Administrator Anoleis had just wanted to keep Shepard away from Peak 15, but in one thing he had spoken the truth: The weather in the region truly was frightening. And the road to Peak 15 proved to be an icy ramp between mountains and deep-cut valleys. Benezia had managed to secure it with some geth turrets, but in truth the weather proved a worse enemy than those installations.
Nonetheless, they eventually reached Peak 15's Central Station. Tali was glad. A return to fighting geth will be an improvement. I can't hack blizzards!
"That's not exactly a good omen," Ashley said as they left the Mako. She pointed towards a burned out vehicle nearby.
"A Kodiak," Shepard observed. "Somebody must have tried to reach the station before us already. Or tried to leave."
The remains of the vehicle were right in front of a large, closed garage door, the counter-part of the one they had gone through at Port Hanshan. The smaller door for people besides it surprisingly proved to be not locked. And as they entered the building, the squad was greeted by very poor illumination.
"Something's not right here," Tali remarked.
"When is it ever," Ashley commented. "We're a magic magnet for things not being quite right."
"Cut the chatter!" Shepard ordered.
The squad entered the garage proper. Dim, reddish light fell from some few sources on the ceiling. Crates created shadows everywhere. An eerie atmosphere covered the garage. The lights must run on emergency power, Tali realized.
A shot rang through the garage. There they are! Geth! The squad had already expected them.
From all over the garage and from between the crates platforms appeared and fired on the squad. This time, however, Shepard and his team were not caught surprised, and were well positioned. They repelled the first attack, and advanced forward, from position to position, from crate to crate, from cover to cover. Bit by bit the geth were pushed back and put down.
"Jon!" Ashley called out, "Above you!"
Shepard swirled around, and Tali followed his gaze. Krogan! Again! A handful of krogan mercenaries were on a catwalk several meters above the ground. Shepard let himself fall down flat. Several bullets missed him by the tiniest of distances, hurling above his head. He crawled behind a crate, but several shots hit his legs.
Fortunately, most geth platforms had already been downed. Wrex and Ashley stormed up the ramp leading to the krogan, while Liara, Tali and Shepard, still downed, provided fire and biotic support.
There was a certain irony to it that it was Wrex who killed the last standing of his racemates, something that was not lost on Ashley: "Damn, Wrex. Didn't you say something about the krogan slowly going extinct? Jon has the cure now, but it's not released yet or anything."
"Any merc who stays on this damn frozen world for longer than a day is either on Saren's payroll, or stupid," Wrex answered. "Those were both. So killing them is both business and a favour to the universe."
Tali did not even bother trying to wrap her mind around Wrex' logic. That was just how he was. Ashley shook her head, probably coming to the same conclusion, while Liara carefully maintained a blank facial expression. Shepard, though, grinned amused.
He turned to Tali. "So, what do you figure happened here?" Even though he had generously applied medi-gel on his leg, he seemed to limp slightly.
"I wondered myself," the quarian answered. "The local wireless network is down. Let me try to find a working terminal."
There was none. All terminals, computers and most other electronics in the room proved to be unresponsive. It was only at the last one she tried, near to an door into the interior of the facility, that she triggered a reaction. Loudspeakers sounded a female voice: "User alert. All Peak 15 facilities have suffered a great deal of damage. Biohazard materials present throughout facility. Virtual Intelligence user interface offline."
"Biohazard?" Ashley asked disdainfully. "I don't like the sound of that. We have no protection against bio-weapons!"
"However, we can't just stop now just because there might be something out there," Shepard commented, "especially as we currently have no way to get back onto the Normandy. Forward is the only direction we have."
"Forward doing what, exactly?" Ashley asked.
"I think I know what we must do first," Tali said. This got everybody's attention. "The door locks, the main illumination and the VI interface all don't work. There can only be one cause for so many system failures at once: The reactor must have been shut down. Or destroyed, but let's hope it's just shut down. We must reactivate it."
"And if it is destroyed?" Liara asked, "Or if the systems have all been physically damaged?"
"The quarian got a point," Wrex answered (normally, Tali would have considered such an address slightly demeaning, but with Wrex it was, again, just normal) "We have nothing else we can do except restarting the reactor. If it's destroyed, we're out of luck."
Tali realized this had been the first time since their meeting with Parasini that Liara had said anything at all. She looked at her and could not help but to have sympathy with her. While she carefully maintained a calm exterior, she could not hide how closing up to her mother made her ever more uneasy.
"Then let's if we can find the reactor. Seems like we have to go exploring," Shepard announced and opened the door next to the terminal Tali had investigated.
Tali, too, stepped to the door - and paused. Turrets, at point blank range! Her hands stumbled towards her weapon, but before they could reach it she realized the turrets did not react to them. And there was something odd about them.
"Why are the turrets facing inwards?" she asked.
"They want to keep their people in as much as they want to keep other people out," Ashley explained darkly.
"I agree," Shepard said. "Goddamn megacorps. All the same."
The facility seemed totally abandoned. They found no people and no equipment. What the exploration did yield was an elevator leading to a higher level. Fortunately, it seemed to be connected to the emergency power sources and thus was able to carry the squad upwards.
The facility's devastation was even more visible on the level they reached. Once it must have had an impressive glass front, but now the glass was all burst. Thus, Noveria's icy wind came pouring into the building. The entire level was nearly completely snowed in. Metal beams, exposed by the destruction dealt to the building's structure, groaned under the storms rushing over them.
The squad encountered some lone geth platforms, but no organized resistance. The sounds of material wear intensified. It sounded almost otherworldly.
"This place is spooky," Ashley observed. "And I'm used to weird sounding storms. Those happen all the time on Sirona."
A thumbing sound came from somewhere. The squad came closer together, at the bottom of a staircase. They stood back to back, watching their surroundings. A shriek could be heard.
"That was no wind," Wrex stated and turned towards the sound's direction. It had sounded like an animal.
And then they came down the stairs - large brown creatures, like giant versions of those bugs Tali had seen in Amazonia, with giant tentacles and multiple mandibles. And yet, despite their strangeness, the squad had seen such creatures before. They were not at all animals.
"Rachni!" Liara exclaimed.
Fortunately, the rachni belonged to the worker caste and thus were relatively weak in combat. They came pouring down a small corridor, and so the team had no problem to concentrate their firepower on them. They were mowed down long before they could have touched the squad. Still, the shock remained.
"What were those bugs doing here?" Ashley asked.
"Yeah," Shepard agreed, "Does everybody have them, or what? I thought they were supposed to be dead!" He was holding his leg, the one that had been shot earlier. Not good.
"They should be," Wrex growled.
"That must be the 'biohazard material'," Tali concluded. "So the rachni probably belong to Saren. Do you think... do you think Saren and Cerberus are cooperating?"
The squad paused. Glances were exchanged. They seemed all rather dumbstruck by that possibility.
"It's... possible," Shepard said. "There must be a link. So, either Saren and Cerberus, or Binary Helix and Cerberus. Saren is not Binary Helix' only investor, after all."
"According to Admiral Kahoku's files, Cerberus is a rogue Alliance unit trying to create a superhuman soldier," Liara observed. "Why would such a group ally itself with a xenophobe turian who already hated humans with a passion even before his indoctrination?"
"Conspiracies and atrocities may make strange bedfellows," Shepard replied and added sarcastically: "After all we know both Saren and Cerberus have a penchant for attacking human colonies." He made an abrupt hand gesture as if to wave the issue away. "It doesn't matter right now. For now, we still need to find that reactor and restart it." He paused. "But it will be something to consider once we're finished here. No matter if Saren or Binary Helix, it seems we've found a Cerberus associate."
Tali knew what Shepard meant with that. He absolutely, utterly hated Cerberus. It was Cerberus who had driven a girlfriend of him to suicide, after the group had lured her squad into a thresher maw nest on Akuze, just to see how exactly they would get killed. And on the course of their mission he also had found out that another member of her squad had survived, but that Cerberus had tortured him with experiments and caged him like a lab animal for years - and furthermore, that Cerberus had killed a further marine unit the same way, that they had killed an entire pioneer settlement on Chasca, and that they had assassinated Admiral Kahoku.
Saren was by far the most dangerous enemy - but Tali knew that it was Cerberus who was Shepard's personal archenemy. The Spectre still seemed to ponder the issue as he walked on. Gravely, he trudged through the snow, his head hanging low and his shotgun in hand. Tali walked up to him, and comfortingly squeezed his upper arm. Shepard looked at her and smiled.
It soon became apparent that the rachni were the only thing of interest on this level of the building. Apart from them there was only snow - snow on the ground, snow hills covering equipment, snow blockading doors. And it was cold, so cold that Tali shivered even inside her suit - and the envirosuit, epitome of quarian engineering and center piece of every quarian life, had heating systems integrated.
Thus, it was a relief when the squad finally found another elevator leading upwards. Hopefully the next level will be less damaged. She was glad when this indeed turned out to be true. The elevator led to a strangely oval shaped corridor, which in turn led to room full of engines and machines - and they were all very familiar to Tali.
"It's the reactor room!" she explained, "If we can -"
"Watch out!" Ashley shouted.
From the other side of the room, a wave of green-brownish creatures appeared. They were obviously rachni in nature, but very small. And they came swarming, dozens of them. The squad immediately began firing, but even though one every shot killed a creature some still reached the squad and exploded in disgusting acidic bursts.
"Ewww," Shepard complained when the last creature was killed, "I can understand now why the rachni were all killed the last time around."
Ashley smirked. "I didn't figure you the type to have arachnophobia, or whatever you call it when it's with insects."
"I have nothing against normal, well-adjusted insects going about their daily lives," Shepard defended himself, "I just happen to have an aversion against the spacefaring, will-kill-you-on-sight variant."
"So, rachni are out for our collection of aliens?" Tali joked.
"Damn right," Shepard confirmed. He looked around. "So, this is the reactor room?"
"Yes," Tali anwered. She took a closer look at one of those machines. Even though the symbols on it were all human in origin, she could read them without problems, since her translator system displayed them as the quarian equivalents. "These things seem to be the power backup for the system's main frame."
"Can we get it back running?" Ashley asked.
"Some systems at least, surely," Tali answered.
Immediately she out to work. It soon became clear that one of the memory cores had been damaged. After finding the central control unit for the system, Tali could verify that the data inside it had not become corrupted, though. If she designated one of the two remaining memory cores as the system's primary one, she could move all the data to there. That should restart the VI system, at least. However, it turned out to be quite a complicated process. The memory management of the system was positively arcane, setting up the memory data in stacks that had to moved separately. Finding a way to do so without damaging the data proved to be a challenge.
It's oddly like a game, Tali realized. Like one of the games we play on the Flotilla.
Her worked had led her to the centre of the reactor core. She watched her omni-tool tracking the data transfer when suddenly, something illuminated her from the side.
She looked up. A holographic system was standing there. The VI! The transfer must have been successful already!
"It looks like you're trying to repair the facility," the hologram said. "Would you like help?"
Tali groaned. "Of all possible VI settings in the galaxy..."
000000
"I can't believe I did all that work for the damn VI!" Tali complained. "I feel unclean. VIs should do work for organics, not the other way round."
Shepard grinned. He, her, and the rest of the squad were all sitting in a tram taking them to Rift Station. According to MIRA, Peak 15's VI system, that was where the problems had happened which Benezia had been sent to fix. Problems so great in fact that several repairs to the Peak 15 infrastructure had been necessary to get the reactor running again and the tram working. Repairs that had been mostly done by Tali.
As she was standing right next to him, she caught his grin. "And you were no great help, either, Jon!"
"I'm sorry," the Spectre apologized. "I was already tasked out with carrying the burden of command."
Truth was rather that he had absolutely no useful technical skills at all. Tali harrumphed, causing him to chuckle. He whispered so quietly that he was sure that the rest of the squad, all well dispersed over the tram wagon, could not hear it: "Maybe I can make it up otherwise. Later."
Tali did not answer, but her nervous finger movements were response enough. Shepard grinned again.
He had to admit, so far everything had gone much better than he had expected. There had been some close calls, like the fight in the Port Hanshan garage. He felt bad about the way the ERCS guard they had overpowered had died. Also, his left leg still hurt. He tried not to show it, but apparently his application of medi-gel had only helped so much. He hoped Dr Chakwas would be able to fix it. However, all in all, they had advanced far more swiftly then he had dared hope for, and had so far weathered any challenge.
Wrex spoke up: "Rachni, geth, krogan mercs, this place is worse than Virmire."
"Don't say such things!" Ashley snapped, "So far nothing bad has happened. Well, not to us anyway."
"Yet all that's missing are creepers and husks," Wrex answered unmoved.
"If those turn up now, I'll just scream," Shepard stated.
The tram arrived at Rift Station. The station's interior seemed to have a similar design than many corridors in Central Station had - basically tubes with a platform in the middle. However, with the reactor working again, Rift Station appeared much better illuminated, and it also used colder and softer colours, making it appear a bit less mechanical.
The train station was relatively big, and Shepard could see several doors presumably leading to other parts of the facility. However, nearly all of them were locked. Shepard could have ordered Tali to open them, but he thought this would be too hasty. First, they needed information. They needed to speak with somebody.
They found one unlocked door - and when they went through it immediately faced weapons drawn and aimed at them. In a heartbeat, the squad drew their own weapons.
Their opponents were human security guards, clad all in white armour. One of them, a dark-skinned bald man, called out: "Stop! Calm down! We want no conflict!" He lowered his weapon, and the rest of the guards soon followed. Slowly, Shepard lowered his weapon, too, watching carefully what the guards would do now. His squad did likewise.
"Sorry," the man spoke up again, "We didn't mean to threaten you. We just didn't know who was on the tram."
"Okay, fair enough," Shepard replied. "Our arrival must've been a surprise. Who are you?"
"Captain Ventralis, Binary Helix Corporate Security," the man answered. "And yeah, you had us in a bit of a shock. We feared being attacked from two sides."
"Attacked? What's going on here?" Shepard asked.
"Bugs. Zillions of them, coming from the tunnel to the hotlabs," Ventralis replied, "My team's been running on stims for days. Look, you're human and that's enough that I won't shoot. But I'd like to know who you are."
Amused, Shepard rose an eyebrow. "Just how long have been you closed down here?"
"Over a week, why?" Ventralis posed a counter-question "That's when the aliens started overrunning the hotlabs."
Shepard just shook his head. It was probably even better the people here had not yet heard of him. "I'm Jonathan Shepard, Citadel Council Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. And the aliens are rachni."
"A human Spectre?" Ventralis replied, "Yeah I think I heard something... wait. Rachni? As in those things the krogan" He looked uncomfortably at Wrex, "killed over a millenium ago?"
"Indeed," Shepard answered. "I've already fought them on other planets. There must be a connection to the ones here."
"And so the Council send you to investigate?" Ventralis inquired.
"Pretty much," Shepard lied. He can believe rachni now, after having seen them. But Reapers? Besides, he does belong to Binary Helix, so let's use the truth sparingly. "I'm here to capture Benezia. I heard she was here."
"The asari matriarch, yeah," Ventralis confirmed. "The board send her to clean up the mess. She went down to the hotlabs yesterday. I bet it's her funeral. Han Olar was the only one who made it out of there alive when the... rachni first attacked, and he ain't all there anymore. And we haven't heard from Benezia since she went down there."
"Well then it seems I need to go down there myself," Shepard concluded.
"There's an emergency elevator by the trams," Ventralis said. "This card will let you activate it. It will take you down to the hotlabs. Good luck." He handed the card over.
"Yeah," Shepard answered and stored the card away in a pocket of his armour, "I guess I'll need..."
A terribly familiar shriek interrupted him.
"Hell!" Ventralis cursed. "Man the perimeters!" He ran behind the small crates his security team used as makeshift barrier. Shepard and his squad wasted no time in following him. He knows what he's doing.
One of the bottom's plates burst open, and two rachni soldiers emerged - brown-greyish creatures, of a man's height and more massive. They sported gigantically long tentacles, and a nightmarish mouth full of mandibles. They darted forwards, almost like a bolt with this mouth as its point, right towards Shepard himself.
In controlled panic, Shepard unloosened a biotic attack on one of the creatures. It was almost instinctively - he did not concentrate it and certainly had no time to think of a sophisticated manoeuvre. Instead, he simply lifted the rachni into the air - and was surprised how easy it was. The creature now floated helplessly in the air, swinging around its too numerous appendices.
The other rachni was blocked by Wrex, who stopped it with his own body mass. Shepard was not able to see the fight, too preoccupied with his own foe, but when he could look again, the other rachni lay dead on the ground - riddled with bullets, but also with some limbs nearly torn off. He began to understand why the Council had sent the krogan against the rachni over a thousand years ago.
The remaining rachni was dead before it could hit the ground again. Everybody breathed out in relief.
"Thanks for the help," Ventralis said. "You're a biotic, huh? That's good. We have an asari among the surviving staff. Total egghead, but she knows some biotics, and has stumbled in one of the fights. Those things don't react well at all to dark energy."
"I'll have to keep that in mind," Shepard answered, and meant it. It was good advise. He cringed as the pain in his leg intensified. Before anybody could comment on it, though, he looked around and made a gesture spanning the battlefield. "Is this normal?"
"Yeah," Ventralis confirmed, "Every few hours a group comes up the tram tunnel. It's actually better since we locked down the elevator."
"Can you still hold out?" Shepard asked.
"We have to," Ventralis answered. "You just go on your way. Maybe you can make this stop."
"Hopefully," Shepard said. "Good luck to you, too, then."
The knowledge that the squad would now enter the den of the lion, the heart of the rachni infestation, did nothing to help the mood. Everybody was on edge, even as they walked through the tram station which they knew was secure. Nonetheless, Shepard felt it necessary now to take some pain killers from the ration every Alliance soldier had. They would dull his senses to a degree, but otherwise those senses would be totally distracted by his aching leg.
It showed that the elevator they used to get down to the hotlabs was just, as Captain Ventralis had said, an emergency elevator - it was poorly lit, poorly aired and very small. With two humans, an asari, a quarian and, worse, a krogan stuffed in there, things got quite unpleasant on the way down. Fortunately, nobody seemed to suffer from claustrophobia.
The elevator opened directly to a very spacious platform. There were working desks on the edges of it. Equipment that once had probably been used there laid scattered across the room - datapads, omni-tools, electronic instruments. The chairs, too, had ended up all over the room. Shepard saw no people at the desks, and no corpses, either. However, as he carefully walked forward, he could see something moving on the other side of the platform.
"A survivor," Liara exclaimed. The asari seemed to have judged the situation quicker, and was already running toward the person.
The person turned out to be a male human. He was past his youth and with very short hair, and he barely managed to hold his balance on one of the chairs. Shepard could see no external wounds, but the man seemed to hurt badly.
Liara was already applying medi-gel when Shepard arrived. Judging by the asari's dismayed look, though, it did not seem to work. Small wonder - if he's a survivor of the rachni onslaught he must've been here for days. Way too late for medi-gel.
The man looked up when Shepard stood in front of him and asked: "Are you here to secure the situation?"
Shepard did not immediately answer and instead posed the counter-question: "Who are you? Are you hurt?"
"I'm Yaroslev Tartakovsky, the operations director," the man answered. "I am hurt, but I am thinking this is not so much important as containing our mistake. You must secure the situation! Is this why you are here?"
Tartakovsky was obviously speaking in English, as otherwise Shepard's translator would have offered a flawless translation. Nonetheless, Shepard wondered why it was not correcting the man's mistakes. He would have to look up the extranet for firmware upgrades once back on the Normandy. For now, he answered truthfully: "I'm here to find an asari matriarch, Benezia."
"Asari? I have not seen one," Tartakovsky declared.
"She must be at Rift Station then," Tali commented.
"Yes, but Ventralis said... nevermind," Shepard answered. That was strange. Ventralis had told them Benezia had gone to the Hotlabs, and Tartakovsky was positioned so that he should have been able to see every new arrival to here. Something was not quite right about this. "What has happened here? Why are rachni all over the place?"
"You know rachni?" Tartakovsky asked genuinely suprised.
"I've already fought and killed them elsewhere," Shepard explained. "You're not the only who has them."
"Then maybe our mistake, it already has spread," Tartakovsky mused. "But the corporate board, they do not know that. If we do nothing, they will drop bombs from the battlestations. It is the security protocol."
Shepard felt slightly appalled and yet not surprised at all at the same time. "Of course. That's how megacorps clean up their mess. Right, give me the full briefing."
"Eh. I am best starting from the beginning," Tartakovsky answered. "Binary Helix found a rachni egg on a derelict ship, thousands of years drifting. Inside they find many eggs in cryogenic suspension."
"So that's the source," Shepard commented.
"You should've just destroyed all eggs," Wrex said. His voice was full of suppressed anger, but he seemed to have himself under control.
"Yes, now I am agreeing with you," Tartakovsky stated. "But Binary Helix brings egg to here. They plan to clone rachni. Mass-produce them. Create an army."
"What?" Shepard asked. Now he well and truly was shocked and appalled. "And you contributed to that?"
"I was just following the orders!" Tartakovsky defended himself.
"The classical excuse," Shepard growled in response. "Are you familiar with the city of Nuremberg?"
"You are mocking. I am certain you have strong feelings, but we already are paying for our mistake," Tartakovsky said. "I am not thinking I get out of this here alive. If it is pleasing you, that is my punishment. Mother always said I would meet a bad end."
There was some karmic justice to it, Shepard had to admit. The Binary Helix scientists were hoisted by their own petard. However, this was not how justice should look like. This was just aimless devastation. It would have to do for now, though. "Well then. What happened next, after the egg was brought here?"
"When egg got here, Binary Helix found it is not a common rachni," Tartakovsky explained. "It is a queen. They do not need cloning now. Rachni queens can lay eggs in hours and have colony in days. After she lays eggs, they move her to Rift Station. They are thinking that without her they can raise the babies do be obedient."
"An army of slave children," Shepard commented darkly. "Charming."
"Ehh. This was exactly the wrong thing to do," Tartakovsky admitted. "I am thinking that without a queen, rachni do not develop properly. Her mind is shaping theirs. These rachni are uncontrollable."
"And that queen still lives?" Shepard inquired. "Then all we need to do is bring her here."
"No. I am sorry, but this will not work," Tartakovsky disagreed. "We know little about rachni communications and development, but we are theorizing that the queen must shape the minds of the common rachni within their first days. These rachni are beyond saving. It is a sad thing but they must be euthanized. I am thinking that the neutron purge must be set off."
"So, first you destroy those rachni's lives, and now you require them to be killed?" Shepard asked outraged. He knew the rachni were no animals. Cerberus had come to that conclusion, and Shepard had seen all their records. It were sapient beings, despite their insectoid forms. "Bravo! Be that as it may..."
Untypically, especially for when they were on missions, Wrex interrupted him: "You have sympathy with them, too? They're bugs. Bugs get crushed. Even you must have a limit"
"I do not think sympathy is a feature of physical similarity, nor should it be," Liara spoke up, surprisingly strongly and decisively. Tali just stared defiantly at Wrex.
Shepard answered directly to the krogan: "Try me. I had enough sympathy with large, bulky, violent space lizardmen, didn't I?" Wrex did not answer, and Shepard turned back to Tartakosvky: "As I was saying: Be that as it may, I don't have time for that, anyway." If this is as complicated as bringing MIRA online... "I'm here only for Benezia."
"Eh. I do not want to be here so much myself," Tartakovsky answered, seemingly unmoved by the discussion he had just witnessed, "But the MIRA system, she will not let you leave. Is failsafe, you understand? You leave without arranging to eliminate rachni, maybe they spread."
"They already have!" Shepard protested.
"I know. You said so. But MIRA, she does not know," Tartakovsky explained.
"So now we're forced to initiate the purge," Shepard complained, "Due to the protocols the megacorps set up. This gets better and better. Once I get out here, and publish the material I have recorded, Binary Helix will be going down the same way ExoGeni is."
"Maybe we are deserving so for our mistake," Tartakovsky agreed, "But you must initiate the neutron purge now!"
"All right," Shepard conceded. He realized the rachni were indeed beyond saving, and if that was the only way they could get out of the hotlabs, he would do it. "How?"
"Arming controls are nearby," Tartakovsky explained. "All you do is insert the key. Then I will give Mira distract co... uh!"
Blood burst forth from Tartakosvky's chest. Something organic darted forwards through his body, and lifted it into the air. This opened the view to the perpetrator of that murder - a rachni soldier emerging from below one of the ground plates, one of its tentacles stretched out and drilled through Tartakovsky's body.
Shit. Not even Shepard, who had seen dozens of battles in his careers, was unmoved by the sudden gore. And so it was Wrex who opened fire first. The rest of the squad, including Shepard soon followed suit. Soon, two corpses lay in front of the squad - a rachni one, and a human one.
"Shit," Shepard cursed, "And what now? We can't get out without initiating this neutron purge, whatever that is, but we don't have the code to do so, either. Tali, can you hack the system?"
The quarian hesitated. "Unlikely," she said, "If it's truly controlled by MIRA, then that means the entire processing power of the facility can be used to counter any hacking attempts I make. I could try, but I don't think it would work."
"Unnecessary," Wrex spoke up. He stood bent over in front of Tartakovsky's corpse. "Binary Helix were utter fools, but they still have some brains left" He rummaged through the scientists' clothes without any concern for piety or respect to the dead. However, his search paid off: "Tartakovsky had the code written down," Wrex announced and held up a small piece of paper.
"How... how did you know?" Liara asked nonplussed.
"The neutron purge is nothing you do daily," Wrex explained. "It's a one-time failsafe system. Most people don't memorize codes for that. Their fault most of the time, but now our gain."
Centuries of experience, Shepard reminded himself. It was far too easy to see Wrex as one-dimensional and consider his antics funny. There was far more to him.
Like everything else in the facility, the arming control was handled by MIRA. The VI began to really annoy Shepard. Its console was in a room separate from the main hall, which was packed full with equipment lying around unorderly. The Spectre gave the MIRA the order to initiate the neutron purge, and rattled down Tartakovsky's authorization code.
"Verified," MIRA's hologram answered, "Code Omega execution in one hundred and twenty seconds."
You gotta be kidding me! Two minutes were plenty of time to get out of the purge's zone and back to Rift Station - But an advance warning would've been nice!
"Move!" Shepard ordered, "I wouldn't like being hit by a neutron storm."
"Bah," Wrex answered, "Just a sunny day on Tuchanka, nothing m... -"
A shriek interrupted him. Several more followed. They came from outside the small room - from the main hall. And that was the only way back to the elevator.
"Shit!" Shepard cursed once again. "Prepare for battle, we need to fight our way through!"
However, as soon as the door to the main hall was opened, the squad already had their hands full with only repelling the wildly attacking rachni wave. Dozens of rachni came upon them, all ferocious beasts without regard for injuries or for their own life. Either Tartakovsky had spoken the truth and this showed how much they were beyond saving - or they knew about their incoming doom. Or maybe both.
He, Wrex and Liara unleashed a formidable storm of dark energy, tossing rachni right and left. Ventralis had spoken true - the insectoid beasts were affected by biotics like no other enemy Shepard had ever faced. But then, he rarely had faced such a swarm of enemies at once.
Mass accelerated bullets riddled the rachni not hit by dark energy. Rachni fell down, bled to death or even outright exploded. And yet, always more were coming. And time was ticking away.
"Wrex, Liara, hold your biotics," Shepard ordered. "Everybody, let your main weapons cool down best as you can. We'll have to break through, no matter what"
It took ten seconds for the squad to gather their forces - but that was nearly enough for the rachni to overwhelm them. Sidearms proved fully insufficient to stem the rachni tide. Ever more beasts came pouring into the room - gigantic soldiers, somewhat smaller workers and dozens of the disgusting, crab-sized small ones. Once more, Wrex entered physical combat with one of the rachni - a soldier, nonetheless. Like two titans of ancient myths they wrestled in the door frame, both holding their ground, neither side ready to let the other pass.
And then Wrex jumped. Shepard would never have thought a krogan even being able to do so - they seemed too heavy, too bulky, with too low a barycentre. But Wrex did so and grabbed the rachni soldier's head. Violently, he jerked it down, and once on the ground immediately bolted into his enemy's body. The rachni seemed stun by that series of attacks, which allowed Wrex to box and tear it apart until it lay bleeding on the ground.
Shepard could not have hoped for a better signal. "Go!" he shouted. "Make your way to the elevator!"
With an outburst of destruction, the squad turned tables: Now they came pouring out of the room. Everybody ran as quick as they could. Their rifles turned hot, their biotic capacities exhausted, their legs cramped. But they went on. The rachni were taken aback by this sudden sortie. None of them were able to withstand the juggernaut.
Yet, for every member of the squad there was still half a dozen rachni or more. Even while some were pushed aside and killed, others came to take their place.
With their last breath, the squad reached the elevators. Liara, who was especially exhausted from a veritable hurricane of biotic activity she had unleashed, stumbled and fell on her knees half a metre before. Tali and Shepard dragged her inside, while Ashley and Wrex provided fire cover.
A rachni soldier jumped into the elevator just as Liara had been moved inside. Panic ensued, but only for a second. Tali activated the emergency override of the system, and the elevator began to move upwards, ignoring the ferocious beast in its door - which was snapped in half by the elevator's ascension.
The squad collectively breathed out. Shepard looked at them with sympathy. They were dirty all over, covered in rachni blood and acid. The armour Wrex and Ashley wore, and also his own, were full of cuts and damages. He hoped Tali had gotten away better - a suit breach was very much worse for her than any armour cuts were for the rest of the squad. However, she seemed fine. And she'll have less problems getting clean of all the rachni mess than the rest of us Shepard realized with a grin.
His mind already was on what to do now. He would need to speak with Captain Ventralis again. Ventralis had told him Benezia had gone down to the hotlabs, but that was apparently not true. Not only had she not been down there, most likely she had never entered that area of the facility at all - or otherwise Yeroslav Tartakovsky would have seen her. The Captain must have lied, and Shepard very much desired to know just why.