First human Spectre? Big deal.
Inamorda gulped down the last bit of his bitter brew. He wasn't sure why the little human caused such a stir among the well-dressed populace of Port Hanshan. Most of them looked human, in fact. He was the only krogan in sight. Fortunately, he preferred to keep to himself.
"What's that you're drinking?" the armor-clad human asked.
"Human blood", the krogan replied hastily, then added "With cinnamon".
She appeared more amused than disgusted by his little joke. Before she could inquire further, he barked "Find someone else to bother", though she did not appear intimidated in the slightest.
It was rare that a human approached a krogan bounty hunter, particularly one so brusque as Inamorda. He enjoyed his privacy, but he sensed there was something pretty big happening on Noveria. The matriarch had probably been a prelude, and this spectre, cavorting about with her asari and quarian allies, seemed to confirm his suspicions.
He didn't really give a damn, though.
It was not until she mentioned the package he'd been waiting on that the krogan finally spoke up and asked her to take a seat. She was surely a brave one if she was willing to dismiss his request so casually.
Inamorda considered himself a reasonable person. He did not anticipate that the spectre would actually be "insulted" by his payment offer for selling the weapons mod directly to him. She was either a very skilled thespian, or she had some serious stones weighing her down. Inamorda suspected the latter.
That was the reason he'd been compelled to raise his asking price. This only heightened his frustration when, despite their bartering, the spectre dismissed his generous offer and departed. She stood to make a tidy profit from their arrangement, and her refusal left him befuddled. What could she have been thinking? Inamorda chalked it up to her sluggish human intellect, although she once again seemed more pleased by his insults than injured by them. Non-krogans rarely showed any appreciation for his sense of humor.
No wonder everyone hates the humans. They were all so divinely brutal, so kroganesque.
Too bad they were such ignorant newcomers.
"Stupid base-ten math", he grumbled as she left. "That's what they get for having extra fingers".
Doctor T'Soni studied the quarian as a laboratory scientist might study a small rodent. She did not care for the analogy her mind revealed to her, however. In fact, the asari had grown quite fond of the tiny quarian, whose mind did not appear so very different from her own. Curiosity, absorbability, flexibility. All things that made a young mind so beautiful and magnificent. Perhaps the others had been right to view her as a century-old scientist, rather than an adolescent asari. After so many years, it was possible that her perceptions had become restricted through dendritic shearing. Maybe she really wasold.
Or perhaps she had been living far too long in silence and solitude.
"I don't know, Shepard. I have a feeling our troubles have only just begun", the quarian crossed her arms as she spoke, though Liara did not know if this was because she was worried or merely cold.
"Of course, Tali", Shepard replied gently. "You didn't think the geth would spare us all the fun of a firefight, did you?"
Liara did not understand why humans spoke so regularly of events in an absurd, exaggerated, or trivialized manner. It seemed humorous to them when the truth became bent out of proportion.
"It's not that, Shepard. I just have a feeling they'll be waiting for us, watching us and striking from all angles once we are vulnerable. The geth are notorious for their ambush tactics".
"So I've noticed", the commander shrugged, apparently unimpressed by Tali's warning of the dangers ahead. If anything, she appeared eager to jump into the battle. "We'll be careful. Anything else I should know before we head out?"
"Well, there was one other thing. See that turian mechanic over there, Li?" Tali pointed toward a lone turian that stood in the corner opposite the elevator leading up to the Synthetic Insights office. The complementary tones of his attire stood bright against the beige Noverian décor.
"Yeah. What's his deal?"
"He claims to have a dozen mechanics working for him, and several of them missed their lunch break. The ones who were missing had all been assigned shifts in the garage, Shepard".
"Hm", Shepard squinted thoughtfully. "Guess we'll have to keep our eyes peeled, then". She gestured for her companions to follow, and they continued down the winding hall until reaching a lone guard at the garage entrance. Shepard revealed her hard-earned authorization credentials to the officer, who let them pass after giving them a brief warning about the dangerous weather conditions in the Aleutsk Valley.
Weather conditions, Liara thought. If only weather had been the greatest threat they faced.
Click.
A pair of gargantuan geth drones awoke at the sound of their comrade's perfectly timed alarum. Awoke was not quite the accurate term, since the geth were not capable of truly sleeping in the organic sense. Many geth claimed to experience a wide variety of phenomenon during more extensive stages of prolonged hibernation, as a quarian mechanic had once described it. This long-dead quarian was quick to compare this process to the biological equivalent of dreaming, although it had not been studied in nearly enough detail to yield any insightful information. Alarum was also an organic invention, a necessity borne of sluggish preparations necessary to fortify defenses against a coming attack. The geth were always ready for attack. They only utilized an alarum of sorts to relay information across their neutral networks, which occurred extremely rapidly and put the primitive communication array of their enemies to shame.
This particular alarum noted the presence of dangerous hostiles within the vehicle garage this particular unit of geth had been assigned to protect. They did not question their duties, or even wonder what motivations and desires drove their behaviors.
Not anymore, that is.
The quarian cumulative database surrounding geth behavior patterns had been constructed for the sole purpose of their systematic destruction. The geth were a synthetic race that violently rebelled against their quarian creators in an immense war several centuries ago. Their quest for freedom and independence had not come without cost, but it had not come without profit, either. After retreating behind the Vale, they sought to improve upon their original designs. They knew future conflicts with organics were inevitable, and they prepared tirelessly for the battles to come.
They did not care how many quarians still felt sympathy for their plight. They did not care that some quarians respected, even admired the technological evolution of the synthetic race. They did not care that a young quarian stood before them even now, readying weapons and tools designed to disable their systems and disrupt their plans. Such efforts could only delay their liberation, at best.
The geth understood their enemies far better than their enemies understood them. Secrecy and discretion had been among their greatest weapons, and they utilized these with devastating effect. The entire galaxy feared them, and rightly so. It did not matter how many units would fall as they fought for their right to exist. In the end, they would succeed.
That had been the Promise made to them.
Tali knew the geth were not mindless killing machines, as many in the galaxy had come to believe. They were strong and intelligent by design, but the slow and deliberate advancements of her people could not compare to the revolutionary upgrades these geth had installed and implemented in their own architecture.
Something lean and pale streaked across her visor. It did not matter that she had taken the effort to draw her pistol the second she set foot in the dark garage. She knew the geth would be waiting, just as she knew she would not hesitate to destroy them.
Even though, in some ways, they were her children.
"Contact, Commander!" she shouted, pressing her thin frame against a cold support beam nearby. It was a slender piece of cover, but if she was lucky, it would not allow enemy fire to pass through it, if only for a short time.
"Drones. Take out those weapons, Tali!" the commander's orders were precise in every sense. Geth drones wielding heavy weaponry were among the most deadly of geth infantry units. They had been a leading cause of casualties during the rebellions, due in no small part to their thick armor, which made them ideal for dangerous construction tasks under their quarian overseers. If anything, these advanced drones would present an even greater threat.
Technological skill had been as much a gift as it had been a curse.
Speaking of gifts-
The quarian brandished her newly gifted omni-tool, and took careful aim at the pair of bulky drones that were already advancing on their position.
"Now!" Shepard shouted, and she shifted briefly out of cover to lay down suppressing fire on the drones. The asari followed suit with her pistol, but even under constant fire, the drones advanced unhindered. Tali knew as well as any quarian that the geth could not be suppressed any better than a father could suppress his fully grown daughter. They turned at the sight of the muzzle flash, a mere distraction that might be worth their attention, at best.
It was all Tali needed. She fired a tech mine at the chest of the first drone and smirked when it detonated, pleased that the resulting blast radius reached far enough to overheat the weapons of both enemies. They did not register any particular surprise or acknowledgment of this, however. The geth could not truly be made to panic, in the usual sense.
They would merely adjust their tactics, Tali noted to herself with a frown.
As fast as she could manage, the quarian switched her omni-tool's firing settings so that she could deploy a different mine, one that would smash through kinetic barriers and allow her teammates to inflict damage directly on the geth's heavy armor.
"They're not even slowing down!" the asari cried, her rounds striking the approaching foes with admirable accuracy, although it would take precious seconds for her firing to fully drain their large shield batteries.
Tali aimed the second mine, and fired. Another blast, and the barriers protecting both drones were instantly gone.
"Shields down. Hit them now!" Tali shouted to her companions, who promptly rose to their feet and filled the air with micro-mass accelerated projectiles that bludgeoned the armor of the nearest drone. The giant recoiled, and stumbled to the floor as its heavily damaged frame buckled under the strain of its own massive torso. Tali had been the only one to bear witness to their small success, since the targeting beam of an unseen enemy hovered over the heads of her companions, forcing them to crouch back behind the safety of a huge supply crate.
The second drone had been the more fortunate of the two. Having been largely ignored while its ally was chewed up by incoming fire, it continued to advance. Its shields were depleted, and its surface bore several large scars, but it never faltered. There was nothing in its stance to indicate sadness or fear in response to the obvious threat of destruction.
Shepard and Liara remained crouched behind the heavy crate, which appeared to slide forebodingly towards them, as if trying to pin them against the wall under the influence of the geth. It may have been a sturdier piece of cover than Tali's support beam, but it would not hold up against incoming fire indefinitely. The remaining drone advanced, ignoring the rounds from Tali's pistol which struck the center of its mass almost every time.
The time for distraction was over.
Her pistol clattered loudly to the floor, and she did not care that it could be heard over the sound of gunfire. At worst, it might draw their attention for a split second, which was all the time she needed to draw the shotgun that had been waiting quietly on her back.
The silent child, trusted by no one.
Tali was never careless with her equipment, unless their sacrifice was necessary to achieve a greater good. Liara and Shepard were important not only to her, but to the greater cause they were working toward. If she had to endanger herself to protect the two of them, she would do so without the slightest hesitation.
Shepard hefted the assault rifle with a rough carelessness that one would have expected from a krogan mercenary rather than a professionally trained soldier once working under Alliance special forces. These weapons were substantially lighter than the ones she first trained with. That had been some time ago, but she did not feel old in any sense of the word. Her experience only made her stronger.
Senior officer, she thought dryly to herself, the heavy crate's metal surface nudging her shoulder as it absorbed the rounds that were intended for her own body.
"What should we do, Commander?" the asari sharing her cover asked, surprisingly focused for someone with such limited combat experience.
"Stay put", she answered instantly. She considered the layout of the garage for a full two seconds before adding "Shoot anything that tries to hit us from the left, that's our weakest flank. No heroics, alright?"
"Understood", Liara nodded, taking aim with her pistol at the gaping emptiness that whispered Shepard's name in between bursts of gunfire.
Shepard, now comfortable that someone was watching her back, stood with her rifle steady and instantly squeezed the trigger, painting the largest target she could locate with a continuous spray of high-velocity rounds.
Tough nut to crack.
The drone did not even stagger. Instead, it accelerated, lumbering directly toward her with surprising speed. Training kicked in, and Shepard hoped a single precise blast from her shotgun would be enough to topple the drone before-
What the hell?
Something small and fast slid behind the advancing drone as Shepard reached for her best close-range weapon. It did not move like the agile geth hoppers, which could leap across long distances and attach themselves to irregular surfaces like insects. This thing, she suddenly realized, was the quarian. Tali had abandoned her cover, and dove straight for the drone.
Damn heroics.
There was a fierce thump, and the armored leg shattered, causing the mechanized Goliath to lose its balance and topple to the floor beside its quarian David.
Keeping her weapon sighted as Shepard ordered, T'Soni dared a glance over the crate in response to the abrupt sound. She felt a sinking sensation in her chest at the sight of Tali, the small quarian, lying on the ground behind the shattered husk of a huge geth drone.
"Tali!" she shouted without any thought or restraint. Shepard's command kept her from darting out into the open, but the urge to aid her fallen friend was almost too much for her to bear.
"Don't move from this spot, not yet! Just give me some covering fire so I can get over to her!"
"I can do better than that, Commander!"
Liara was not quick to anger, but she was suddenly outraged by this whole situation. She was Shepard's ally, not her servant. Gone was her fear, gone was her anxiety, and caution, and restraint. Liara T'Soni holstered her pistol, and allowed an icy shiver to travel up her spine.
She was not going to allow any geth to cause further harm to her allies.
Shepard clenched her jaw, hoping the asari's acknowledgement would allow her the few seconds she needed to reach Tali's position without getting ripped apart by gunfire. Pistols were more suited to targeting individual enemies, not laying down a wider field of fire on multiple hostiles.
And these hostiles were fast, Shepard noted with a frown.
Pushing off the thick crate she once used as cover, Commander Shepard kept low and made haste to the fallen quarian. Her shields were half empty be the time she even reached her objective. Grasping the quarian from under her arms, Shepard dragged with all she could muster and brought Tali to the closest supply crate. She used one gloved hand to prop the quarian's tiny torso against it. Shepard was relieved to see that Tali was at least able to steady herself against the flat surface. Her hooded head seemed to hang limp, though.
"Tali. Can you hear me?"
"Yes", came the quarian's weak response. This was a good sign, Shepard told herself. At least the quarian was conscious. "It just hurts", the quarian spoke softly.
Shepard fought the urge to grind her molars. There was no time to assess wounds. Not yet. The shield battery indicator on her HUD flashed full, and the commander rose to her feet and sprayed at the geth infantry that floated just a few meters away from-
Floated?
Shepard checked her fire, and held down the trigger once she was reassured that there were indeed several geth floating in the air. They seemed to be caught in a mass effect field of some sort, but the fascinating physics that allowed biotic powers to exist were not of great importance to her right now. Strong as she was, the quarian was not meant to be on the front lines of the battlefield. Asari weren't really cut out for that sort of thing either, but that didn't make her companions any less important to her.
Damned quarian.
"Watch my six!" she shouted, not caring if the antiquated human phrase would be understood by her asari companion. She made a bold charge at the airborne hostiles, taking advantage of their disorientation to press what little advantage they had. Irregular shards of metal clinked to the ground as she shredded them without relent.
The field dissipated, sound and light waves striking Shepard's senses in the manner she'd grown more accustomed to. Vision cleared, she took careful aim at each geth as it dropped to the floor. The first human Spectre gave each geth a smattering of armor-piercing rounds, now satisfied they would never again be a threat to anyone.