Chapter 5: Geth and the skyway
They approached Feros, where they had heard news of Geth activity from ambassador Udina.
After exiting Normandy they arrived at a flight of stairs. Halfway up the stairs they heard strange noises and several Geth hoppers appeared. They took them out without any problems and proceeded. They arrived at the Zhu's Hope, a small settlement, where one of the human inhabitants forwarded them towards Fai Dan, their leader. Some of the team noted that the people in Zhu's Hope seemed so... absent. After receiving more information from Fai Dan, they were attacked by a group of Geth. After taking them out they heard a Geth dropship.
As they entered the tower where the dropship was hovering above the ground, Jaden was the first to step around a corner. He was immediately hit by a Geth sniper. Several rectangular 'plates' of blue-white energy appeared in front of Jaden as the sniper round hit his shields. The plate that took the hit glowed slightly more brightly than the others and they all soon faded. He quickly reacted and fired his Thunderbolt; the lightning pierced the cover the sniper was hiding behind and the sniper itself.
Shepard had never seen that type of shielding before. She assumed that the plates covered Jaden entirely and their purpose was to either spread the load of incoming attacks, or to allow a single plate to withstand much more than normally possible by redirecting energy from other plates. But she didn't have time to think more than that, as the Geth sniper wasn't the only Geth present, far from it.
She, Ashley and Garrus drew their sniper rifles and got to work, Wrex charged right in, Kaidan and Liara worked their biotics and Tali proceeded to disrupt the Geth with her tricks. Jaden had disappeared but his location soon became apparent, when they heard the telltale sounds of Detonator fire, behind the Geth.
After a lengthy and heated firefight, they cleared out all the Geth. Shepard then gave out her next orders:
"All right, we dealt with the Geth here, Joker can drop the Mako. Garrus, Kaidan, Liara and Tali, get to the tunnels under Zhu's Hope, see what you can do about the problems Fai Dan told us. Rest of us, we're going to the ExoGeni headquarters with the Mako."
The team separated: Garrus, Kaidan and Tali began descending the stairs while everyone else got to the elevator that would take them up to the garage, where the Mako would be dropped. Once there they saw several Geth drones firing at some colonists. They helped the colonists and afterwards Shepard called the Mako.
They entered and exited the garage.
The Prothean skyway laid before them.
The first thing Shepard and her team saw, was another Geth dropship dropping several armatures in their way. There wasn't a whole lot of space to maneuver around and falling off the skyway certainly wasn't preferable. As the atmosphere of Feros was suitable for them, Jaden opened one of the hatches of the Mako and provided extra support with his Thunderbolt.
As they drove into one of the buildings, they received some radio chatter: someone could see a vehicle that wasn't Geth. Their vehicle. They exited the Mako and found a small group of ExoGeni refugees, who explained more about the Geth attack. Though one of the refugees, a man named Jeong wasn't really fond of telling them much. Another man, by the name of Gavin, asked them to perform a small task for him at the headquarters.
They returned to the Mako and drove up a ramp to a higher level of the skyway. Once they exited the building, they saw more armatures and Geth troops in their way. Rockets and siege pulses were sent in their way. In return, they sent explosive shells and bolts of lightning back at the Geth.
When they reached the headquarters, they were blocked by a jammed door. The door was partially open. They could easily fit through, but they would have to leave the Mako behind.
As they approached the door Shepard warned: "My radar's jammed."
After others said the same about their radars, Jaden told them to wait and turned invisible.
A moment later, sounds of fighting and gunfire could be heard from the other side of the door.
It was odd, as usually Jaden could remain completely unnoticed.
One decapitated Geth hopper was thrown outside the door in front of Shepard and the others.
Jaden reappeared next to the hopper and said: "Hoppers. These appear to have a jammer on them. The Geth also seem to have developed a crude technology to detect me while I'm invisible. The technology is crude and unreliable, but it is still noteworthy."
"You're still going to be all right, though?", Shepard asked.
"Oh please. Considering my past, if that was a big problem to me, I would have been destroyed long ago."
They entered and took care of the remaining Geth. On their left, there was a force field, strong enough for their weapons as it appeared to draw its power from somewhere. In the middle a dropdown that would take them a level below. Finally, the path on the right side led to a small storage room with some lockers and a deactivated armature. As Shepard and Ashley were checking the lockers, the armature suddenly activated and almost instantly opened up with its machine guns. Shepard and Ashley quickly retreated but being that close to the armature took out their shields quickly and they also got directly hit by multiple rounds.
"Get back", Jaden warned and fired his Detonators at the armature. Then he tapped his weapons, which created a large explosion, much like on Therum. The explosion enveloped both Jaden and the armature.
When Jaden joined the others, his shields were still visible from to the explosion. To Shepard, the plates appeared to be dimmer than before. Maybe it was a sign of strain, she thought to herself.
"Everyone allright?", Jaden asked.
"Yeh, the armor managed to stop the rounds.", Ashley responded, though she seemed slightly shaken.
"Thanks for the intervention.", Shepard added.
"Anytime", a pause. "Looks like there is only one way forward."
They jumped down.
When they entered the large open area, first thing they heard was a gunshot followed by: "Damn it! Damn it."
The shooter was a young woman, who then introduced herself as Lizbeth, daughter of one of the refugees they found on their way to the headquarters. When asked, she told that the Geth were probably there for the Thorian. The Thorian was supposedly a sentient plant.
Jaden then said: "There is more. You know more than this.", He didn't sound any more threatening than usual, but trying to hide something from a being who can sense thoughts wasn't really going to work.
"All right, all right. The Thorian has mind control properties. It spreads out spores, that once inhaled, allows the Thorian to control whoever inhaled the spores, but not instantly. ExoGeni knew this and... allowed the inhabitants of Zhu's Hope to fall under the Thorian's control. I didn't want them to do it, but they threatened me, said I'd be next! That's all I know I swear."
Shepard looked at Jaden, who responded with a calm slow nod. That was all Lizbeth knew.
After telling Lizbeth to stay safe until they dealt with the Geth, took some stairs upwards, where they found a Krogan, who wasn't getting proper customer service from an ExoGeni VI. While the Krogan was still occupied, Wrex decided to 'prank' the other Krogan with his shotgun.
By using Lizbeth's ID, the VI told them what Lizbeth had already told them, but with more details about the Thorian. Afterwards they arrived at a location where they could see the same force field they saw before; they were now on the other side. At this point they took a detour to perform that little favor Gavin had asked them.
Finally they arrived in the area where the Geth ship had latched itself on. After clearing the remaining Geth, they began to look for a way to destabilize the ship.
"Jaden, can your swords cut through the claws? Or we could exploit the error in the bay door."
Jaden activated one of his swords, the blade casting its pale red light in the area.
"I may have slightly exaggerated their cutting power. Unless...", like on Therum, strange red energy appeared around his hand and enveloped the hilt of his sword.
Sparks flew from the entire length of the blade and it turned blindingly bright.
Even though Shepard was more than twenty meters away from Jaden, she could feel the radiant heat generated by the overcharged blade.
With a single swift swipe, Jaden cut through the claw like it was nothing.
Cutting just one claw was enough, with metallic screeching, slowly the Geth ship was detached from the side of the building and tumbled towards the surface.
At this time they got a message from Joker: the people at Zhu's Hope had gone mad and are attacking the Normandy. Shepard told Joker to make sure that the colonists wouldn't get in and tried to contact Kaidan's group. Kaidan reported that after fixing the issues under the colony, the people on Zhu's Hope became more and more distant until they attacked them, forcing them to retreat, back to the tunnels below the colony. They were fine for the time being. Shepard told them to stay put until she and her team got back.
They returned to the room where the force field originally was, now gone. On the other side they found Lizbeth and they all got onboard the Mako. At this point Joker warned them that there were more Geth coming their way. The cleared the Geth in their way and drove back to the building with the ExoGeni refugees. But something was wrong as over the radio they could hear Juliana, Lizbeth's mother, asking for help. Immediately after a male voice, Jeong told her to get off the radio.
Lizbeth demanded the Mako to be stopped so she could get out. Shepard and the others followed her, with Jaden being invisible as usual. They tried to stay hidden but Lizbeth revealed their position, after which Jeong demanded they step forward. After he expressed his disappointment for hoping that the Geth would have killed Shepard. Two security guards were holding Juliana back.
"Comms are back online, ExoGeni wants this place purged.", Jeong said.
"This is a human colony! You can't just re-purpose us!", Lizbeth responded in disbelief.
"It's not just you! There is something much more important here."
"The Thorian.", Shepard finished.
"The what?", Juliana asked
"It's a telepathic life form that exists under Zhu's Hope. ExoGeni knew all the time and allowed the colonists to fall under its control.", Lizbeth explained.
"You won't get away with this Jeong!", Juliana shouted back.
"So you keep saying. No one's gonna miss a few colonists.", Jeong said and pointed at the guards, "Get her out of here!"
"Somewhat... I highly doubt it.", a cold voice came from seemingly nowhere. Until Jaden reappeared between Jeong and the guards that were holding Juliana.
Jeong turned around and the expression on his face was nothing short of horrified. The two guards pointed their weapons at Jaden. A second later, the guards were pointing their weapons at each other, unable to move at all.
At this point Jeong had regained himself a little, pulled out a pistol, pointed it at Jaden and said:
"If that's the way it has to be, then c'mon, c'mon!"
"Shoot me. And you will spend an eternity begging for death.", Jaden's usual glowing white eyes, got a very slight red tint on them.
Jeong was practically frozen in horror.
Jaden then gestured with his hand and Jeong's pistol was crushed into useless scrap.
At this point Shepard stepped in: "Jaden, wait. Jeong, there has to be another way. Tell them that the Geth destroyed the Throrian."
After Jeong again regained himself he responded: "Yeah, yeah, but the infected colonists can't be here when ExoGeni arrives."
"Leave that to us."
"Wait, you can't just kill them.", Lizbeth protested.
"If there is a another way, we'll take it.", Shepard responded.
"Maybe there is", Juliana said and proceeded to explain about a chemical they had been using in some other experiments. Which could also act as a type of nerve agent. At this point Shepard expressed her concerns about releasing nerve gas. The chemical wouldn't be weapons-grade gas, but potent enough to knock out the infected colonists.
"Yes, a reduced concussion grenade should do the trick", Shepard finally finished.
She and her group began to walk back to the Mako. That's when Shepard asked Jaden:
"Was all that really necessary?"
"Aah, just wanted to scare him good. He is... a 'bean counter', as you once said. He probably would have missed me even at that distance. But you should have seen his face."
They approached the Mako.
"So, a concussion...", Jaden took one of his Detonators and removed the magazine. The magazine vanished inside his trench coat and he pulled out another. This one was filled with yellow-golden crystals, rather than the usual red.
"Yellow crystals?", Shepard asked.
"Instead of a fiery explosion, these crystals generate a powerful concussive shockwave upon detonation.", Jaden explained. "If we are to keep the colonists alive, I'd say these are better than me going out and punching them. But still, I'd recommend you use your grenades before I start shooting these."
"And how many other types of crystals you have?"
"Four in total. Red and yellow. But also...", he reached inside his coat and pulled out two more magazines, one filled with dark blue crystals and the other filled with green crystals.
"The blue crystals are cryogenic, they freeze almost anything in their effective radius. The green crystals send out an intense pulse of radiation strong enough to partially disintegrate matter, so I won't be using them most of the time."
"Why not?"
"You may have not thought about it, but if you were in the effective radius of any type of detonation, you would be affected as well. Since radiation works so differently, you would basically receive the same amount of radiation as anything I fire at. It tends to be fatal. Unless you are behind dense cover."
"All right you made your point."
They got onboard the Mako and drove back towards Zhu's Hope, clearing any Geth in their way.
Notes
This wasn't Feros entirely, we'll get to the Thorian soon enough. I also chose to omit the Varren fight after finding Lizbeth.
So, Jaden does have shields after all. While I'm sure those kinds of shields exists elsewhere, I got the idea from an old RTS game, where a mod added lots of new units. One of these units possessed shields that looked like rectangular plates of energy surrounding the unit.
Many times when Jades does or uses something new, it is often followed with 'to Shepard it seems like...' etc. Remember that Shepard is meant to be an Infiltrator, half combat and half tech. She's a thinker.
Jaden's, crystals: essentially fire, concussion, ice and poison.
Blaze1992: I admit i didn't put much thought on how the C-Sec or others would react to Jaden's exotic weapons. But there are few things to note:
On Citadel, before meeting Shepard, Jaden would mostly use his abilities or his energy swords. His Detonators or the Thunderbolt would be nowhere to be seen.
Anyone that survived his previous encounters with any 'crime lord', what they could ultimately tell C-Sec was that they saw a dark figure with glowing swords.
How seriously could C-Sec take their reports. The damage caused by his swords, there are other ways to achieve similar effects.
By the time Jaden was seen with all of his weapons, was when he joined Shepard at the C-Sec academy. Shepard was already a Spectre at that point, so she could tell any curious C-Sec officers to let him be. She wouldn't let anyone bother her team. At that time no one but Shepard and the team truly knew about his weapons.
As for forcibly trying to get Jaden to surrender himself or his weapons... To say that would be a bad idea, is a monumental understatement.
This approach might still seem like a lazy one, but i'd say its better than saying 'oh they don't care'