Mass Effect is Bioware property, and unfortunately EA.
The Normandy was slowly approaching the Omega's Mass Relay, which would take the ship to the liaison system, where they could go almost anywhere in the terminus. So far, there was no information about where they should go in search of geth, but the Commander did not intend to stay in one place for too long, so as not to attract the attention of pirates or other outcasts hoping for extremely valuable loot in the form of earthly technologies.
After receiving the order to disperse, Tali decided to ask a second mate named Presly if the food she and the sergeant had purchased had arrived on the ship. Fortunately, the courier, or rather an armored vessel controlled by the VI, with a rather substantial cargo of baggage, reached the dock indicated by them and, after prior checking, was packed on board. Happy that she would not be condemned to only quarian food rations, she decided to go to the laboratory, where in peace and quiet she would be able to think carefully about what she had heard and seen on the station.
In fact, she was in no hurry to think, and even now, as she slowly moved up the stairs, the image of misery and despair was still in her mind. Hungry and begging for mercy, children, old men and women, most of whom, as the krogan had helped her to point out, were Turians. The last war really turned everything upside down. Officially, humans were considered an inherently friendly species to which the new Quarian Republic should be grateful, albeit symbolically, for making it possible for them to find a new home among the stars. However, a conversation with this trader made the young quarian doubt the veracity of this, as well as anything heard or learned in her homeland. She also began to wonder if she was doing the right thing by helping people. Shepard wanted to fight the geth, which should be enough encouragement for her, as these machines have been enemies of the quarians for hundreds of years. But then the turians and the Citadel Council were too, and yet the sight of people starving and dying in the streets didn't inspire much sympathy or trust in humans. The consequences of their actions seemed to be catastrophic for the entire Galaxy. He still remembers from his history lessons the fall of the Citadel, the salarian-batarian wars, and the never-ending civil war in the old Asari Republics. She began to doubt that anything good would come of this trip.
Suddenly she was pulled out of her reverie by the voice of Lieutenant Alenko calling for her to stop. She obediently did so, turning to him curiously about the reason for the conversation. As it turned out, the Commander wanted to see her to determine the next step in achieving their goals. Tali didn't think her opinion mattered. She followed the lieutenant to the meeting room, where, in addition to Shepard, she saw Wrex.
"I'm sorry for calling you so soon, but the matter is urgent and we need to determine where we should go next, so as not to hang aimlessly in inter-relay space," the Commander said after she came.
"That's okay. I was going to lie down for a while before going back to work on the system. I'll just shorten my sleep a bit." she answered half jokingly.
"That's what I wanted to talk about. Wrex tipped us off that one of Asari's outposts was besieged by geth two days away, and this opportunity would greatly increase our chances of successfully capturing one of the machines. They will be busy fighting the blue ones, so we should have no problems destroying one of the smaller groups at the back. The question, however, is whether the program you are working on will be ready."
It took her a moment to gather her thoughts, she knew that sooner or later she would have to face the eternal enemy of her people, but she secretly hoped that it would be later than before. Unfortunately, reality took her by surprise again.
"The program is long overdue, all I do now is test it against the geth database schemas I have, but the truth is that until it is used on one of them, we will never know if it works properly." she answered honestly as surely as she could, while being aware in the back of her mind that the whole trip may turn out to be worth nothing because her code won't work.
"You have 2 days to perfect it. Once we reach Therum, the ship's cloaking systems will allow us to get into orbit undetected and then take a shuttle to the surface." the Commander decided
"The shuttle will be conspicuous, not to mention radar. They'll shoot us down before we land." the bass voice of the krogan answered
"We have a stealth shuttle that will allow a small force to land and take off without triggering every alarm within earshot, we can handle it." the ship's commander assured Wrex confidently.
"Unfortunately, only three people will be able to fly, i.e. me, you and our specialist." he added after a moment, looking at her. Her heart began to beat faster.
"How is it only three?!" she almost screamed.
"How are we going to take on a geth army with only three people? It's not even suicide, it's pure stupidity!" with a scream of shock and anger, she accentuated her outburst. There was an almost dead silence, and only then did Tali realize she had yelled at her immediate superior. Shame, horror and a bit of disbelief, she didn't know how she should feel, but she knew she had to apologize as soon as possible. She didn't have time to do it, however, because suddenly the krogan standing in front of her let out a loud roar that seemed to resemble laughter only after a moment of listening.
"Your mouse is slowly starting to show her teeth, human. I didn't think she had it in her." said the big man with a smile on his face.
"I must admit, I was also surprised, but positively, a little aggression will do her good." the Commander replied to the kogan as if she wasn't there at all.
"Don't worry, the Normandy will support us with precision missile strikes straight from orbit, the three of us are really you and protection in the form of me and Wrex. We'll track down the geth squad, destroy it from the air with cruise missiles, and then extract the necessary information from the less-destroyed ones." he said with a complete lack of concern in his voice. His directness surprised the young woman for a moment, but soon she was able to see a gap in her reasoning.
"What if the attack from orbit is too devastating?" she asked.
"Then we find another group and repeat the whole process until we succeed. Don't worry, we can evacuate quickly if necessary." he told her with a smile on his face. Tali wasn't laughing, but she didn't argue with him. She'd almost gone astray with her sudden outburst a moment ago, and she didn't want to expose herself to potential punishment again. So she gritted her teeth and nodded, after which she was ordered to leave.
The next two days were one big sitting in front of the computers, testing her original program again and again and improving it from time to time when she managed to detect a bug. Two days with little breaks for food and toilet, she also slept little, though that was more due to the prospect of an impending confrontation with her people's ancient enemy. She realized that their interactions with them should be limited to sending coordinates for orbital fire and extracting as much information as possible from the remaining synthetics. However, remembering a joke from one of the Marines in the cafeteria about Murphy's not-so-law, she preferred to check her program a few more times to make sure they wouldn't have to make this interception more than once.
"You should get a good night's sleep," Dr. Chakwas's voice suddenly came from outside the door
"I can't afford it, if this program doesn't work, we're just wasting time and money unnecessarily. Not to mention that someone might die." responsible almost automatically.
'If you are overtired, you are bound to make mistakes and that will be even more dangerous for your team." said the doctor then walked over to the console and turned off the entire computer.
"That is enough. Now go to sleep! Now!" Tali wanted to yell at the older woman, but to her surprise she got up as if she had no control over her body and went to bed. She fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. Almost 10 hours later, she was standing in front of the doctor, thanking him for making her rest.
"No problem. I used to be like you too, full of passion, commitment, I thought that if I don't devote myself fully to my work, something terrible will happen, but later I realized that by making mistakes due to lack of sleep and rest, we can cause even more misery. Believe me, I experienced it firsthand. Remember to rest." the dream came at the right moment because right after she woke up, Normandy reached the target system and was slowly approaching the planet.
"Commander, our sensors indicate three geth ships in stationary orbit over Thetum," said the sensor officer.
"Excellent! The enemy must still be on the surface. Do we know if there's any fighting going on there?" Shepard asked
"The gauges read eruptions at one of the planet's volcanoes. These are not natural eruptions, however, sir, there is a regular battle going on there."
"Bingo! That's what we meant, Tali, Wrex, get ready. We should be over the drop zone in half an hour." said their captain and they both went to the elevator.
There was what could be called organized chaos in the hangar. Marines and sailors ran back and forth as directed by their superiors. Alenko drilled the troops, reminding them to be ready for a quick drop in case something went wrong. Tali walked over to the equipment cabinets, trying not to think about the fact that something might actually go wrong and they would have to be rescued. She wondered if they would make it in time.
"Don't forget the EMP grenades." she was suddenly snapped out of her thoughts by the voice of Ash, who for some reason decided to approach the young quarian. Turning towards Sergeant Tali noticed that she had such grenades in her hands and handed them to her.
"Thank you, they will definitely come in handy." she responded by taking them in her hand and attaching them to the carapace.
"Their range after the explosion is about 5 m, quite a precise weapon. If you have problems with throwing at the target, give them to the commander and focus on shooting. Remember that you did great on the simulator, and finally calm down. You're shaking all over." to her surprise, Tali noticed that her legs were indeed trembling and her teeth almost barked. Not knowing why, she decided to confide in the woman standing in front of her a secret.
"I've never been on a line, this will be my first mission. I'm scared," she whispered,
"I know. I've been through that too, and mine was against a bunch of poorly armed pirates, so you're worse off in that regard." it was not reassuring
"Luckily you have two veterans with you and one older than the language I use. You'll be fine, just keep your head down and follow their orders."
Tali didn't know where the concern came from, but she decided not to think about it and nodded her thanks before taking a deep breath. Suddenly the Commander came out of the winch shouting for her and the krogan to join him. She thanked Ash again and ran towards Shepard, who along with Alenko was trying to push Wrex into the chair. The scene amused her, which could be heard after she began to giggle aloud. The sound caught the attention of the krogan, who addressed her as follows:
"If someone suggests I'm fat, I swear by everything I'll eat them." the crowd couldn't take it anymore and burst out laughing. Tali instantly forgot about the upcoming fight.
5 minutes later all three were inside the machine.
"One minute to drop," came the voice of the Normandy's pilot. Nobody said anything. There was complete silence, until suddenly you could feel the jolt of the Shuttle launching out of the hangar. Shocks and vibrations, that was all Tali felt all the way from orbit to the planet's surface. Each of the three passengers sat in tense anticipation of landing, aware at the same time that at any moment they might be targeted by the defenses of the getas and shot down. Shepard swore the shuttle was undetectable, but you never know. 10 minutes. That was the journey and landing, the longest 10 minutes in a quarian's life. As the shuttle landed and the doors opened, the adrenaline suddenly hit double, the easiest part now was finding the geth.
"Normandy can you hear me?" the Commander told the radio
"We have landed at a predetermined location, waiting for field data, and superimposing enemy movements on them."
While their commander conferred with the ship in orbit as to their next move, the other two members of the team watched the foreground from opposite peaks of the crater where they had landed. The landscape around them looked more like a horror than a planet where someone wanted to set up a colony, what those Asari thought when they came here. Mining, on the other hand, should be facilitated by the constant outflows of material from below the planet's surface, but the risk of being so far from the Planets of the republics' inner spaces was too risky in her opinion.
"Okay listen." Shepard's voice suddenly interrupted her thoughts
"About 20 minutes' walk from here, there is a small canyon that is regularly traversed by an individual. We'll leave a trap there, take the extra explosives and MG from the shuttle in case there are more than expected."
"We're not going to destroy them from orbit as originally planned?" she asked surprised
"We will destroy, but I prefer to be protected in case rocket fire is not enough. We'll mine the way to our positions to make it easier to defend ourselves for the next raid. Wrex MG, Tali explosives, move!"
Half an hour later, after a rather tiring crossing of the planet's sandy surface, they reached their chosen ambush spot. Additional few minutes to lay mines and prepare positions and all that was left was to wait for contact with the enemy. Her father said many times that in war it is not the battle that is the worst but the waiting. Minutes, hours and sometimes even days full of exhausting uncertainty during which you don't know what awaits you. Now she was experiencing it the hard way, it could start now. The anticipation certainly didn't help the feeling of a knot in her stomach, which kept legs twitching.
"Easy," she heard a bass voice in Wrex
"We have good positions here, and human missiles never miss. That doesn't mean you have to stop focusing, but being constantly shorted won't help anything, especially not aiming."
"How can you be so calm? Geth are about to come around the corner of the canyon with who knows what forces and what weapons, and yet you tell me to relax? How?" she asked with a slightly raised voice.
"It's easy. If you're destined to get shot in the face, there's nothing you can do about it anyway. War is a lottery, you can help your luck by keeping your head down and not peeking out of cover twice in the same place, but otherwise just accept that you're already dead. With this approach, the battle will be much easier and less stressful, and with time, experience will allow you to keep a cool head even after artillery fire. It is cold blood that is really the most important on the battlefield, without it you will make mistakes and they do not help your happiness at all. So take it easy."
Two deep breaths later Tali lay a little calmer, anticipating the inevitable.
Suddenly in the distance muffled sounds of footsteps could be heard, which became louder with each passing moment.
"5 minutes by my ear, the rockets are on their way. As soon as they come out into the open, I'll order an airstrike, and until then, keep your heads down," the Commander ordered. As he said, 5 minutes later a squad of machines began to emerge from behind the wall of the ravine. Tali couldn't see them very well from her position, except for the distinctive lights on the synthetics' head. There were about ten of them armed only with rifles, fortunately.
"Three, two, one, boom." bang, shake, dust. It all happened in a fraction of a second after which all three leaned out from the prepared positions aiming ahead in search of moving targets. One light was still on.
"Wrex"
"On it." a quick series with a machine gun solved the problem.
"Tali, let's go." said the Commander. It didn't need to be repeated twice, after deactivating the mines remotely, they quickly crossed the area between them and reached the wreckage on the ground. Only now was the young quarian able to look at the ancient enemy of her people. The tall and thin silhouettes of the enemy machines didn't seem too scary until she realized that they had once wiped out almost an entire species. Quickly moving away from her thoughts and observations, she hooked up to the first unit and turned on the program.
"Work, for all that is sacred… work."
-Successful burglary-
-Connecting to the database-
-I'm starting the upload-
"Commander!" she exclaimed. "It worked! Retrieving data from geth core"
"Excellent, try to do the same with the others, download as much as you can," Shepard replied with satisfaction in his voice.
"Can you decipher any of this yet?" the bass voice of the krogan asked.
"Just the latest files, why?" she replied by jumping to the next machine.
"Maybe we could find out why they attacked this particular planet"
"Not stupid. Tali, see what can be done." she nodded her head in acknowledgment of the order and slowly started decrypting the files while downloading data from other platforms. It took about 15 minutes until she finally got what she was looking for.
"Commander, from what I've downloaded, the geth have come here in search of someone named Liara T'soni, an archaeologist studying Prothean technology. Turns out there are some ruins here and the Asari have come to explore them."
"T'soni?" Wrex asked
"It's quite a familiar name. If it's young Benezia, it's no wonder she has so many bodyguards."
"Do you know her?" the man asked
"Kid not, but her mother tried to kill me a couple of times and vice versa"
"I don't even want to ask why"
"Well, since you asked so nicely. I broke the heart of one of her close cousins or something," he said smiling.
"We don't want to know the details, but what machines want from her kid?"
"Wait a minute," she pleaded, focusing on the omnitool.
"I don't have the exact information, but the words "relay" and "transmitter" appear quite often, I don't have anything else." she answered honestly. Shepard stood for a moment in thought as if weighing all the pros and cons of the current situation and trying to make the best decision.
"All right. Since the geth want it so badly, I think it's our best bet to keep it out of their hands. Normandy are you there? I need to know where the fighting between the Asarii and the geth is going on. Also have some cruise missiles at my disposal."
Tali felt as if her eyes were about to pop out of their sockets. Is this lunatic planning an assault on the geth army right now? All she heard in response to her silent question was the low-pitched laughter of the krogan.
Forty-five minutes later, the three watched from above as another wave of machine infantry slowly and methodically moved deeper and deeper into the defenders' occupied ground. The asari effectively destroyed enemy artillery thanks to their natural abilities, but this was done at the expense of firepower, which was losing intensity by the minute.
"It won't be long now." the Wrex decreed
"Asari are devilishly tough, but even those with years of experience can't hold the Non Stop biotic barrier. In an hour or so, they'll be exhausted, and then the infantry will overwhelm them." concluded
"Then there's no need to wait, I'm connecting with the missiles. They're about to get a nice surprise," said the Commander, then began typing data into the armor's touchpad.
"Hit in three, two, one." six powerful explosions supported by huge tremors announced to the gathered people that the bombardment had been carried out.
"Follow me. Tali, are you able to pick up celestial communication channels?" the quarian quickly aligned her omnitool with a nearby signal until she found the right line.
"Excellent. Plug me in, this is Commander Shepard of the Terrar Union. We've come to the rescue, coming from direction 337. Don't shoot us."
"How can you be sure that's not what they're going to do?" she asked
"We have just razed their entire foreground to the barred ground. They are unlikely to risk the same with their positions."
They moved efficiently in a kind of triangle, finishing off the machine's signs of operation on the way, there were not too many of them. Earthly weapons, despite their seemingly simple design, were devilishly effective. After a few minutes, they reached the line, or rather what was left of it.
"Stop." answered a voice from the trench.
"What do you want here?"
"Maybe be a more polite child, we just rescued your skin." replied the krogan firmly.
"That doesn't mean I have to trust you right away"
"True," said the Commander,
"Then allow me to introduce myself. Commander Shepard of the Terran Union, and these are my soldiers Tali and Wrex, and as I said, we have come to the rescue."
"And we are grateful to you for it, but nothing is free in this galaxy, so I ask again, what do you want?"
"Cock a snook at geth" everyone around him looked at him in a strange way.
"Such an earthly saying, we want to hinder the machines in their plans. We've been able to determine that they're hunting your archaeologist Liara T'soni."
"Ah yes?" she replied "That would explain why they didn't just flatten us out of orbit. You can rest easy, I'm fine."
"Are you T'soni?" asked Tali, surprised "What are you doing on the front line? VIPs should rather be guarded in the back?"
"True, unfortunately, it's the back." She pointed to the trench where they were standing
"Willingly or not, I had to help maintain the bit barrier, and as soon as I heard on the radio that you were approaching, I immediately ran over." At that moment, another Asari emerged from behind the walls of the trench. They were visibly wounded and could barely hold their weapons in their hands.
"Damn, they cut you down nicely," the krogan commented
"I'm sorry for your losses, but we have some questions," the Commander said.
"Of course, but please tell me why I should answer any of them?" she asked with feigned curiosity in her voice.
"Because me and my ship are your only chance to escape this planet"
"How can we be sure we can't fly away?"
"It's simple, you would have done it already" Asari standing in front of them made a face and looked away, asking,
"What do you want to know?"
"What is a relay, and what kind of beacon might the geth have in mind about you?"
"There are loads of relays, and the only beacon we have is a broken communications system that fried the mind of the last person who touched it." she answered without thinking. At these words, Shepard turned around and, ordering his subordinates to do the same, began to walk away from the archaeologist.
"What are you doing? You're not going to leave us here to die, are you?" she shouted after them
"If you're not going to cooperate with us, then I don't need you. Goodbye." replied, then quickened his pace.
As if on cue, a cloud of geth landing craft had just passed over them, heralding the destruction of the expedition.
"Wait!" she shouted after him
"It's about the 'Mu' relay. It's said to be in front of the Prothean Hidden World, but I don't know where it is, that's why we're here to find clues, now please help us. There are only a handful of us left and the wounded need care, please!" she cried imploringly.
Shepard looked at Tali, then at Wrex, then activated his communicator and called the Normandy to evacuate the survivors.