner.
"Geez, they're even uglier in person," she whispered, pushing an ECM grenade into the rail launcher on her pistol.
The sound of something scraping against concrete was all the warning they got as a low-slung, quadrupedal form barreled out of a dark corner beside them and launched itself at Wickham with an ugly roar. The chief only managed a startled yell before the beast crashed into her, sending them both to the floor, her gun spinning away.
Varren. Long and lean, the alien creature's scaly hide glittered dull silver in the dim light. Garrus had plenty of experience with the vicious pests, and knew firsthand how dangerous they were, the very reason they were often kept as pets by enterprising thugs. Illegal on the Citadel, they were nonetheless nearly impossible to eliminate even in the barren ecosystem of the massive station.
"Intruders!" one of the batarians yelled.
Garrus cursed. The varren's long jaws were clamped around Wickham's forearm, making it too risky to fire on it. He lunged toward the stricken marine and swung the butt of his rifle at the varren's head, but the alien beast twisted violently and the blow skipped off the hard scales of its neck. Wickham yelled in pain as her arm was wrenched.
Suddenly Garrus' shield hissed and the dull impact of decelerated gunfire slammed into his armored back. He whirled around, spraying a wild burst of rifle rounds back at his attackers. He was completely exposed, with the five batarians advancing fast. In that sickening instant, he faced a choice- stay and die, or retreat to cover but leave Wickham to her fate.
The second his wild shots had bought him expired quickly as the batarians returned fire en masse. Garrus dropped into a roll as sparks exploded off the heavy machinery around him. His outstretched left hand closed around Wickham's pistol, and, flat on the ground, he twisted and fired the loaded ECM grenade in one quick movement.
The batarians were experienced fighters, and knew they had the advantage. The two closest to Garrus' wild grenade launch dodged behind cover as it exploded, spreading crackling blue lighting across the layered conduits. The lead alien confidently shrugged off the coruscating energy and waved two of his companions forward as he raised his rifle. Bringing his own rifle to bear, Garrus' breath hissed between his teeth as he got ready to die.
An abrupt explosion saved him. A wave of shrapnel knifed into the batarians from behind, followed swiftly by a bloom of dark energy that washed through the confined space, smashing the aliens into the machines and sending them sprawling. Garrus pushed himself to his feet just as Alenko rounded the corner ahead of him, firing at the disorganized batarians. Behind the lieutenant, the rhythmic boom of Shepard's shotgun wove through the batarian's dying shouts.
Alenko skidded to a stop beside Garrus, his feet planted wide. He gestured sharply, and the blue corona of dark energy enveloped him. Both the varren and Wickham lifted into the air. Garrus quickly realized the lieutenant's intent- the varren's legs scrabbled and clawed at the empty air, suddenly robbed of leverage.
Her eyes wide with terror, Wickham nonetheless responded to the sudden opportunity. Exploiting the only piece of leverage between them- the varren's grip on her own arm, she swung her right fist hard at the beast's eye. The varren's jaws opened reflexively as it let out a roar of pain and wrenched its head back.
Alenko jumped forward and hooked his arm around Wickham's waist, dragging her out of the blue distortion in the air and away from the floating varren. Garrus quickly snapped up his rifle and fired, ending the unshielded beast's life in a spray of orange blood.
The fiery blue energy around Alenko subsided as he helped the chief regain her balance. Though he had seen it now many times, Garrus was always a little awestruck by his friends' command of the mysterious energies that underpinned the universe. Neither Alenko nor Shepard ever spoke of their abilities in anything other than practical terms, but among turians, biotics were kept apart in specialized, secretive cabals, so Garrus had never completely shaken the sense of wonder his culture had impressed on him.
Garrus looked around, rifle ready, looking for signs of opposition. Instead, the commander herself crossed the hallway at a brisk trot, Nayar on her heels as they threaded their way between the armored batarian bodies now spread haphazardly along the floor. Shepard took in the team's situation with a quick glance.
"Keep together until we confirm clear," she ordered crisply. "Vakarian, cover the rear." Turning on her heel, she advanced quickly down toward the control bay, the corporal shadowing her closely.
Garrus stood aside to allow Alenko and Wickham past, noting the chief's pallid face with concern as she leaned on the lieutenant. Mercifully, there were no other attacks as they emerged out of the machine room to the entrance of the control bay. Garrus popped open his omni-tool interface and ran a scan for hardsuit signatures.
"Anything?" the commander asked, spotting the orange glow.
"We seem to be clear, Commander," Garrus said, shutting down the tool.
"Okay. Get Wickham patched up; Nayar and I will shut this thing down," she answered. "Vakarian, stay here and keep your eyes peeled for varren."
"Yes Commander," Garrus said with a nod.
The commander tapped her long-range comms as she turned to go. Garrus heard her instruct Joker to patch her through to the surviving human engineer as she and the corporal stepped through the heavy doors leading to the torch's main control bay.
He turned back to the others to see Alenko indicating a jutting retainer at the base of a concrete piling to Wickham, who gingerly sat down, cradling her left forearm.
Ever curious, Garrus watched as the lieutenant ran his fingers over the chief's damaged arm, carefully examining the scratched and damaged armor plates. Wickham bared her teeth, her breath hissing in pain, but stubbornly refusing to cry out.
"Something's broken, I think. What class mexo are you running?" Alenko asked, using the marines' common contraction for the more cumbersome 'medical exoskeleton'.
"Um... S- Sirta SMI..."
"Good," the lieutenant said conversationally. "Aldrin's compatibility interface drives me insane."
Wickham chuckled weakly. "I thought it was just me..."
Alenko smiled and shook his head. "I don't like a mexo trying to tell me how to do my job, thank you very much." He reached into is medical kit and withdrew a small, clear vial. He eased Wickham sideways and reached around to fiddle with the thin compartments along the armor's power plant.
"What's that?" Wickham asked.
"Nexadrine, not standard issue. It's powerful, better at targeting localized pain, and it won't adversely affect your reaction times." The lieutenant tapped a few commands into his omni-tool, and Wickham's tool blipped in response.
"Why isn't it standard issue?" Garrus inquired curiously.
"Because it's narcotic. Not after a single dose," Alenko said quickly, seeing Wickham's worried expression. "But they're not going to go putting it in everyone's default delivery system."
Wickham smirked. "I guess not, huh?"
"I know my way around painkillers," Alenko said in a strangely guarded tone. He pulled out a cylinder of dark blue shiny cloth and unrolled it into a sleeve. "Normally I wouldn't resort to Nex, but this isn't a situation where we can afford to slow down."
"I won't slow anyone down," Wickham said, squaring her shoulders as Alenko slipped the sleeve over her left forearm. "This is going to hurt, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Okay... do it."
The lieutenant tapped a command, and the sleeve suddenly contracted around Wickham's arm, changing color as the nano-fibers hardened and forced the limb into alignment. The chief's body stiffened, and she swore virulently between her teeth. Garrus winced in sympathy.
"Sorry," she mumbled sheepishly, breathing hard.
Alenko smiled reassuringly as he checked the sleeve. "You did fine. I've seen guys twice your size bitch and moan a lot worse than that. At least you didn't try to punch my lights out."
Wickham snickered, then her face fell. "I... It's all my fault. It was stupid, I was just watching armor sigs. Didn't even occur to me they'd have friggin' guard dogs..."
"We're running with zero intel here," Garrus offered. "Surprises can't be helped."
Among turians, dealing with injuries was usually a silent affair. Soldiers were taught different ways to manage pain, but it was always treated stoically. Something in the human temperament seemed to respond to the conversational tone, however, because already the color was coming back to Wickham's face.
"Nayar makes fun of me because I have my face in a terminal all the time," the chief continued morosely, "and this time it really did bite me in the ass. I'm never going to hear the end of it."
A shudder ran through the floor, then the omni-present vibration stilled as the torch's carefully controlled fusion reaction burnt itself out. Garrus looked around to see Shepard and Nayar emerge from the back room, both wearing expressions that radiated cold fury. The commander's face in particular made Garrus reflexively grip his assault rifle tighter.
"There's more of them in the main control complex next to the last torch," Shepard announced in a clipped voice. "Chief?"
"Good to go, ma'am," Wickham answered, drawing herself up.
Shepard swept a quick gaze over the marine, noting the stabilizing sleeve. "We can't retreat. Stay smart and don't take chances."
"Aye aye."
"Did the batarians contact you, Commander?" Alenko asked.
"No, one of the engineers did," Shepard said as she swept past them toward the exit. "Now let's move before the batarians amuse themselves by shooting anyone else."
The chill in the air was palpable as Garrus fell in behind the rest of the team. Shepard was right- there was no way out of this but through.