Shockwave
Nihlus hit the ground and rolled. He went into a run as soon as he was on his feet, unlocking his assault rifle from his back and pressing himself up against the nearest cover, which turned out to be an outcropping of rocks that didn't support him as well as he would have liked.
A quick sweep of the area revealed what appeared to be a secure drop zone. Given that ships usually needed at least a hundred meters of open terrain to make a drop, it was nothing short miraculous. Eden Prime was a beautiful world. Nature clung to every outcropping, tried to climb up bare rock, burst forth around prefab units. Nothing threatened him. It was serene, tranquil, and wholly undeserving of what had befallen it.
Movement on his left drew his attention. He dropped to one knee, ready to open fire on what turned out to be nothing more than native fauna.
Straightening, he checked his omnitool and had it guide him in the direction of the dig site. It pointed straight towards the nest of strange bulbous creatures that floated for no apparent reason. Nihlus poked one with the nose of his assault rifle as he passed. Nothing happened. How disturbing.
"Disturbing?" Shepard covered her bare chest and scooted away from him.
"They don't do anything," Why did he have to open his mouth? Why couldn't he shut it? "At best, they get in the way."
"They get in the way?" Shepard scoffed and waved a wild hand at his chest spur, "That's something coming from you, Mister... chest… spike… thing."
Nihlus blinked, realizing he was comparing a misshapen lump with what was meant to be an erotic part of his lover's body. It was a good thing she'd been interested from the start. If he'd been the one leading the conversation, he'd probably have gotten slapped.
Jogging towards the dig site, the path split off in two directions: north and east. His omnitool pointed north so, naturally, he went east. The crimson sky was marred with soft wisps of smoke. The colony was so peaceful, if he hadn't been here on a mission, he would have assumed someone was cooking and carried on without a second thought.
He rounded the bend and came upon what looked to be a recent scene of battle. Prefab units clustered in a quaint cul-de-sac, where neighbors could gather in the center. A small pond was encircled with stone chairs, all empty. The water was red.
"Why didn't you leave it red?"
"Red's not my color. Not my favorite," Shepard shrugged, "At least not anymore."
"And black is?"
"No."
"Then what is?"
"Nihlus, I'm disappointed," Her eyes (at least they were still red) sparkled with mischief. "I thought you knew everything about me."
The prefab units had been burned from the inside out, silver metal charred black. "I've got some burned out buildings here, Shepard," Nihlus radioed in. The buildings were arranged in multiple crescents, some he couldn't see, all smoking. Small rock paths paved the ground, grouted with blood. Civilians were in the center as they might have been on any day off, all dead. "A lot of bodies. I'm going to check it out. I'll try to catch up with you at the dig site."
The slaughter was recent, the bodies still warm. The wounds on all of them inconsistent with the weapons he recognized as being native to the Terminus. The footprints he found leading away from the battle weren't from any race he recognized. If he didn't know better, he would have said they were quarian, but they were too deep. Even the heaviest set quarian didn't weigh that much.
Nihlus checked the intact bodies he found. They were charred and twisted as if they'd been hit by an electrical current, but the bullet holes were evident. Men. Women… Children.
"You shouldn't be here." Nihlus mumbled half-asleep at the fingers that scratched along his neck.
"I'm here anyway." Her weight settled on his cot and he threw an arm around her waist, "Dreaming about me?"
"Hardly," He forced himself awake, grazing his teeth on the ear beside his mouth, "There weren't enough explosions."
The doors throughout the small neighborhood showed no signs of being blown open. Tech experts had made short work of the locks and dragged everyone outside, or further away. Away where? Nihlus checked the last house, and a small hand flopped out from underneath the bed. A child had hidden there during the attack. Blood was still flowing to pool beneath pale, uncalloused fingers.
"You're bleeding." Nihlus cursed himself, staring at the imprints his claws had left in her shoulders. She wasn't a turian, what the hell was wrong with him?
Shepard went to wipe the blood off her bare shoulders, and smeared it across them instead. Bright, red, irrefutable proof that this would never work. Inconceivably, she smiled, "I didn't even notice."
Nihlus pulled the small body out from underneath the bed. It was a young girl, with long golden locks dyed an ugly brown with her blood. Her stomach was shredded open, but miraculously, an omnitool scan revealed she was still alive. He reached for a pack of medigel when her eyes opened and fixed on him, wild with fear. She gasped once, but never screamed. Her body went limp and lifeless in his arms.
Shaking his head, he set her down gently and went back outside. There was hardly any sign of active resistance on part of the colonists, but then where turians kept small arms and explosives in their homes, humans actually believed in civilians. They may have been able to fight, but they wouldn't have known how.
He was about to head towards the dig site when he noticed signs of a scuffle in the dirt: a huge scuffle that ended in the enemies favor. It looked as if they'd dragged survivors in the opposite direction. Nihlus jogged along the path and came around the bend. The dirt road led downhill to a spaceport surrounded by more prefab units, a few them not smoking. The loading bay showed signs of movement, though whether that meant survivors he couldn't say.
"Change of plans, Shepard," He radioed in, "There's a small spaceport up ahead. I want to check it out. I'll wait for you there."
Nihlus brought his assault rifle up and locked it against his shoulder, then made a cautious advance.
"You can't just go down there." Shepard. She'd followed him out of the comm room, and was prepared to make a scene in the mess. Thankfully, it was between meals and relatively empty. The few soldiers still there scattered. Their commander was known to be a walking time bomb with a short fuse and huge explosion radius.
"You should be readying your ground team." Nihlus said over his shoulder. Captain Anderson had already hinted to him he knew about the two of them. Scuttlebutt would spread through the ship like wildfire, and Shepard seemed all too willing to fan the flames.
"My ground team is ready," Shepard shot back, coming to stand directly in front of him. "We have to tell them about the ship, about-"
"I've already alerted the Council." Nihlus locked his guns to the back of his hardsuit, then glared down at the small human woman who'd trapped an armored turian in a corner.
"To hell with the Council!" Shepard snapped, clenching and unclenching her fists, "Who knows what we'll find down there."
Synthetics. Quarian shaped synthetics were dragging humans down the hill, towards strange alien contraptions: hunched tripods, with a small spike emerging from the top. Some were already extended, long white thorns drenched with blood from their human victims impaled on the top.
He couldn't open fire with an assault rifle without risking the hostages. He flipped to his sniper and lined up a headshot almost as soon as it was fully extended. The headshot ripped through the synthetic's kinetic barriers and turned its robotic head into scrap metal. It stuttered and sparked, dropping the man it was carrying, and stumbled forward a few paces before its processor realized what had happened, and abruptly exploded.
Thankfully, the man had the good sense to roll away the moment the robot dropped him. He scrambled to his feet, and one of the remaining synthetics turned to open fire on the escapee. Nihlus lined up another shot and fired, taking the robot's arms off. White fluid too close to blood for comfort sprayed forth, and its alien gun clattered to the ground.
It turned a flashlight shaped head to its weapon, then back to Nihlus. It took a single step forward before a shot to the chest blasted it to pieces. Three more robots turned to face the threat. Two were carrying hostages. Nihlus fired on the enemy with no hostage, acutely aware of his lack of cover. The shot made it staggered and collapse, and an instant later a portable kinetic barrier popped up uselessly in front of its corpse.
One of the synthetics slung its hostage, a screaming human woman, over its shoulder, freeing up a hand for its assault rifle. It opened fire, and Nihlus dropped to one knee to make himself a smaller target. His kinetic barriers screamed at him as he wasted time lining up a shot that wouldn't hit the colonist. He took the creature's legs out from under it, and the woman flew free of its grasp. A second shot ended it, but there was one robot left.
… no there wasn't. The robot had thrown down its hostage rather than use it as a human shield, leaving it a clear target. For the other man. The first hostage had grabbed the synthetic's fallen weapon, and as soon as his fellow human was free, opened fire. The creature died in a burst of electricity, fire, metal, and white blood.
The humans clustered instantly around the only one of their kind with a weapon, wide eyed and quaking with fear. He didn't even make a pretense of keeping his guard up around his savior. Clearly a civilian. He flung the weapon from his hands as if it disgusted him.
"You saved us." The female whispered. "We-"
"Need to get out of here." Nihlus finished for her.
"No need to tell us twice." The man who'd taken up arms muttered. "I know a place where we can hide. If only we'd had the chance to get to it sooner." He cast a glance over his shoulder at his fellows who hadn't been so lucky and shook his head. No one else looked back.
The leader started herding them towards the neighborhood, when the woman grabbed Nihlus's arm as he was switching back to his assault rifle. "Thank you. Thank you so much. If you hadn't been here…" Tears spilled over her eyes, and she turned and ran to catch up with the others.
Nihlus shook his head in disbelief as he continued towards the spaceport. Synthetics. Quarian shaped synthetics. That could only mean geth, outside the Veil for the first time in two hundred years. What would geth want with the beacon? What would geth want with him and Shepard dead? The voice on the call to Terra Libera had been robotic, but geth couldn't speak, as far as Nihlus knew.
He was missing pieces. Maybe only a single piece. Something that would make all of this make sense.
"We don't need to know what we'll find," Nihlus didn't try to move her out of his way. She wouldn't have let him. He stepped around her instead. "Intel does the best it can and soldiers do the rest."
"Damnit Nihlus-" Shepard grabbed his arm, five fingers wrapped around him like a vice. He looked down at her hand, then back into her crimson eyes, glistening with new emotions and expressions he didn't have time to memorize. Concern. Worry. Something else.
"What would you propose we do instead?" He stopped, waiting for an answer. It occurred to him his question wasn't rhetorical. He was actually waiting for her suggestion. Actually willing to go through with it.
Nihlus passed by more spikes, and looked up despite himself. The bodies were slowly changing, growing paler as they were drained of blood. Beneath their skin, blue and black fluids poured into them from the spikes, for what purpose Nihlus could only guess.
They were impaled through their hearts and lined up side by side. All of them hung spread-eagle, heads bent back and mouths open as if they'd died screaming. Two dripping corpses were bent unnaturally, leaving their foreheads touching.
"I don't know…" Shepard let go of his arm and ran her hands through her hair. "But that ship, whoever was on that ship, tried to have us killed. What are we supposed to do?"
"The mission." His answer came slower than he would have liked. Shepard nodded absently, but neither of them moved. After what seemed like an eternity, he turned himself towards the cargo hold when Shepard stopped him again.
"Nihlus," He glanced back, half-expecting she'd come up with something, but all she did what was walk up to him and wrap one hand around his neck. He let her pull his head down to touch their foreheads together.
"What does this mean?" She whispered, closing her eyes. He wrapped a hand around her neck and tried to think of something that would translate, something romantic, or at least clinically detailed.
In the end, he gave up and closed his eyes too, "You know what it means."
Nihlus shook himself. The two might have been lovers, friends, strangers, and he might never know. It didn't matter now. He made his way up the stairs of the spaceport to the loading bay, expecting more geth, more enemies, more colonists. Expecting anything but what he saw.
"… Saren?"