C H A P T E R 5
Frank Antweiler watched the small flotilla of ships approach the planet with a stony expression. Four smaller crafts, maybe corvettes or gunships, were providing the vanguard for a veritable monster of a ship, a converted, solid-looking 300,000 ton freighter squawking a 'Blue Suns' transponder code. It was filling the airwaves with sophisticated ECM, making it very tough to target via long-range ladar. On top of that it was leading the IR sensors down a dozen wrong paths by employing a dozen or so eezo spheres, small drones circling its hull in a distance of several kilometres whose only task it was to emit their unshielded heat signatures. They were still several million clicks away from the Mercury Star, but that would change soon.
"We can't stay here, Frank," Melissa Antweiler soberly told her husband.
"I know, darling," he muttered with a sigh. Remaining where they were was the easiest way to earn a fast pass to the afterlife - and he did not mean club on Omega! The 'Blue Suns' were a no-nonsense crowd. They would not close in to ask questions; they would come in shooting. And really, with two debris clouds hanging in orbit that once had been ships of them, who could really blame them? He activated the intercom and patched himself into engineering.
"How's the work on the drive coming along back there?"
"We've welded some cracks in the mountings shut and are done rewiring the compensators, boss," came the answer from the back of the ship. "I wouldn't take her to FTL just yet, but we're safe to run conventionally up to, ahm, I'd say, 80% capacity. My guys are done plugging the leaks, and the bigger holes've been contained by kinetic barriers. Just don't take her back into a fight and we should be okay."
The warning was more than obvious, and the elder Antweiler decided to heed it.
"Understood. I need manoeuvring thrusters and conventional power in ninety seconds, engineering." He turned to his wife. "We're getting out of here. Getting shot to pieces here won't do us any good."
"Understood, bridge. You'll have the core up in ninety," the machinist responded affirmatively, and the intercom fell silent again.
"I'm calling Magnus, Mellie. He's a reckless bastard, but neither of needs to get killed because a bitch like Craster thinks she can play princess out here," he glanced at the bridge's chronometer. Chimaera was ten minutes overdue. If they got out of this alive the Alliance would have to pay them a lot more to deal with incompetence and spitefulness of this level.
Dig Site, Orieste IV
Orieste Star System, 2184 C.E.
"We're bailing," Magnus Johanson's voice cracked through some static. "The Star took some damage, and I'm down to half my ammunitions. Keep your heads down, guys. There's company on the way."
"Any ideas how many mercs we're dealing with?" Kenyon sounded composed, but it was more due to resignation to fate than anything else. It was not as if they had many options left to them.
"Don't know. With a ship like this, could be everything between two dozen and two hundred. I've also got Geth readings on the ground, approaching your position from the plains."
"Happy times," Nidal Amin groaned, a sentiment silently echoed by Amos Kenyon and the others.
"I know. Listen, we'll keep an eye out for you guys, keep you informed if anything happens on the high ground. But we gotta run with our tails between our legs. Too much fire power thrown around up here," Johanson sounded strung up.
"Understood. Find a safe spot. Landing party out."
Kenyon rose back to his feet and took a look at the tunnel they had moved through, and at the gates they stood in front of. Someone had cleared the tunnel of debris and sand and installed a makeshift lighting. Well, that must have been destroyed in the fight that had left those merc bodies behind. He turned around. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel appeared dimmer than he would have expected. No, they could not move back out into the open. That would be suicidal - well, even more suicidal than the job they had done so far. They had only one way to go: forward. He shook himself and turned his attention back to the team under his command.
"Marak, do you have something in your collection to lay some traps here to slow down any newcomers?"
The Batarian flashed a grin. With his four, black eyes and the sharp teeth, it was a blood-curling image.
"About a dozen motion-triggered fragmentation mines," he pulled a small tool from his utility belt. "Remote controlled. I'm on my way," he sprinted off into the tunnel, not waiting for further orders, and Kenyon noticed with a frown that the bloody Batarian maybe so far had proven to be their best asset.
"Tsen, hold the position till Marak's back. Adams," Amos turned to the tall female marine. "You're with him. Nidal," he nodded towards the open gates, "you're with me. You, too, Buckley," he added with an irritated afterthought and began to move deeper into the tunnel.
They passed the gate. It was an impressive piece of engineering, Kenyon thought, easily three times his own height and a solid one and a half metres thick. Its outer surface should have shown signs were the sand had grated on it during the past fifty thousand years, but it was as smooth as the day it had been installed here. The energy necessary to move this thing certainly had been astronomical. And yet, somebody had opened it. Instead of finding themselves in another part of a tunnel network, or some sort of underground base, the gate simply lead them to an octagonal room, maybe fifteen metres in diameter. It all looked as smooth as if it had been cast in one go - and it was empty. Illuminating the large room with their suit-included flash lights as best as they could, the three of them began to search for any clues that could offer them a lead. The search was not just academic: with Geth and 'Blue Sun' mercs incoming they had to find a way out of this dead end soon.
After they had searched for about three minutes, Nidal Amin threw his arms into the air with a frustrated groan.
"There's nothing here! All surfaces are about as smooth as an infant's butt! This mak-."
Karina Buckley's frightened and surprised outcry made him and Kenyon whirl around on their heels, weapons already half drawn. The magnet for bad luck had jumped back from the corner of the eight-sided room she had searched. Where she had stood just a second before, a small, green-lit and octagonal console began to move out of the formerly seamless floor. It stopped without a sound at the level of Kenyon's chest, clearly originally intended for the use by a taller species.
"I didn't touch anything!" the team's biotic exclaimed defensively.
Nidal moved closer to examine the console, and Kenyon noticed that the two corporals and Marak had joined them, having completed their tasks.
"Well, I suppose it's Prothean technology," the sniper-slash-pilot shrugged. "I'm not exactly an archaeologist. Luckily for us, someone seems to have bridged that problems for us already," he pointed to the console's side where a round object had been attached to it. "The system's been bypassed. Looks like a high-tech hacking tool," he leaned closer to study it. "Yeah, made by some Salarian manufacturer."
Sun-Hi Tsen stepped forward. His movements were not quite as fluid as they had been at the beginning of the mission, but his self-control and the help from his suit's medical systems hid his injuries well enough.
"I'll try to figure it out," the small marine called up his omnitool. "Shouldn't take me too long." He started to run a series of analytic programmes that were supposed to check what that hacking device actually was supposed to do. The programme cluster had hardly began to run when Tsen hastily withdraw his omnitool and a hydraulic hiss filled the thin air.
"Uh-oh."
There was no transition. One moment the team stood in the centre of the octagon, wondering what was happening. The next moment, it felt as if the ground was giving way. At an insane speed the platform which had appeared to be a seamless part of the whole room raced vertically into the mountain. Against the natural impulse to stare at the ground as the one thing that actually was solid, Amos had to force himself to look up. The walls of concrete were one single, fluid mass of dark grey racing past his eye, blurring into a mush. The dim light from the entrance above faded rapidly in the few seconds they had been moving and was soon gone. Karina Buckley was shrieking hysterically, but he simply cut her from his comm circuit. Mentally unstable girls, darkness and a roller coaster ride. Shiny.
Their descent ended as abrupt as it had begun. One moment the platform moved, the other it rested.
"Inertial dampening field," Nidal muttered perplexed. "And not a makeshift one either."
That made some sense. At the speed the platform had moved a non-bolstered stop would most likely have ground their bones to a mush. And it gave a frightening insight into Prothean technological longevity. But there would be enough time for archaeological insight later. Right now they had more pressing concerns.
"Gear up, folks. Whoever went through those mercs at ground level will be down here!" Amos warned his team mates. Weapons were drawn, and they took up a half-round formation in the centre of the platform. There was no armoured gate down here similar to the one at the top of the shaft.
Then, swift as a saw blade, a dark metal plate emerged with a mechanic whirr some ten metres over their heads from the side of the shaft and cut it off from the surface above. With a hiss, air started being pumped into the room. Adams cursed silently.
"God damn it, I wish they could stop using these cheap scares! I feel like I'm in an alien dark ride," Frederica Adams snapped after she had exhaled the breath she had kept for too long. She checked her readouts. "Standard nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. We can take off our helmets, sir."
"Keep your suits closed," Kenyon shook his head. "We don't know what's down here."
As if on cue, a wide segment of the wall seemed to simply vanish. Bright light bathed them and blinded their vision for a moment before their suits' visors adapted to the brightness. The two marines had instinctively thrown themselves to the ground, their weapons pointed at the opening. But as the intensity waned, they slowly crawled back on their feet again. Dim light that seemed to be coming from no particular point illuminated a flawless concrete corridor wide enough to drive an Alliance tank through and then some. The material appeared almost pristine to their eyes. There was no hint of decay anywhere. Only the colour from what must have at one time been Prothean markings had not stood the test of time that well, leaving only black smudges. Not that a complete word would have helped. For all the relics left behind by the ancient galaxy-ruling race there was surprisingly little actual data left. Their ruins were empty, some appearing almost scrubbed clean, and the few data caches the Citadel races and later humanity had found were often audiovisual in nature, not written text. Granted, there were certainly thousands of dig sites and just as many planets formerly inhabited by the Protheans that had not yet been discovered, but what had been discovered so far often left more questions than answers.
The pristine corridor was in stark contrast to what filled it. The scene was that of an aftermath of a merciless battle. Burnt out mech parts littered the floor, time and again accompanied by debris from barricades that had given way under an obviously relentless assault. The remains of a more than a dozen 'dead' Geth of all combat classes in various states of destruction were strewn in between them. And in between the mutual synthetic destruction several bodies of 'Blue Sun' mercenaries had been left lying were they had fallen.
Amos was the first to move into the corridor, his deep-set eyes carefully noting every facet of the battlefield as his gaunt face hardened, faced with the close quarters butchery. He noticed that one of the Geth drones was still twitching, a purely mechanical reflex of powered myomers that no longer received fresh input. He also noticed that the same drone lay close entangled with a LOKI mech. Its twitching arm held a whirring vibro-bayonet. Kenyon shuddered. Battles against the Geth had always seemed like almost clinically clean operations to him in the aftermath of the attack on the Citadel. He had never heard, or even imagined, Geth drones getting into hand to hand range and attacking with anything but guns. It gave them a strangely more human face, he thought and wondered at the same time if this was how the Quarians had experienced the fall of their civilization: close, personal, ugly.
Tsen and Adams checked on the fallen mercs - Batarians, Turians and humans alike -, but none of them was still alive.
"Looks like a bloody 'Battle Royale' to me," Nidal muttered. "Blue Suns against the security mechs, and both against the Geth," he shook his head. "Someone badly wants our Salarian."
"Or what he's found here," Marak added darkly.
Kenyon cut the power cords of the moving Geth and rose to his feet again.
"Probably both, but we're not here to speculate about that. Time's short. Take whatever thermal clips and equipment you need and lets keep going."
They followed the corridor until it widened into an underground hall that proved to be just as empty of its original contents as the rest of the bunker complex. The burnt out husks of a wheeled armoured vehicle, and more debris from security mechs and Geth drones covered the floor. But here again the battle had already moved on. The large room, easily a hundred metres long and wide, branched of into three smaller corridors. Only one of them stood open, but Nidal and Tsen went to check out the other two, to no effect. There were no consoles or displays there, meaning those parts of the bunker could probably only be opened from the inside. Calmly, they began to further descend into the old Prothean facility. From time to time they came by closed bulkheads to each side of their tunnel, but the small consoles they found there embedded into the smooth walls were dark and without power, and a quick examination of those bulkheads only brought forward a frustrated shake of Marak's head. Those doors would be able to withstand even the most powerful conventional explosives. Here and there they found spent thermal clips lying on the otherwise pristine floors, but whatever technology the Protheans had used to make those tunnels had created them impervious to the effects of small arms fire. Their route took several turns, and after ten minutes Kenyon began to wonder just how huge this facility actually was. Given the closed hatches they had passed so far, what they had seen must have been the bare minimum of the extent of the underground bunkers.
He did not get to linger on the thought. His suit's audio sensors picked up the faint echoes of weapons' fire, and the former lieutenant-commander ordered his team to quicken their pace. Nidal fell in besides him, with the two marines following directly after the them. The Arabic sniper-slash-navigator had replaced his precision rifle with a submachinegun. The sounds of battle grew louder with every metre, until the corridor around them was filled with the roaring staccato and rolling thunder of mass accelerator weapons and explosions. They moved around a right-hand bend and came to a halt. Less than half a dozen metres away the small corridor widened into a T-section which again seemed wide enough to drive a vehicle through it.
Mass accelerator rounds raced from one side to the other, leaving a blue-ish blur hanging in the air for a few sections in the small section Kenyon and his team could witness. Amos took a deep breath and pressed his back against the wall before tilting his head just enough to glance around the corners. Projectiles screamed past his head and he hurriedly withdrew it, closed his eyes and exhaled to get his adrenaline levels back to somewhat normal...ish.
"Mercs on the left side, Geth on the right side," he told his team, forcing his voice to sound steady. "The mercs are bottled up but in a good defensive position. The Geth," he frowned, "the Geth have an armature with them."
The reaction of his team to the realisation that there was a heavy walker ahead was cut short by the battle intensifying. A rocket screamed through the corridor, drawing a trail of exhaust fumes after it and exploded somewhere in the not so distant distance. Weapons fire from the Geth side fell silent for a moment, them resumed with less intensity. The armature fired its main gun, and the projectile screamed past the T-crossing, slamming into something on the other side. Geth drones rushed past the opening, firing their weapons and ignoring Amos and the other Corsairs. Heavy steps echoed back from the concrete walls, and with a long howl automatic weapons began to hammer away. The sound was accompanied by the sickening tone of something ripping through synthetic fabric. Half a Geth drone came flying back through the corridor, flailing helplessly, it's round ocular flashing frantically. Heavy steps from both sides approached. Slowly, unhurriedly the massive bipedal form of a heavy YMIR security mech shoved itself into Kenyon's field of view while the Geth armature was also close enough for him to clearly here it.
"Shit! SHIT! Fall back! Move it, people!"
But it was too late. The YMIR stopped its approach, but only to unleash another missile from its launcher. It slammed into the massive Geth walker at point blank range, forcing the machine to stagger back a bit. Still, the explosion was enough to knock the members of Kenyon's team off their feet. The armature responded with a shot from its own main gun, supported by the small arms of the remaining Geth drones that had assembled around it. For a few seconds the two giants were duking it out in a ferocious match of mutually assured destruction while a shaken Kenyon tried to get back on his feet again, numbly noticing that Buckley had crawled into a corner. He returned his gaze back to the T-crossing just in time to realize the heavy security mech had sustained critical damage and had begun to overload. He hurled himself away from it with all his remaining strength, and not a second too soon. The mech's small power core exploded, and a wave of superheated plasma raced through the wider corridor, its extensions rushing into the team's hideout where it almost burned out their suits' capacitors. Here and there the compound materials most of the suits were made off seemed to smoulder. But they were alive. However, before Kenyon could thank whatever god there was for their luck, the Geth armature exploded in a storm of electrical overcharges that raced right through the team, knocking half of them out by the shock, the other half by the blast wave.
Karina Buckley had remained unaffected by the explosions since she had been the one of the team the furthest away from them. She was no fighter. What few combat simulations she had been in had been simple point and shoot training exercises against targets that did not shoot back. Nothing had prepared her for what she was going through at the moment. She did not want to look at the other team members since she feared that what she would see were the faces of dead people, leaving her alone and stranded beneath the surface of an alien planet, surrounded by things set out to kill her. Her fear was almost literally choking her. Shit, she was only eighteen. People her age were supposed to make their first experiences with drugs and alcohol that age, maybe get a boy- or girlfriend. This here was not how it was supposed to be. A thin stream of tears ran down her cheeks. Oh, shit, how she had disappointed her parents... . There were a thousand different thoughts running through her head at the same time. She only noticed that someone had stepped into the corridor when he kicked her foot and she, instinctively, looked up.
"Hey, seems like we have newcomers," a menacing voice called out. "And one of them's even conscious."
She frantically blinked the tears away, trying to figure out who was standing there against the backdrop of light from the larger corridor. Three more shadows stepped into the hallway, casually strolling over the other fallen team members. The light dimmed enough for her to realize she was surrounded by a group of 'Blue Sun' mercenaries.
"What about the others?" one of the newcomers wanted to know, and the man in front of her - a Batarian, she realized now - shrugged his shoulders.
"What about them, Bernowsky? Unconscious and no danger to us," he picked up a gun from the floor. "Take their stuff, we'll see what we do with them later."
The one he had spoken to, Bernowsky, seemed to frown.
"Why the hell should we do that? Lets just put a bullet between their eyes and be done with it!"
The leader of them, the one that had kicked her, shook his head and laughed maliciously.
"Now, now, Mr. Bernowsky. That way, we won't have the opportunity to talk to them. And," he stared down at Buckley with a dangerous sparkle in his four eyes, "we'd be spoiling all the fun we could get out of this." He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.
Buckley was young, and she was no fighter, but she was not stupid. She had an all too good idea of what this 'fun' would be, and she struggled against the Batarian's grip. He slapped her, and got ready for another swing when the other merc stepped in.
"There aren't exactly many options as to who they are working for, boss," he had grabbed the Batarian's hand and held the man's four-eyed gaze. "They're either freelancers who've stumbled into this, or they're here on behalf of Aria T'Loak to get to that Salarian before we can snatch him up for Vido. Either way, keeping them around would be a movie-villain mistake." He let go of the Batarian's hand and shrugged nonchalantly. "Anyway, with the Geth up there I doubt there'd be time for some 'fun'," he airquoted the word in a distinctly neutral tone.
The Batarian harrumphed but let go of Karina. She slid back to the ground, shaking.
"Fine, I see your point, Bernowsky. All right, lets be about it, then." He drew his sidearm and levelled it at Buckley, and something more primal, something stronger tore through the haze of fear and panic that engulfed her, something that stopped her shaking and whimpering and made him hesitate momentarily: her survival instinct.
Her latent powers broke through the barriers her mind had erected around them out of fear and shame, and like some huge juggernaut a biotic shock wave unloaded itself in the narrow confines of the corridor without any advance warning. Like flies swatted aside by a giant, the Batarian, Bernowsky, and the other two mercs flew through the air, crashing into the concrete wall on the other side with so much force that Buckley could - somewhere at the edge of her conscious mind - hear their bones shatter. Feeling the raw energy flow through her veins, she was on her feet in no time and raced out into the open. There were no Geth left in the tunnel, but on the opposite side of it some security mechs and and mercenaries looked up in surprise at her appearance and began to level their weapons against her. Instead of the pervasive fear that had been her constant companion ever since they had left Omega Karina felt... excited. Her lips curled into a devious grin, and she rushed towards her enemies. Projectiles hammered against the reinforced walls all around her, but they neither damaged the ancient Prothean structures nor did they injure herself. She moved like lightning, her reservoir of biotic power propelling her across the hundred or so metres like a spectre. A new shock wave smashed the mercs' makeshift barricades and tore two LOKI mechs in half. She leaped into the air, grabbed two crates with a biotic pull and smashed them against the a group of Blue Sun soldiers at full speed. She landed nimbly on her feet, and without pause formed a warp field that engulfed the last two remaining security mechs, shredding them apart much like a disruptor torpedo would have done with a starship. A salvo impacted into her suit's kinetic barriers and threw her around, forcing her stabilize herself on her knees. Her vision turned into a haze for a moment, but when it cleared again she saw a mercenary who frantically tried placing a new thermal clip into his assault rifle. Both her arms shot forward, and her biotic powers unleashed themselves against the man's nerve centre, frying his brain and spinal cord.
Buckley hurled herself around, but there was nobody else left to fight. Slowly, regrettingly, she let go of her biotic powers, and collapsed wide-eyed onto the floor. All her muscles felt like jelly, and her heart was racing in her chest. She lay on the ground, panting. Then, soft darkness embraced her.
Chimaera flashed into existence a hundred and forty million kilometres away from Orieste IV.
"Sitrep, XO!" Captain Janina Craster's voice was harsh, but composed. This was what she had been born for, she thought, her eyes gliding over the holoplot in the middle of CIC.
"Ladar shows five vessels in orbit, presumably hostile. Their profiles mirror those of some mercenary vessels we've in our databanks. Four corvettes and one mothership. Power readings suggest heavy armaments, Ma'am."
"Plot an intercept vector and sound general quarters!"
"Aye, aye, Ma'am." The alarms aboard Chimaera began to howl, and crew members sprinted to their battle stations. "Captain Craster, we're also picking up two contacts in the outer asteroid belt. It's Dragonfly and the freighter, Ma'am. They're hailing us, and they're not sounding happy."
Craster frowned.
"Keep them on hold. Any response from the mercs yet?"
"No, Ma'am."
"All right, bring us in!"
Chimaera's sub-light engines roared to full power, bringing the ninety-five metres long vessel onto a wide curved vector ninety degrees to the position of the 'Blue Sun' flotilla. Craster's ship had nothing of the elegance of the 'SR-1 Normandy' or even a standard Alliance frigate. It was a hexagonal tube with rounded edges, onto which several sensor towers, several massive GARDIAN arrays and two rectangular engines blocks had been fitted. A retractable cover in its central front hid the muzzle of a heavy cruiser-sized mass accelerator while four dual turrets with fast-firing cannons of the same calibre as those aboard Dragonfly covered all approaches. It was a dark ship, almost of the colour of rust, but it was exceptionally powerful for its size.
And Janina Craster intended to make a point of that.
"She's waking up again, sir," Corporal Frederica Adams called Amos to the Karina Buckley's stirring body. Her eyelids seemed to flutter, then they opened and Buckley loudly gasped for air. Her eyes erratically swept the room.
Kenyon knelt down besides her and gently too her hands into his, giving her a friendly, soft smile from behind his helmet's visor.
"It's okay, Buckley. It's fine. You're all right, and so are we. And we've got you to thank for that," he gave her a friendly nudge. "Can you move yourself?"
She slowly pushed herself back on her feet, then gave him a weak smile.
"I think so. I'm just a bit dizzy, that's all," she shrugged.
He held her hand for a just second longer.
"That was some good work, Miss Buckley," he told her, looking into her eyes. For once, her gaze did not flinch away. "I'm glad you're with us." Their eyes met for that moment, and Kenyon had to force himself to open his hand again.
Tsen's voice cut through the haze and made him turn around.
"Sir, seems they were trying to hack their way in," he pointed at the massive metal bulkhead that cut off the tunnel. It was a virtual copy of the one they had passed on the elevator shaft, only scaled down by about thirty percent. Tsen got to work on the console, then turned around with a frown.
"There are about a dozen different code cracking programmes running here," he swept his tools over the running applications. "Seems they are trying to get through a mix of customized commercial Salarian software and something a lot more powerful, supposedly Prothean," he whistled appreciatively. "And I'm not sure which side is on the offensive, sir."
"I don't suppose there's an easier way in there?" Kenyon sighed and put his pistol back into his holster.
"Not really, sir," Tsen apologized, turning half around with a wince. "There's a simple code phrase built into the mechanism, but that could be anything. I've got no idea what weird kind of things a Salarian freelance scientist would come up with," he added laconically.
"Fine, whatever," Kenyon muttered. "Add your own toys to the mix and see what you can get done."
"It'll take some time, sir," Tsen warned him. "This is some really good encryption here, and the programming language is, well, alien."
Amos simply nodded, and together with the rest of the team began to erect some makeshift barricades from the debris that littered the tunnel. If this took longer, they would most likely need something to hide behind.
In the meantime, Karina stepped closer to the locked console. Tsen looked up at her, and she gave him a shy smile.
"I... used to be good with riddles, you know," she told him when he raised an eyebrow. "Will it make things worse if I try a code phrase and it's the wrong one."
The marine gave her a long, sceptical look, then checked his readouts and shrugged.
"Probably not. You can try your luck, but please do me a favour and don't stand in the way."
She began with simple historical facts and parts of speeches she remembered from what she had read in school. Every time she uttered a code phrase, the console would shortly light up in an angry red and bark and angry 'Access Denied', but that seemed to be all her interference did. It was frustrating, but she kept at it. Karina Buckley was aware of how little she had contributed to the mission so far, and she tried to find a way to justify the praise she had received from the commander. As much as it still shamed her that she had needed a near-death experience to force her powers to the surface, it had felt good to be useful and not just a drag. She knew she was of little value helping the others preparing a defence. Physically she was too weak to help them with the barricades, and her biotic powers were strong when awakened, but imprecise. A sledgehammer, not a scalpel. The biotic dug deeper through her memories, but to no avail. Almost as an afterthought she remembered something she had once heard and called up the menu again.
"Knowledge for all is a value of all."
The user interface lit up like a Christmas tree, then switched to a pleasant green, displaying a simple 'Password Accepted' tag line. Tsen turned to her, the surprise on his face obvious, and she offered a meek smile.
"It's the motto of the Salarian Institute for Exo-Archaeological Research. Social studies always was my favourite subject back at school. I figured since the man we're looking for is a Salarian exo-archaeologist...," she shrugged, uncomfortable with the sudden attention.
"Well, good that at least someone was paying attention in school," he smirked. "Seems like you're turning out to be our lucky charm. That removed the Salarian part of the lock. The rest is just a matter of time."
"How are we doing?" Kenyon called from the other end of the room at the gate, and Tsen held up his hand, all five fingers spread.
After four minutes and thirty-nine seconds, the gate mechanisms began to work. It was a silent process that had the massive metal block swing inside with ghostlike ease. It gave way to an room quite unlike any other they had seen down there so far. It was large, but was at the same time so full of ancient machinery that it appeared cramped. Most of the machines were offline, and Kenyon had no idea what their purpose once might have been. What few lights were on gave off an eerie twilight that turned everything but the closest parts to it into shadows. It starkly contrasted with the almost bright lit wide corridor on the other side. The only direct source of light close to them was a console mirroring the one they had hacked. It stood chest-high, and its panelling had been removed.
"Well, someone was working on this door from this side, too," the small marine of Asian descent commented with an alarmed voice and bowed down over the opened console. His eyes raced across the displayed code, and the anxiety on his face turned to grudging admiration. "Pretty exotic coding, but damn effective," he commented. "Uses only half as many programmes as I do, and takes up a lot less computing power with virtually the same performance."
"Thank you, Corporal Tsen. I programmed it myself," a soft, female voice told them from the shadows, and all weapons snapped to the ready. With deliberate slowness a Quarian peeled herself from the shadows, both hands raised to show she meant no harm.
"Who are you? How do you know his name? Answer!" Kenyon snapped harshly.
The Quarian pensively tilted her head to one side before answering him.
"I've used the bunker's wireless comm systems to hack into yours from time to time, Amos Kenyon. That did prove to be easier than getting this door to open," she shrugged, the sentiment transporting a sense of frustration. Her enviro-suit had a dark red, almost crimson colour, with the reinforced parts contrasting that in a vibrant, lively green. The shawl that easily marked her as a female was of the same colour, but sown with silvery threads. "My name is Zara'Koris nar Rayya," she bowed slightly but kept her hands wisely away from the pistol strapped to her right leg. She tilted her head to the other side, her speech accelerating. "This was supposed to be the glorious end to my pilgrimage, but it seems I got into more than I bargained for."
"How did you get here in the first place?" Kenyon eyed her suspiciously, and her arms flapped down in a clear sign of frustration.
"The pilgrimage is our way of, well, proving that we are adults. The usual idea is to travel space on our own, and then return to the Flotilla with a piece of technology, or even a ship, that'll help all Quarians. I thought I was being clever when I hired myself out as a maintenance tech for the Salarian professor," she sighed. "After all, when was the last time somebody else paid a Quarian to travel. But that was before the Geth and the mercenaries appeared out of nowhere and the prof went all mad."
Nidal frowned, slowly lowering his own gun.
"He went mad? What happened?"
"Our comm and sensor buoy picked up Geth dropships and some merc corvettes before it was destroyed. Some of the others told the professor that we should leave – we have a shuttle, you know – but he began to throw a tantrum, activated the old Prothean bunker VI and shut the whole place down." She shook her head. "The others tried to overwhelm him, but he turned the security mechs against them," Zara looked away from them. "None of them are still alive," she sounded sick.
Kenyon slowly motioned the others to put down their weapons.
"Zara, does he still have those mechs in here?"
The Quarian girl shook her head.
"No. He sent them out when the first Geth," she put an immense amount of spite into that single word, "entered the bunker. "I tried to get out, but there was no way of doing so without being seen. It wasn't like I could fight through all of that out there on my own," her shoulders slumped.
"Miss nar Rayya, can you lead us to the professor?" Amos asked her softly. "We have to bring him back to the woman that sent him here in the first place."
"Aria T'Loak," Zara nodded. "What's your deal with her?"
Kenyon shot Nidal a glance, then shrugged.
"She has data very valuable to us. Data about intensified attacks against primarily human colonies in this region of space. Attacks we intend to put an end to."
The Quarian watched him thoughtfully for a few silent seconds, then, with a start, nodded sharply.
"Yes, I know where he is. Follow me."
She led them through a maze of abandoned and inoperable machinery, sometimes strangely punctuated with what clearly were at least partially functioning servers of Prothean origin, until they reached a wide, possibly oval room shaped like a miniature sports arena. But instead of passengers benches old workstations lined each descending ring, each accompanied by a dark, offline holoprojector, while in its centre a giant, flickering holoplot hovered like a light show two metres above the floor. It showed a multitude of rather simple symbols matched by star ratings between one and seven, and Kenyon suddenly realized what this room was. It was no arena. It was a war room, a command centre. And the Salarian they had come to pick up stood in the middle of it, working with his omnitool as if nothing had happened!
Kenyon took the lead and descended down to him.
"Professor? Aria sends us. She wants you back on Omega!"
The Salarian scientist briefly turned his head to look at him, then returned to whatever he had been doing.
"Professor?" Amos asked again, this time less forceful.
"No time," Harad Velan replied in an atypically deep voice for a Salarian. "I have to get the systems back online as long as there's still the opportunity. Have to gather more uncorrupted data. This here is a treasure trove!"
"There's a war up there, Velan," Nidal Amin eyed the Salarian with much less friendliness than his commanding officer. "Pack your things, we're leaving!"
Tsen inspected the workstations and original computers in the room.
"Seems like he's using Salarian technology to get the original Prothean systems back online," the marine commented, only to be corrected by Velan without him even turning his head.
"More complicated than that. Needed to write own programming language to interface with Prothean systems. And I had to supplement faulty or destroyed segments with what I only could assume to be the right input parameters. Too much of the old system's decayed, too much of the new one's unstable," he muttered.
The ground trembled slightly, accompanied by a sound of a distant thunder. A second tremor followed, then a third.
"What's happening?" Frederica Adams demanded to know, her furrowed brows reflecting the concerns shared by the rest of the group.
The Salarian gave them a long, inscrutable look from his large eyes, then turned back to the large holographic display and waved his custom-made omnitool over it. A series of images and flashed across it before a graphic representation of Orieste IV and the space around it stabilized itself. Five red triangles hung above the planet in a loose formation. More red triangles were marked on the surface.
"The 'Blue Suns' mothership has begun to attack Geth concentrations on planet surface with mass accelerators," the scientist reported in his fast, but at the same time so calm voice. "The bunker's VI system estimates from the impact strength and speed of the projectiles that 150mm and 250mm guns are being used with destructive power in the sub-kiloton level."
"The impacts are getting close," Zara'Koris nar Rayya sounded concerned.
A new blip appeared on the outer edges of the 'war room's holo projector, and the Prothean systems automatically began to relay the radio signals it was sending.
"... Chimaera to Lieutenant-Commander Kenyon and the landing team, do you copy? I repeat, this is the Chimaera to-."
A sense of collective relief ran through the small group – except the Quarian – when the voice started to blare through the ancient speakers.
"Fuck yeah," Adams muttered. "I never thought I'd be happy to hear that voice."
Tsen nodded emphatically. For once, Captain Janina Craster's voice was a welcome sound for their ears.
Amos looked at Harad Velan.
"Can you put me through?"
The Salarian scientist seemed to struggle against himself before he waved his omnitool over a console once more and motioned Amos Kenyon to speak.
"Chimaera, this is Kenyon! We're fine, but we can't leave the surface as long as that bombardment's still continuing!"
"Understood, Mr. Kenyon," Craster replied cordially. "Get your people and the package back to the surface. We'll deal with matters up here in the meantime. Good luck."
The connection was cut again, and Kenyon turned to his team.
"That's our call, people. Lets get the hell out of here. Professor Velan, you're coming with us."
The Salarian scientist did not react too well to that demand. In fact, he became positively agitated.
"No way! There's still too much work to do, too much data to correct and retrieve!" he growled. "Invaluable findings are to be made here, and you want me to hand them to the Blue Suns, or even the Geth? No!" he shook his head. "No, no, no! Hands off me!" he snapped as Tsen put his hand on his arm.
Amos took a long look at the massive holoplot and shook his head.
"We don't have time for this prima ballerina bullshit," he gave Corporal Adams a sidelong glance, and the marine slammed to butt of her rifle against the Salarian's head, sending him into the land of the unconscious. Both, Zara'Koris and Karina Buckley shrieked at the sudden and casual violence, but Amos chose to ignore them. "Take whatever data storage devices you can find. The more we haul out of here, the better the deal with Aria." He gave the ladar blips over the planet one long look, then turned to the Quarian pilgrim. "Today's your lucky day. You're coming with us!"