Lizzie activated her Annihilation Field, the warping effect chewing away at the Varren pinning her to the floor as another one tried to chomp at her leg.
"Easy? This is not easy!"
Saren lifted one of the slavering beasts into the air, muscles straining as he slammed it to the ground just in time to be bowled over by one of its buddies.
"I spoke too soon!"
Cursing loudly, Garrus brought his sidearm to bear, his sniper and assault rifle having both been knocked away by angry Varren. Toggling the shotgun fire mode, he pressed it into the nearest varren and fired. The blast tore through flesh and split bone, yet the slavering beast kept coming, albeit with one leg hanging by a thread of sinew. Muttering to himself, he unleashed a concussive shot and sent the unfortunate beast flying back into two of its comrades.
Taeri had backed into a corner, a steady barrage of rounds from her LMG combined with lightening attacks keeping the claws and jaws of the varren horde at bay, but every time she had to reload or recharge her biotics they inched closer. Cursing, she tried a last resort, punching a gauntlet to the ground. Her biotic barrier was consumed in a blast that sent four legged bodies flying across the cave-like room they were hiding in, slowly recharging as she panned her LMG across the fallen varren.
A truly enormous beast appeared, roaring as it charged at the squad. Lizzie crushed the head of the varren on her chest, hurling the corpse at the alpha as she dropped to a crouch, swiftly following up with a Throw that knocked it back. Scrambling to his feet, Garrus rolled over to his sniper and pumped six bullets into the floored alpha, killing it with a pitiful whine. The rest of the pack, demoralised by the death of their leader, broke and fled.
Picking up her discarded weapons, Lizzie high-fived Taeri as the Atavira directed a kick into the cooling corpse of a Varren split open lengthways by an arc of biotic lightening.
"We could probably yank some power cells from that vehicle."
Sighing, Garrus disappeared into the crashed rover as the rest of the team stood guard. Hopefully the rest of the objectives would be slightly easier to accomplish.
###
The living crystal body Ko was consigned to moved smoothly, seeming to flow between the shadows as his grip tightened on the haft of his blade. Pausing only for a second, he rolled to a position behind a rock and crouched in the ready position, his mind humming a familiar refrain of power. If he was still capable of breathing, his breath would be coming fast and shallow. He knew these enemies. They would not pause until he was shattered, hunting him down with no pity or remorse. He had seen many of his kind felled by their monsters, both before and after their virus.
The society of the planet Yggradissil had been based on the technology of morphic crystal, a naturally occurring material that through means inexplicable to the greatest Grassa scientists could be reshaped by the energies of the mind. Ninety nine per cent of the Grassa species had been a hybrid of organic material and morphic crystal, the remaining one per cent split evenly between the handful untouched by morphic crystal augs, mostly newborn babies, and the select few who had transferred into bodies composed entirely of morphic crystal. He remembered it well. Organ failure was no stranger to the Grassa, a side effect of a long-obsolete evolutionary quirk and the reason they required so many morphic crystal augs in the first place, but eventually there reached a point where the organic body couldn't be saved by more chunks of the bluish crystal. At that point every Grassa had to make a choice - die with their body or be uploaded as a Stalwart, one of the consciousnesses that drove the morphic crystal bodies that kept Grassa society functioning. The choice wasn't so much of a no-brainer as many children believed. The lot of a Stalwart was that of a slave, their neural patterns treated to unthinking obedience toward the still-living, stored in a digital purgatory when not needed.
Of course, he wasn't taking any orders right now. He didn't think he ever would again. These creatures, these ... Collectors ... had invaded Yggradissil, the aggressors swiftly taking huge tracts of the planet before releasing the plague. The plague that made the Grassa immune system reject morphic crystal organs. Within twenty hours every Grassa with a single crystal implant was dead. All that remained was the babies who had yet to suffer an organ failure and the Stalwarts.
Ko usually travelled by merging his body back into the veins of morphic crystal shot through the planet, his raw consciousness moving through the material and reforming his body at his destination. The sleeping Grassa child in a sling on his back precluded that. He needed to fight his way past the Collectors and back to the encampment with the baby unharmed. Luckily, he wasn't alone.
His two companions, Va and Ji, paused ahead. Ji's smooth head panned around before he disappeared with a quiet grunt, scouting ahead and leaving Ko with Va. Ji had been a professional soldier before he elected to become a Stalwart, his strength, his life and even his death given to protect the Grassa people. Ko and Va had less noble stories. They were convicts, sentenced to an eternity as slaves for murder. They had been high out of their minds on a potent cocktail of stimulants and beaten an old man to death for no reason, and had spent the last forty seven years of their murky half-lives trying to atone.
By Grassa standards, Va had been beautiful. Her body was long and slender, her skin a heavenly shade of deep red, her horn long and thin, wrapping right round her head to the point where if she bent her neck back as far as she could the point just touched between her shoulder blades. The crystal body she resided in made a mockery of her organic body's beauty, her perfect form forever preserved in her sentence and cell combined. Ko was far more average in looks for a Grassa, his horn small and squat, his body short, thick and muscular.
Careful to avoid jostling the sleeping baby, Ko slung the blade on his back, the crystal melting back into his body. Va had created a sniper rifle from the excess crystal all Stalwarts carried on missions, the scope held up to her smooth, featureless head more as force of habit than anything else - she had probably transferred her vision directly into the weapon's scope as she panned it around. Before the Collector invasion neither of them had the first clue when it came to martial matters, but dicing with death on a daily basis made for fast learners. Ko formed his own weapon and pulled it off his back. His mastery of the morphic crystal could never hope to match Va so he fell back on a tried and tested design rather than the customised lance held by his lover. His weapon was a starcannon, a rapid fire plasma weapon that fired torrents of miniature stars at its targets, using the planet's atmosphere as ammunition. By comparison, Va's weapon was a heavily modified directed resonance rifle, also known as a seismogun, using intense localised pressure waves to make material shake itself apart at the molecular level.
"Looks clear. Ji?"
Moments later the enormous form of their companion appeared beside them, startling Ko. He could not fathom how someone so large could be so stealthy.
"All clear. Straight shot to the tunnels."
Taking off, the three Stalwarts sprinted into the mouth of the tunnel, the morphic crystal closing up behind them.
Walking through a secret crystal tunnel was a strange experience. The tunnel opened itself up from the solid crystal face in front of them, sealing up again behind them to create the illusion they were walking in a bubble of air. Of course, they weren't - they were in hard vacuum, the child protected by a layer of crystal until they reached the encampment itself.
The encampment was built in a system of natural caves formed from regular rock, not the miracle crystal. Air circulated through the system but the drops were too steep and the tunnels too narrow for the Collectors to access them. The only way in was where a vein of morphic crystal intersected the system. There were almost two thousand babies in this cave alone, tended by about three hundred Stalwarts.
Handing off the still-dozing child to another Stalwart, he nodded to Ji who didn't respond as he stalked off. Ko and Va had become used to the cold shoulder - it was the fate of those Stalwarts sentenced to crystal for a crime to be looked down upon by the self proclaimed 'noble Stalwarts', or those who had elected to serve even after death. Shedding the chunks of extra crystal strapped to their backs, the two of them made their way to a smaller cave, only accessible by a difficult climb. It was their little private space.
Once inside, Va slumped against the wall, sighing, seemingly uncaring as her delicate horn scraped against the hard stone.
"I'm tired of this living hell, Ko."
He sat down beside her, laying a hand on her knee.
"We all are. Three hundred babies in that maternity ward and we managed to save one from the Collector kill-team."
A faint sniffle told him that if Va had tear-ducts she would be crying.
"No, not that. These bodies. These prisons. I hate it!"
She leaned into him and he was suddenly aware of her body pressed against his. A pink mist descended over his vision. Apparently she had the same sensation, for she rolled onto her back, sprawling with her legs splayed. He settled his hips between her thighs, slowly rolling them in that way that used to drive her wild. The only reward he received was the grinding sound of crystal on crystal. The lust faded from his mind and he collapsed onto his lover, fist pounding the floor as sorrow and anger built up inside him. Sure, they could manipulate the crystal of their bodies to more closely resemble the male and female form, but what was the point? Not even Va had the mastery of morphic crystal necessary to recreate the complex nerve endings they needed to make love like they used to. What was the point of any of it?
Beneath him, Va wriggled her arms free and wrapped them around his torso, whispering quiet sounds of comfort. Grassa neural patterns didn't - couldn't - degrade. They weren't even allowed the escape insanity would bring from their curse. Focusing her mind, she started reshaping her body. It was always a great mental effort holding anything approximating her old organic form, but seeing herself, seeing Ko see herself as she had once been stove off the grief and rage for a while. Her featureless face began to change, depressions forming that resolved into eyes, vertical slit-like nostrils appearing either side of the base of her horn as a beak-like mouth resolved beneath it. Hard armoured pauldrons shrunk down, excess crystal crawling down her torso as a pair of slim shoulders revealed themselves, the ridge of a collarbone prominent. The amorphous lump on her chest split in two, each section slowly resolving itself into a smooth breast as the crystalline armour reshaped itself into a traditional robe that hung about her shoulders like a tabard, twin strips coming down her torso to meet at the waist and hang down between her legs. She left her forearms and lower legs in their armoured battle-forms to conserve energy, well aware that holding her shape would prove taxing.
Ko was momentarily startled when he looked down and saw not a blank battle-mask but a concerned face looking at him. Inwardly smiling, he shifted his own form to match, battlemask and crystal armour replaced by a smiling face and hard muscles beneath a thin tunic. Suddenly mindful of his position, he shifted and allowed Va to sit, resting against the opposite wall of the cave with his ankles touching hers. He knew that if he gave in to his lust again it would only hurt them both but with her so close, looking like that, it was hard. To distract his errant mind, he initiated a conversation.
"Why do you suppose they invaded?"
Va shook her head.
"Can anyone fathom minds as alien as the Collectors? They swarm us, we kill as many as we can before we are overwhelmed."
Ko sighed.
"A bleak outlook."
"Bleaker than what our lives would be had the Collectors not attacked?"
He snorted, nostrils dilating and the air chamber in the base of his horn vibrating to make a deep hooting sound. She did make a fair point.
"All this running and hiding grows tiresome. Our species is extinct."
"Then what would you have us do?"
Va's voice was strained, showing the effort required to maintain her more complex form was taking its toll. Ko could feel the effort required to prevent him from slipping back into his battle shape steadily mounting.
"March out there and face the Collectors down. One last grand battle, then the Grassa die with dignity."
Va didn't like that at all.
"What of the young? You would abandon them? There is still hope!"
Ko could feel his own temper rising and he fought to remain calm.
"They are dead already, they just don't know it. Their cells still teem with the Collector plague. How old were you when your first organ failed?"
When Va replied, her voice was subdued.
"Two years, three months and fourteen days. Liver, if I remember correctly."
"For me it was the day after my first birthday. Pancreas. I remember my mother telling me about it. My father hit his horn on the breakfast table, muttered 'about time' and shoved his news-crystal down my throat. When one of those children loses an organ we won't be able to shove a news-crystal down their throats. That would kill them just as surely as if we did nothing. Face it, Va. Even if every Collector on the planet dropped dead the Grassa are finished."
Va was trembling, eyes wide, unable to cry so instead making a low keening noise. Ko pulled her into his arms, gently rocking her, wishing he could shed tears. He heard the humming sound as Va relinquished her mental effort and her body reverted back to its Stalwart frame and he quickly followed suit, unwilling to mentally over exert himself. He didn't tell her it was okay. They both knew that was a lie.
###
Swearing mildly, Lizzie refilled her canteen from the freshly repaired water mains, emptying two sachets of biotic energy serum into it, capping and shaking then taking a deep drink. The sharp orange bite cleared away the dry, gummy sensation in her mouth from the amount of energy she had just burned dodging Collector bullets and cannon blasts. The single Scion had been complicated by the fact that Taeri couldn't use her rocket launcher so close to the water pipes but Saren and Garrus had quickly taken it down with a mixture of Incinerate tech and sniper rounds. It turned out the bulbous sac on their right shoulder contained a store of coolant for their cannon arm, meaning that not only did it hurt when destroyed but it also drastically reduced the fire rate of the Scion's main weapon.
With the water flowing, Saren led them through the tunnels, pausing as they saw something up ahead. A flash of blue confirmed it as an Asari colonist.
As they approached, she held up a hand. She was in a sorry state. Skin covered in a mix of dirt and blood, on all fours with scabby hands and knees, breath coming in rattling gasps.
"Don't come any closer!"
Her voice was an animalistic shriek. Saren cued his faceplate to become transparent.
"It's okay. We'll take you back to the colony."
To his surprise, she only screamed harder at that suggestion.
"No! Don't take meAAAAAAAIE!"
Her sentence terminated in a wail of pain as a blue aura appeared around her, opening up fresh cuts across her skin and prompting her to cough up a glut of violet blood.
"Don't make me like them! Don't want ... don't want to change ... No! I won'tAAAAAAAAIE!"
Her scream was accompanied by another blue flare and fresh cuts opening up on her body. With matching horror, Lizzie and Garrus realised what was happening at the same time.
"She's warping herself!"
Saren held up a hand.
"Stay back. If she pulls that stunt while we're too close we'll get caught in her warp field."
The girl dragged herself to her feet, leaving bloody handprints on the wall.
"I ... He'll take me. Use me to make more ... No! Nonononono ..."
She dropped to her knees.
"He took my sister. My mother. My daughter. Not me though."
They all took a step back.
"I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"
She ran at the squad, biotics flaring, leaving a contrail of biotically charged droplets of violet blood. The biotic effect she was surrounded in was similar to Lizzie's Annihilation Field, only it was affecting its user as well.
The squad wasted no time. Four weapons barked, chewing the Asari's torso into purple mince. Without a barrier, she fell almost immediately, the biotic effect disappearing as she lay still in a steadily expanding pool of her own blood, unquestionably and irrevocably dead.
Taeri accurately summed up the squad's thoughts on the matter.
"The hell was that?"
###
A/N: I don't usually take a siesta in the middle of a combat mission but I need to think Feros through a bit more. Hence the slight deviation from topic. Hopefully you guys will like my new OCs - I'm really fond of Ko and Va myself. Feedbacks always appreciated.