A/N: I had initially planned to split the Thessia mission into two parts, but it somehow turned into three chapters. Totally not trying to prolong the suffering, nope, not me. :)
Also, while I wanted to just ignore the Vrolik's syndrome and punch Joker for that line in the game, I thought it made a decent chapter title. :P
Chapter 103 - Wanted: Fewer Dancers, More Commandos
"I feel a bit bad about keeping Dr. Bryson on the Normandy almost like a hostage," Shepard speaks quietly as together with Liara they stand on the bridge of the ship, behind Lia'Vael and EDI. The Normandy has just made the jump to the Athena Nebula, the stealth drive letting them escape the attention of the Reaper forces monitoring the relay.
"There was no choice, Morgan. If we would have dropped her off at the Citadel, Hackett would know that we're done with the mission," Liara replies in an equally low voice. "And we save time this way. Besides, like Dr. Michel said, Ann needs to rest and recuperate, not to be immediately thrust back into action."
"Yeah. She... took the news of her father's death better than I expected," Shepard remarks, shaking her head sadly. "Damn it, I really hate being the bearer of bad news, especially like that... Ann Bryson is a very brave person."
"I agree," Liara nods. "And speaking of fathers..." she says, nervously wringing her hands.
"She'll be alright, babe," Morgan says softly, taking Liara's hand in hers. "Your dad is very resourceful, she'll keep herself safe, I'm sure of it."
"I pray you are right," Liara whispers, then quickly gathering herself. "So, you also agree with Ann's assertion that Leviathan is a rogue Reaper?"
"Yes, I thought it was obvious by now, do you disagree?" Shepard looks at Liara curiously.
"I agree wholeheartedly," the asari says. "Which simply brings me to what I was going to say next. We will recover the Catalyst and finish the Crucible, and when it is deployed, it should destroy all the Reapers... or at least, so it is believed. But this means..."
"That it would also destroy the Leviathan, of course," Morgan nods, smiling. "I see, I hadn't thought of that. It just means that chasing after that thing is a complete and utter waste of time, isn't it?"
"Dangerous waste of time, considering the ease with which it is indoctrinating everyone... and yet, if Admiral Hackett will insist on continuing on this path..."
"I have an idea on how to avoid that," Morgan grins, deciding against elaborating, despite Liara's attempted glare. "But as soon as we get the Catalyst, Hackett will forget all about that wild Reaper chase, I'm sure of it."
"Let's just hope that we're not too late..." Liara sighs, as the view of her homeworld appears before them, the palette of the planet's colors quite similar to those of Earth.
"Uh, Commander... that is a whole lot of nasty looking Reapers!" Lia'Vael comments from the pilot's seat, sounding very worried and for good reason, the enemy force is here in numbers, almost as many destroyers are Morgan remembers seeing around Palaven. "And we have already been running silent for longer than recommended. It is getting quite hot up here... and I'm not sure I should follow Lieutenant Vega's suggestion and get out of my suit to cool down."
"Perhaps not, Lia," Shepard manages a smile, despite the gravity of the situation. "We'll just need about twenty minutes, then you can drop us off in a shuttle and retreat. Do you have the coordinates of the temple?"
"I do," the quarian nods. "But Commander! In order to vent the heat, we will need to retreat out of the comm range. This could be dangerous in case you need an emergency pickup!"
"Let's hope we end up in a position to escape and get clear in the Kodiak..." Shepard mutters, watching the planet before them, feeling Liara shivering next to her from the frightening sights. Even if Thessia is not burning the same way that Palaven did, the swarms of Reaper ships are disconcerting.
"Shepard, considering that Garrus and Tali are still recovering in the medbay, would you wish me to accompany you groundside?" EDI asks.
"Hmm... I'm not sure, EDI," Shepard ponders for a while. "Considering how dicey this mission looks, I'm thinking maybe we shouldn't withdraw any resources from the bridge. I trust that Lia'Vael would do a good job anyway," she pats the ever-exuberant quarian on the shoulder. "But this is an unprecedented situation, having your processing power at full disposal might be a good idea, EDI."
"I think we should take Javik, he might make sense of the Prothean artifacts that are supposedly stored at the temple," Liara suggests. "I imagine the Cipher would let you translate everything, but perhaps it would be wise to have another option... just in case."
"Agreed," Shepard nods. "And James too. This mission will benefit from having a heavy hitter like him along. There's nothing subtle about what's going on down there..."
Thirty minutes later, the Kodiak is well on its way towards the Temple of Athame, Cortez carefully picking a safe flight path to avoid the thickest concentration of Reaper ships and flocks of harvesters. The video feed they are receiving inside the shuttle does not paint a pretty picture, the scenery is much like on Earth, Reaper destroyers strolling around the surface of the planet and killing helpless asari at will.
Desperate to break Liara's attention from the screens, Shepard addresses her squad in the shuttle. "So, listen up, folks. We have a confirmed Prothean artifact in this Temple of Athame, but we don't really know what it looks like or where exactly it is. I'm sure we'll recognize it when we see it, though," she says. "Aside that, we don't really know much. Liara, perhaps you have something to add?"
"Hmm? Oh..." Liara finally stops watching the gruesome pictures, turning her attention to Morgan. "I have visited this temple only once, Benezia took me there when I was very young. The temple itself is several thousand years old. But the oddest thing about it was that for some reason it had classified government funding and I never managed to find out why."
"I guess now we know the reason," Shepard says. "That's where your leaders hid their dirty laundry. And Prothean artifacts."
"It certainly appears that way," Liara nods, a little reluctantly. "I'm starting to wonder whether there were more reasons for Benezia taking me to that temple than just a history lesson. After her death, I have been digging through her old files... she had some heavily encrypted data relating to this place, some even dating back centuries. I still haven't managed to crack any of the important files."
"Well, she was powerful and influential, she would have had government clearance to any secrets stored here, wouldn't she?" Morgan asks, Liara nodding in confirmation.
"I studied your old mission reports. Your mother was indoctrinated," Javik speaks up suddenly.
"Yes, thanks for bringing that up," Shepard rolls her eyes at his comment.
"You were forced to kill her, and yet it did not stop you from fighting," Javik continues, undeterred. "I can sense your empathy when you look at the Reapers culling your people down on the planet. Bury that empathy and steel yourself. Many more lives will be lost."
"You are wrong to think that indifference can give us strength," Liara shakes her head. "Grief for my mother and desire to see Saren punished for his crimes was what pushed me on to fight. If I did not care for my people, I would not even be here."
"Prothy's just full of crap as always," Vega grins, slapping the irritated Prothean on the shoulder in a friendly manner. "He fights because there is someone who will fight back, and he needs no other reason. And he doesn't understand that not all of us are wired the same way, and that we are not worse soldiers because of that."
"Approaching the temple entrance," Cortez shouts from the pilot's seat. "Or... eh, what's left of it... damn, Shepard, this is bad... I'll try to hang around, but if things get too hot, I might need to bug out!"
"Understood, Steve! Everyone, get out!" Shepard shouts in reply, being the first to jump outside and landing on a pile of rubble, once a beautiful wide stairway leading up to the temple, now completely ruined and reduced to gravel.
"Goddess, this can't be happening... my home..." Morgan feels almost paralyzed from the pure pain and suffering in Liara's voice, even as she pushes herself forward, approaching the fortifications held by the desperate asari defenders.
The path leads them past rows and rows of those impersonal brown bodybags, Shepard counts at least sixty dead, and there are also great many charred corpses, burned so thoroughly that nobody has bothered to put them in the bag. "Damn..." Vega curses, giving a sad shake of his head as they push past the deceased. "Those poor blue beauties... such a damn waste, this fucking war. Pisses me off."
"Exactly what you should all be feeling," Javik echoes. "Anger. Anger and rage."
"Oh, I feel plenty of that, you can be sure of it," Morgan replies, throwing a quick glance at Liara, the asari biting down hard on a gloved finger to stop the tears from welling in her eyes at the terrible sights around them.
"You! You must be Shepard!" one of the asari behind the barricades points at them, breaking the cover to catch up with Morgan and her group. Her dark blue hued face is twisted by rage as she jabs an accusing finger at Morgan's chest. "Damn it, couldn't you get here sooner? I had eighty people under my command just twelve hours ago, now I have eight! Everyone's evacuating, but apparently we need to sit here and die for some higher purpose!"
"I'm sorry... but we came as soon as we could," Shepard replies, her voice a little subdued, feeling increasingly guilty over the whole chasing Leviathan nonsense. "Your name and rank?"
"Lieutenant Kurin," the angry asari replies, her voice becoming a little more level after Shepard's calm response. "I swear, if not for Matriarch Aethyta, I'd have pulled my people out a long time ago. Dying just to make sure you can get into the temple? What the fuck for we should care and risk our lives?"
"I understand your anger, Lieutenant Kurin, but believe me, your superiors have made the right call," Morgan continues to speak calmly with the understandably upset lieutenant. She's watched almost all of her people die over this past day, I can't snap at someone who has gone through that. "The fate of the galaxy hinges on us getting into that temple, trust me on this."
Kurin looks a little disbelieving, but then Liara steps up next to Shepard. "You mentioned Matriarch Aethyta," she almost manages to keep her voice from wavering. "Where is she?"
"Our eastern perimeter collapsed half an hour before, she took a squad of krogan commandos and went to support what's left of task force Vendora," Kurin replies. "The Reaper advance on the east has stopped, so I am guessing they were successful."
Liara relaxes visibly, even if the situation is still more than dire. "We will try to wrap things up quickly, Lieutenant," Shepard says. "Once we have the intel we need, you can pull your people out immediately. Just give us a little bit more time..."
"Shepard, if they launch another huge wave of troops like couple of hours ago, these eight exhausted and starving soldiers won't hold them," Kurin tells her quietly, making sure her people don't overhear her and lose all heart. "Our forces have been stretched very thin trying to hold the perimeter and keeping a safe cordon to the inner sanctum of the temple."
"Understood, Lieutenant," Shepard nods curtly. "Just hold on for a while longer. Where do we go, across that ruined bridge?" she points ahead of them, the road covered by rubble from the collapsing temple walls and smoldering wrecks of skycars. Kurin simply nods, ordering her people to lower the barricades, allowing Shepard and her people through.
"If you make it past the bridge, Shepard, there should be sniper teams further along the way to support you, until you reach outpost Tykis," Kurin shouts from behind as they quickly run across the rubble littered bridge.
"I was here years ago... to see the city burning like this is..." Liara starts, then cutting herself short as she throws a quick glance at Morgan. "But it must have hurt you the same to watch the cities of Earth burn."
"No, not quite. Remember, I'm a space nomad and have spent only very little time on Earth, not enough to form such attachment as you have with Thessia," Shepard replies. "I form bonds with people I care about, ships I serve on, not places."
"After we win this war, I will want to come back here and do what I can to help rebuild," Liara says determinedly.
"And I will be by your side through it all," Shepard smiles, but the expression fades quickly as she sees a greeting procession emerging from the temple and moving towards them, a rather large force of cannibals and marauders. "Still, first things first," she adds, dropping into crouch behind a wrecked shuttle.
Liara's anger seems to be fueling her biotics to unseen level of efficiency, and Javik actually seems to be working well with the asari, detonating her singularities and causing impressive biotic explosions that launch some of the cannibals as high as twenty yards up in the air, throwing the corpses up on the roof of the temple. In the middle of the firefight, an enemy harvester suddenly decides to drop in more troops, but an asari gunship appears literally out of nowhere and makes short work of the surprised harvester, Morgan mentally thanking Kurin and her people for this favor.
As the last of the marauders fall, Shepard pulls Liara a little aside as Vega and Javik continue on. "Listen, babe, I know you're angry like hell, but remember to pace yourself, okay?" she reminds the asari. "Don't exhaust yourself too much at once, who knows what we'll have to contend with once we get further inside."
Liara nods reluctantly, agreeing. "You're right, I should... possess better self-control like this. I'm sorry."
"Don't feel bad for having a natural reaction," Morgan smiles, briefly hugging her bondmate and then quickly pulling her along as they close the last few meters across the bridge to catch up with the two men ahead of them.
After passing through a short corridor, they emerge into a wide courtyard. "There, we have fire support!" Liara exclaims with relief, pointing to the building on the opposite side of the courtyard, a group of asari entrenched on the roof and shooting at the foes down in the plaza. As Shepard and her friends start to carefully move through the courtyard, there is a loud crash as a harvester suddenly barges through the glass wall of the dome covering the temple courtyard, surprising the asari defenders on the roof.
The fire support squad cannot last long against the harvester's cannons, exposed as they are on the roof. One of the asari slowly sags on the roof as her barriers cannot keep up, the other one, already heavily injured, drags herself towards the edge of the roof and dies there, precariously hanging over the edge. The last one tries to make a break for it, levitating herself down to safety with her biotics, but as she jumps over the edge, the harvester simply guns her down and the unfortunate asari hits the ground in a bloody heap.
Liara lets out an anguished wail and jerks to bolt forward, Morgan managing to grab her and hold the asari back in the very last moment. "Keep it together," she hisses quietly, Liara breathing heavily, almost starting to hyperventilate.
"Here they come!" James exclaims, watching more and more Reaper troops pouring into the courtyard, cannibals and marauders this time supported by a lone banshee, quickly charge-jumping towards them. Javik's biotics are particularly handy against the banshee, and Liara quickly snaps back into action to complement the Prothean's attacks with her warp fields, bringing down the dangerous foe before it has reached them, as Shepard and Vega have their hands full, thinning out the numbers of the enemy shock troops.
Hiding behind the once magnificent flowerbeds, they slowly push forward and across the courtyard, driving the Reaper forces back. Even in the heat of the battle, Morgan cannot help to notice the beauty that this place once held, beauty now ravaged and desecrated beyond recognition, granting her painful understanding why this is proving almost impossible for Liara to bear.
Another short corridor leads them into a smaller courtyard, and it is James who stops them, pointing ahead in the distance. "Madre mia... look there, above us..."
Shepard feels a powerful surge of fear suddenly gripping her as they watch a massive two hundred yard tall Reaper destroyer casually strolling by the beautiful white spires of the inner complex of the temple, somehow miraculously avoiding to hit and collapse the graceful building that is also their destination to recover the precious Prothean artifact. "Hopefully it will bugger off and won't decide to sit there to protect the artifact like that one at the Shroud..." she only remarks as they move onwards, jumping from the end of the collapsed walkway down into the courtyard.
"I agree, Shepard," Liara says shakily. "Thessia does not have any thresher maws we could summon to deal with that thing... and I'd rather avoid charging down a destroyer, if I can help it..."
"Hey, it was fun on Rannoch," James chuckles. "And Prothy probably wants to try it too, he still hasn't killed a single Reaper, the big ones, I mean." Javik looks a little peeved at that, but says nothing.
There are a pair of cannibals lurking around in the courtyard, but they suddenly collapse seemingly on their own. As Shepard ponders whether the Reapers could be prone to epileptic seizures, the real truth is revealed in a slender shape of a lone remaining asari sniper, crouching up on a shattered balcony, one side of it destroyed and creating a convenient access path for Shepard and her friends.
"This is Specialist Cayla! Specialist Jineva has been killed by enemy fire," they can hear the young asari frantically reporting on the comms as they climb up to her position. "I've been cut off from outpost Tykis, I'm all alone here!" it sounds like the unfortunate sniper is slowly mentally breaking down as she receives further orders from Lieutenant Kurin. "Alright, I'll hold position until... oh, thank the goddess, I think it's her... Shepard?" the young specialist turns towards them as they approach.
"That's right, Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy," Morgan smiles thinly, dropping in cover next to Cayla. "Things don't look good here, what's the situation?"
"This is a reasonably defensible position, I should be able to hold it," Cayla replies, her confidence immediately restored. "But I think outpost Tykis may have fallen, I... I can't get in touch with my friends anymore!"
"If there's anyone alive, we'll send them back to you, Specialist Cayla," Liara replies softly, looking out from the cover. "At least that destroyer is moving away from the temple. We have a clear run, but we need to move fast!"
Just as Liara has spoken those words, however, the Reapers decide to test just how defensible this position is, dozens of cannibals and marauders pouring in through the holes in the opposite wall, not caring about having a strategy, simply counting on being able to overwhelm them with sheer numbers. If Cayla had still been alone, the approach would have proved successful, but now with five of them and aiming from an elevated position, the Reaper forces are quickly dealt with and they dash towards a section of the broken wall to emerge on another walkway, leaving Cayla behind to hold the fort.
"This nightmare just won't end," Liara cries out as they run up the stairway towards their destination, the view on their right revealing a once magnificent city, the falling spires covered in thick clouds of smoke and dust, the Reaper particle beams slicing the graceful asari structures to ugly, shapeless chunks.
"That's why we need to get to that artifact," Shepard tells her. "Then we can end this nightmare and finally wake up."
"Yes. Fifty-thousand years later," Javik mutters, Morgan barely resisting the urge to whack him with the butt of her rifle.
"Look!" James suddenly exclaims, pointing at the walkway ahead of them. There is a figure of a lone asari sprinting towards them as fast she can, large Reaper contingent hot in pursuit. She is maybe twenty yards away from them when an explosion catches up with her, just narrowly missing, but the force of the blast still launches her into the air. "Wait... wait, I've got this..." Vega shouts, running forward, aiming to catch the flying asari, and by some sort of miracle, the dazed soldier lands right in James' arms, in the best traditions of corny romance vids.
"Lieutenant James Vega, at your service, ma'am," he grins broadly, gently lowering the blinking asari on the ground as they get ready to meet the Reaper forces heading towards them.
"Uh... Private Kinira," the asari manages, shaking her head. "Thanks for that... I imagine if not for you, that would have really, really hurt!"
"I'm guessing you're all that's left of Outpost Tykis?" Shepard asks, staring into the sights of her sniper rifle and not really liking what she sees.
"Yeah. Kurin told us to hold position at any cost, but... do you see what's out there? What am I supposed to do against that all by myself?" Kinira exclaims.
"I'm... not sure there's much we can do about it even now," Shepard concedes, having counted the staggering amount of ravagers standing in defense of the walkway leading to the inner sanctum of the temple.
"Shepard... we need to get through... at any cost!" Liara exclaims, trembling with anxiety.
"Well, if we all die trying, that's not really an acceptable cost," Morgan shakes her head.
"Is there any chance to get some reinforcements, Kinira?" Vega asks.
"We had gunships flying support, but they had to bug out when that destroyer showed up," the asari soldier replies. "It's gone now, so I'll try to raise them." She switches her comms on to make the call. "Talon Swarm, this is Outpost Tykis! Is anybody left on this frequency? Shepard is here, but we need immediate air support to reach the destination!" There is an agonizing wait of almost a minute, before someone responds on the comms. "Oh, thank the goddess, thank you," Kinira whispers, as they see two Talon gunships appearing in the distance, reaching them quickly and starting to pepper the ravagers and entrenched marauders on the bridge.
As soon as the gunships have engaged, Shepard leads her crew into action as well, trying to take some of the heat off from the Talon pilots by quickly finishing the ravagers who are now concentrating all their fire on the gunships. With their combined efforts, the enemies are routed fast, but not before one of the gunships catches fire and disappears from their view, spinning out of the pilot's control.
"Have I told you yet how much I hate this war?" Kinira sighs, waving them on for good luck before quickly dropping back as per Shepard's recommendation to link up with Specialist Cayla. The remaining gunship remains with Shepard's team, determined to help them get to the temple, and Morgan is indescribably grateful for the aid, knowing that without the Talon Swarm support, success would be highly improbable.
This proves particularly true when facing the last line of the Reaper defenses before the entrance to the temple proper. Hordes of husks and marauders are supported by a couple of ravagers and two harvesters, perched along the edges of the bridge and annoyingly showing no intention of flapping off to pick up new reinforcements. The shock troops are only a minor annoyance, and the gunship proves to be extremely helpful and effective, together with Shepard's sniper rifle doing enough damage to blow up one of the harvesters in a fiery explosion.
The other harvester reacts immediately, finding it too hard to pierce the gunship's shields, it simply flies over and tackles the gunship, the two opponents going down together in a tangled heap, bright explosion lighting up under bridge, taking the life of the unfortunate asari pilot. Shepard chokes back the tears, offering whatever prayers she can think of to the brave soul who gave her life just so that they can cross these last few steps on the bridge.
"All this sacrifice... Morgan, we can't allow it to be all for nothing..." Liara sniffs next to her as Javik and Vega finish off the last of the ravagers, meaning that their path to the temple is now clear.
"It won't be made pointless, I promise," Morgan grinds out, trying her best to believe in her own words as she drags Liara forth with her, chasing after Vega and Javik who have already rounded the corner, now standing before a shimmering barrier, protecting the entrance into the temple, watching the countless relics displayed in the hall before them and the main passageway leading up to a tall, majestic statue of the beautiful goddess Athame.
"Let me take a look at that..." Liara says, quickly dashing to the control console in the wall just in front of the barrier. "Military grade encryption, won't be a problem for me... but to even find it here, in this temple, when the Athame doctrine is almost forgotten... you were right, they were trying to conceal secrets here," the asari finally admits as the barrier winks out of the existence.
"Well, we're not interested in the secrets of the asari, except for a very specific one that will save this galaxy," Shepard speaks, leading her friends further into the temple. "Now, let's get that Catalyst and be out of here..."